Prayer is not an isolated and optional religious exercise. It is a vital factor, significant in determining our eternal destiny!
The supreme purpose that God is working out here on earth is the expansion of His Kingdom \u2013 His Family. He wants to make out of human beings immortal members of His ruling Family.
These must be individuals who, by their own free choice, come to fully support God\u2019s way of doing things, who want to think as God thinks, perceive as God perceives, react as God reacts. They must want with all their hearts to be involved in whatever God is doing.
Such an attitude is essential in order to maintain, throughout eternity, harmony and peace in the God Family.
Deuteronomy 8:2
<\/span>Remember how the Lord<\/span> your God led you through the wilderness for these forty years, humbling you and testing you to prove your character, and to find out whether or not you would obey his commands.<\/span>
God has made us temporarily human. This existence is a testing ground so our Creator can try us and know what is in our hearts, whether or not He can trust us to live by His rules and laws. He must be sure. He is looking at us, closely examining our actions and reactions.
God takes note of what we say when we are talking to Him. Of course He knows our hearts and intents. And the Holy Spirit helps where we cannot adequately express ourselves.
Romans 8:26-27
<\/span>And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don\u2019t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words.
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And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God\u2019s own will.
Still, as Jesus showed, the actual words we use are also important, and they ought to be meaningful, rather than vain repetitions.
Matthew 6:7
<\/span>\u201cWhen you pray, don\u2019t babble on and on as the Gentiles do. They think their prayers are answered merely by repeating their words again and again.
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One of the obstacles to effective prayer is not often identified: It is the fact that we live in the age of devalued language. Words have never been so cheap, so frequently meaningless. All around us language is misused in advertising, politics, entertainment and casual conversation.
Because we have been disillusioned more than once by broken promises, exaggerations, shading of the truth, even outright lies, we have come to automatically doubt that words mean what their face value would indicate.
This is one reason some have difficulty believing God\u2019s promises. It also could be one of the reasons some prayers are not as effective as they should be.
Remember that God really didn\u2019t have to ask Adam and Eve the series of questions about what they had done. He already knew the answer.
Genesis 3:9-13
<\/span>Then the Lord God called to the man, \u201cWhere are you?\u201d He replied, \u201cI heard you walking in the garden, so I hid. I was afraid because I was naked.\u201d \u201cWho told you that you were naked?\u201d the Lord God asked. \u201cHave you eaten from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat?\u201d The man replied, \u201cIt was the woman you gave me who gave me the fruit, and I ate it.\u201d Then the Lord God asked the woman, \u201cWhat have you done?\u201d \u201cThe serpent deceived me,\u201d she replied. \u201cThat\u2019s why I ate it.\u201d<\/span>
He didn\u2019t have to ask Cain where Abel was.
Genesis 4:9
Afterward the Lord<\/span> asked Cain, \u201cWhere is your brother? Where is Abel?\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>
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