It has been a while since I’ve written on prayer and since I’m doing a study on prayer, I though it a good idea to share some thoughts with you. We know that prayer is a conversation with our Heavenly Father, our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. Conversation carries the understanding that each person involved is given time to speak.

However, because people spend so little time in prayer, they often tend to do most of the talking, if not all the talking, and then leave the conversation before giving themselves time to hear what God is saying. Hey, we’ve all been guilty of this at one time or another. The point is to NOT make it a habit of just coming to God when we want to talk, when we need healing or need an answer to a problem. We need to come into His Presence to hear what He has to say.

Time is an important factor in our lives and we need to spend it wisely. Prayer is the wisest things we can do for the welfare of our lives and our family, and our Nation. The point I want to make clear is that everyone needs to plan to spend enough time in prayer to not only bring their requests before the Lord, but also to incorporate discipline to remain in His presence to hear His side of the conversation.

From my own experience, my heart calms down when I spend time in prayer with my Heavenly Father. When my mind and emotions are calm, my spirit more clearly hears the voice of my God. The Lord has wisdom to give us for decisions in our life. He has more revelation to give us about the Scriptures we read. It is in those quiet times, in His presence, that we received not only revelation of the Scriptures we are reading but also the understanding of how they apply to our lives.

Prayer is a wonderful gift from our Creator to us. Do not mis-use it! A mis-use of prayer time is spending the whole time talking about our problems and asking God for help – and then NOT giving Him a chance to talk and give us the answers!

This absence of quality time in prayer can be the very thing that is causing you to think that you never get your prayers answered; you are not giving yourself a change to hear the answers. I do not mean for this to sound harsh, but there is a truth here that everyone needs to recognize and apply to their prayer time. I’m not saying that the time you spend in prayer always has to be hours at a time, but it most certainly needs to be with reverence to the God of the Universe whom you are going to for answers. Everyone has a busy schedule. If we say we do not have much time to pray, is it because we really don’t believe that prayer is worth our time? Each person must search their own heart with that question and seek out the answer before God.

Psalm 6:9 tells us that God hears and receives our prayers. Psalm 143:1 states that our Lord hears our supplications, and in His faithfulness answers in His righteousness. Proverbs 15:29 assures us that He hears the prayers of the righteous. So, the problem is not that God does not answer prayers, it is more likely that we are not listening. Ugh!

But do not give up, keep working on developing the discipline of prayer. Make time to pray; making your requests with joy to the Father (Philippians 1:4), and make time to listen for what the Father wants to say to you.