Yesterday, during my quiet time, I was encouraged after praying for healing and strength for a dear friend and his wife, to come across this line in ‘Streams in the Desert.’ It said ‘Perseverance in prayer is necessary to prevalence in prayer.’ In the passage for the day the point was made, that it is by praying we learn how to pray more effectively. In other words it comes back again to putting it into practice.
When I conduct writing workshops I often tell my students it’s no good saying they want to write, or reading about writing, or even coming to workshops, unless they are going to put it into practice. What they hear and say must translate into action. The same is true in our Christian lives.
Reading God’s words is no use to us, if we then go away and forget all we have read, or if it is only head knowledge. We need to learn how to put it into practice – how to apply God’s Word to our daily life and situation. Similarly it is no good talking about prayer, reading prayers, listening to prayers unless we pray ourselves. Unless we put it into practice. We learn to pray by doing it.
At one stage I wrote an article for Footprints magazine titled, ‘How did you learn to pray?’ In the article I talked about how I learned pray. Coming from a non-Christian home, I did not have an example to follow. I learned much later, as an adult, by listening to the prayers of others in the bible study group I belonged to. But it became real when I put it into practice – when I opened my mouth and prayed myself.
Similarly, with my daughter, she learned a certain amount by example as her Dad and I prayed for her during family devotions, in evening prayers or when specific problems arose in her life at school or our family life. But she never really discovered that much about prayer, until she put what she had heard into practice and learned to pray herself. Yes, it’s important that we give our children a prayerful example but it is also important we encourage them to talk to the Lord themselves.
Like any other skill, we learn most about praying by doing it. And by not giving up when prayer does not appear to be answered but by persevering in prayer. Only then will we see the power of God in our lives and of those we pray for.
Please visit these related blogs
Putting it in practice – part 2
faith and persistence bring results