Faith & Insight: Let prayer change you

What’s your perspective on prayer? How we view prayer will determine how we approach prayer. A recent devotion that inspired me spoke of prayer and the order of it. When we consider the prayer that the Lord taught the disciples, which is affectionately titled the Lord’s Prayer, we see an order in it. Acknowledging God first, His almightiness. In a sense, we are adoring Him in the first portions of our prayer life. If we are not careful we could be going through motions to get to our grocery list of prayer, and then if we are not careful, if we don’t see the prayers answered in a timely manner we begin to abandon it altogether. Prayer that just seeks its own end can become self-centered and shallow. Psalm 100:4 says, “Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise; give thanks to Him and praise His name.” God’s goodness is the starting point for a good time of communication with the Lord. In being thankful for what we have in Him, not what we don’t have in this world. There is another encouragement that I learned that goes against the grain of our fast paced drive through society, we lose the patience of persistence. The parable that Jesus taught involves a woman who was persistent and that we should not give up but pray something all the way through. Persistence doesn’t force God’s cooperation it builds and strengthens what a wise country preacher once told me, the wait muscle. The most difficult muscle in the human body to work out. They that wait upon the Lord, as Isaiah 40:31 says, will have strength renewed, wings that can mount up and a run where one does not grow weary. With these things in mind, think of prayer as something that is, in many cases, changing you and not the circumstances. Last thought, the effectual and fervent prayer of the righteous availeth much. We provide the effectual, He provides the righteous and in so doing prayer availeth much. • Pat Propster is the pastor of Calvary Chapel of Carson City.