Persuasive Essay On Prayer

“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name…” We’ve all either heard, read, or said this prayer once or twice in our lives, but what exactly is prayer? According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, prayer is “an address to God or a god in word or thought; an earnest request or wish.” This definition just hints at what prayer actually is. Prayer is far more than just asking God for things in our spiritual walks with Christ, but it’s what most Christians focus on as if God were Santa Claus. Our focus should not be on the endless list of requests, but on why we should pray, how we should pray, and what we should be doing after we pray. Once all these things are taken into consideration, the believer will be able to marvel in the power of prayer

However, how do we know if our prayers are effective, and if they aren’t, how do we make them more effective? The Bible says, “the prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working” (Jas 5:16, ESV). This means that our prayers, like our lives, must be obedient in regards to God’s will. Throughout the Bible, God tells us what to do in order to pray powerful, effective prayers. For instance, in Matthew 6:8, Jesus instructs that the length of our prayers should not be wordy because “your Father knows what you need before you ask Him.” (Matt. 6:8) In her book The Power of Simple Prayer, Joyce Meyers goes over other keys that will ensure our prayers to be effective. The keys she goes over include: obedience to God, being consistently and uncompromisingly righteous, persistence, being properly submitted to those in authority over us, praying for others more than we pray for ourselves, treating people well, extending forgiveness just as we have been forgiven, and praying with expectation (The Power of Simple Prayer; Chapter 10, Joyce Meyers). To me the praying for others more than praying for myself seems to be a struggle of mine because I’m focused more on others during the day that my faith feels as though it’s dragging, so I pray for spiritual maturity and restoration more than I pray about the people I’ve come

Psalm 19: 1-4 can be a reference to state that instead of going to God with requests all the time, we should worship Him and His art, His handiwork and His creation which all echo the truth of His glory. In his book Crazy Love, Francis Chan states “We are programmed to focus on what we don’t have, bombarded multiple times throughout the day with what we need to buy that will make us feel happier or sexier or more at peace. This dissatisfaction transfers over to our thinking about God. We forget that we already have everything we need in Him. Because we don’t often think about the reality of who God is, we quickly forget that He is worthy to be worshipped and loved.” (Page 32, Chan) Another thing we’re called to do after prayer is to believe that what we had prayed for has already been granted and rejoice in it. (Mark 11:24) God is worthy of our worship because of all the marvelous things He’s done for and given us through our answered