

"Pray continually, and
give thanks whatever happens. That is what God wants for you in Christ
Jesus. " I Thessalonians
5:17
"Anyone
who is having troubles should pray. Anyone who is happy should sing
praises. Anyone who is sick should call the church's elders. They
should pray for and pour oil on the person in the name of the Lord. And
the prayer that is said with faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will
heal that person. And if the person has sinned, the sins will be
forgiven. Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so God
can heal you. When a believing person prays, great things
happen."
James 5:13-16

We as believers should pray so
that we will engage ourselves in one of the primary activities that will keep
our faith strong and vital. Prayer is our communication between ourselves
and God, and Christianity is basically a relationship between God and His
created mankind. We can improve our relationship with God by developing a
good communication with Him through prayer.
When we pray, we must have a
genuine and honest communication with God. When this happens, God will
hear and respond, and we will find that prayer is definitely a two-way
conversation between ourselves and God.
The teachings of Jesus point
us clearly to the importance of prayer. He prayed often and about many
things. His prayer was important between Him and His Heavenly
Father. We must use His example to realize the significance of prayer in
keeping us in touch with God, whose grace can sustain us through both good and
bad times. We must develop a true communion with the living God and not be
only concerned with getting answers to our problems.
Our prayers may be of various
forms, with probably the most important being that of adoration, which gives us
the opportunity to praise God. Another form involves us giving thanks to
God for all of the blessings which He bestows into our lives. We should
all use confession as a form of prayer, where we pray to God for the forgiveness
of our sins.
Another form of prayer which
we must practice often is that of praying for others, and finally, God gives us
the permission to pray for ourselves.
We must, through faith,
establish communications with God by prayer, in order to tune our lives to God's
will and direction.

