I am going to convince you to pray.
This is the first of a four-part series.
The first two parts is the point of prayer, parts one and two.
The second two parts is the power of prayer, parts one and two.
The power of prayer will be in person and live-streamed on 7/29. By the end, you'll want to join the Prayer Gym Challenge, a 30-day challenge to pray every day for 30 minutes a day at the same time.
Challenge begins August 1st.
Let's dive in.
If you knew how much help you needed, you will pray more. You don't pray because you're prideful.
You believe you can help yourself or someone around you can help you. When you realize only God can help you, you will pray. Let's define prayer. It's simply a two-way communication with God.
To understand prayer, you need to go to Genesis. The first three chapters of Genesis introduces something profound about prayer. We find the first word spoken in who spoke them.
The first by God.
Genesis 1:3:
"Then God said, let there be light. And there was light."
The second person that spoke was Adam.
Genesis 2:23:
"And Adam said, this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man."
The third person to speak was the serpent.
Genesis 3:1:
"Now, the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field, which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, has God indeed said, you shall not eat of every tree of the garden."
And the fourth person to speak was Eve.
Genesis 3:2:
"And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat the fruits of the trees of the garden."
Did you see that?
The first person that spoke was God, and he spoke life into all of creation, including Adam. Very productive.
The second person to speak was Adam and Adam spoke to God and adoration, thanking him for what he had done.
The third person to speak spoke to Eve. The serpent. This was where the problems began. Anytime you disrupt the natural flow of dialogue between God and man, temptation creeps in the serpent's. First words were to discredit the words of God.
And a fourth person to speak was Eve. And Eve could have defeated this temptation by simply speaking to God by her first recorded words.
And the Genesis accounts were to the serpent. We can't blame the serpent for doing serpent how things, but we can always blame man for not praying. A prayerless life is a breeding ground for temptation. The extended dialogue between Eve and the serpent led to the fall of men and a major shift in the Genesis account.
God spoke to Adam before the fall
Genesis 2:18:
"And the Lord God said, it is not good. That man should be alone. I will make him a helper comparable to him."
God knew what Adam wanted before Adam asked for it.
Then Adam essentially prayed for it.
Genesis 2:20:
"But for Adam, there was not found a helper comparable to him."
God answered that deep desire by giving Adam E the very next words. God speaks to Adam after answering his prayer.
Genesis 3:9:
"Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, where are you?"
Anyone who does not pray will not be found where God placed them. Said another way, people who don't pray are lost. The points of prayer is to position yourself where God is looking for you. God is looking for relationship fellowship and communion, but God is spirit. So we need a spiritual interface to interact with God.
That interface is prayer. You must be very careful not to allow the voice of another to interrupt the constant dialogue we are to have with God The moment any voice apart from the voice of God enters your thoughts. Temptation is closely behind. This is why Jesus teaches
Luke 18:1:
"Then he spoke a parable to them that men always ought to pray and not to lose heart."
Lose hearts here in the Greek means to be weak. Or to faint.
Have you ever seen someone faint before? What happens? They fall.
Men fall when they stop relying on God to hold them up.
Adam and Eve fail the very moment they stopped praying. Are you getting this? Sin enters the life of a person when they stop talking to God.
When Adam was talking to God, he had a purpose. His needs were being met and he existed in paradise.
That's what prayer does. It brings us back to a position where we can understand God's plan for our lives and get this.
God wanted to populate the earth. He already knew that Adam would need and eve. So he positioned Adam in such a way that Adam would ask for the very thin God wanted for him.
This is so profound. When you are in perfect harmony with God, all our prayers will be answered because we are perfectly aligned with his will. That's prayer.
Before we wrap up, I want you to know this. Praying for five minutes every day at the same time is more powerful than praying one day a week for one hour.
It's a muscle. Do you want to grow that muscle in the prayer jam? Then join us for this 30 day challenge.
It begins August 1st. If you're interested, just subscribe to this newsletter and we'll get you all the information you need.
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