Learning to Pray (Part 1)

Danish philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, once said, "Prayer does not change God, but changes him who prays." I have been thinking much of prayer for the past couple of weeks. I have been looking at the prayers of Paul and comparing them to my own. I have found that what I often pray about and what Paul prayed about are, for the most part, far away from one another.


I long to have the type of prayer life that Paul had. I want to be known as one who is always in prayer for the things of God. When I think about the majority of my prayers, there is no way that God could use those to change me. I am all too often praying for physical needs of people. There is a time and a place for that type of prayer but if that is what dominates your prayer life then something needs to change. Paul made it a point to pray for the spiritual more than the earthly needs of the people he loved. This earth is going to pass away but the spirit will remain for eternity. Which is in need of more prayer?


Prayer is the great instrument that God has given men to make us more like Him. It is when we pray that we feel the closeness of God. Of course God is omnipresent and is always with us but we feel closer to Him when we are in communion with Him. So when we talk about getting closer to God, what we really mean is that we realize more and more the closeness of God. Again, prayer changes us, not God.


One of the best books that I have ever read on prayer is called A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers. Over the next couple of weeks I will be taking some of the information about how to pray from this book and sharing it with you. I pray that God would use this information to transform the way that you pray so that God can use your prayer times to make you more like himself!