Insincere, impure, and unrighteous reasons for prayer are unbecoming of its intended recipient. God is holy, holy, holy (Isaiah 6:3); therefore, our reasons for seeking His glorious and august audience ought to be sincere, pure, and befitting. In Jesus’ model prayer (Matthew 6:9-13),…
Jesus’ counsel on prayer in Matthew 6:5-8 gives four distinguishing characteristics of how the righteous pray. Send article as PDF
The rationale for James’ exhortation to “confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed” is that “the effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much” (James 5:16). Send article as PDF
Like any avenue of communication, prayer has its Do’s and Don’ts. In our last blog we considered three Do’s Jesus gave in Matthew 6:5-8: Do pray; Do pray to be heard by God; Do pray with confidence. In this same portion of the…
Both the righteous and the unrighteous pray. The Pharisee and the tax-collector both went up to the temple to pray in Luke 18:10. Both Jesus and the hypocrites of His day prayed. Send article as PDF
The skeptic scoffs at prayer as nothing more than autosuggestion. Those promoting a health, wealth, and prosperity gospel abuse prayer with their presumptuous “name it and claim it” doctrine. The double-minded find prayer futile because they feed their doubts to the point that…
As taught in the New Testament, Christianity is a “one another” religion. Christians are to prefer, love, receive, admonish, wait for, care for, greet, serve, forbear, be kind to, forgive, consider, comfort, and exhort one another. They are also to “pray for one…
“Lord, teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1) was one of the wisest requests ever made by a disciple of Jesus. Learning from the examples of the fervent prayers recorded in Scripture is an excellent way for a Christian to use the Old Testament…
Confident trust in God is essential to effective prayer (James 1:6). Because Jehovah’s hand is not shortened and His ear is not heavy so that He cannot hear (Isaiah 59:1), David was confident that when he called upon Jehovah, He would incline His…
There are some prayers that God does not attend to, because “the Lord is far from the wicked, but He hears the prayer of the righteous” (Proverbs 15:29). There are some prayers that Jehovah attends to with great care and interest, because “the prayer of the upright…
