![]() ![]() Will their prideful prayers accomplish anything? Yes! It will bring about their humiliation! For if we think highly of ourselves God will humble us. They won’t even pray very much because they won’t view themselves as needing God’s help. If we trust in ourselves why do we need to pray to God? People who trust in themselves will pray to God out of wrong motives. Jesus told this parable to some who trusted in themselves because they were righteous yet treated others with contempt. With only our skin we came into this world and now we have become… thanks only to God’s grace in our lives. We should also realize that whatever we have spiritually or physically is from God. His prayer was very simple and he was very humble.Īre we worthy of what we have or what God has done for us? No. As we will discuss later, eloquence of words is not needed. This prayer has a lot of good elements inside of it. He told the Lord that he feared Esau and simply asked for His help. He also acknowledged his reliance on God. ![]() He had a lot of things and became very wealthy, but he realized it was all from God and that he didn’t deserve it. Jacob was a great example of humility in this instance. Of course we won’t ever reach perfection, but we should always confess our sins to make a clear slate from which we can pray to the holy God.īe humble. It is hypocritical to be rebelling against God and forcing our own way yet ask for His help in another area. It is hypocritical to pray for God’s will in some area when we are sinning against His known will in another area without confessing. That is always the first and most pressing issue to address. Because God is holy, He doesn’t tolerate sin. What are the problems with praying to God while we have unconfessed sin in our lives? The Old Testament mentions a number of times that God doesn’t listen to sinners prayers, which is why the Pharisees said this in John. I won’t say God will not answer the prayers of unbelievers for He could in order to show Himself to them, but He doesn’t promise to.Ĭonfess sin. If we don’t believe in Christ then God is not our Father. Many verses in the NT talk about our Father in heaven answering our prayer. According to Hebrews 11:6 to come to God we must have faith in Him. Of course anyone can pray since prayer is simply talking to God, but it doesn’t make sense to pray to God if you don’t believe He exists. As normal it’s not so much a question of knowing, but of doing. My hope is that as we study prayer all of us will be reminded of it’s importance, learn to have more faith in God, and renew our commitment to continual and biblical prayer. Why? Because it is so important to our relationships to God. ![]() But as we can see in Scripture, it is so important that is reviewed again and again and again. I don’t expect that today I am going to blow you away with some “new” truth or magic formula on prayer. Like the others, we probably mostly know what the Bible teaches on it already. Prayer is one of the basic disciplines in Christian life. We could EASILY do a 4-5 month study just on prayer. As I was studying for this lesson Scripture after Scripture kept coming up related to the concept of prayer. Sometimes I am far too general and wordy. Sometimes I am concerned how I will be viewed by others. ![]()
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