From time to time, I receive prayer requests from you or others in need.  I appreciate the trust given to me to pray for you but most of all I am glad that you put a lot of weight on prayer. You believe with all your heart that not only does God hear our prayer, but He also answer our prayer.  He gives what we pray for, be it help or healing.

In his book, Old Paths, New Power, Daniel Henderson explains, “one of the devil’s strategies is to keep Christians from praying together.”  If I may add, not only praying together, but also praying, period!  He does not prohibit us to pray because it’d be in direct contradiction to God’s command, and we would right away reject it.  Instead, the devil tells us that God does not hear and grant our prayer. He will leave it at that and let us make our own conclusion about God.   What the devil does is he sows the seed of doubt in our heart, and that usually works.  We begin to doubt and lose motivation to pray.

We come to God to pray not out of desperation but rather out of assurance that He is good.  And because He is good, He will listen to our prayer.  Because He is good, He will heal us and help us as long as it is in accordance with His good and perfect will. Because He is good, we know that somehow, He will work something out so our need will be met. In other words, we come to God not because there is no other way or alternative but rather because He is the first and the best way. He is good and He is all powerful.

The devil, our enemy, does not want us to come to God and enjoy His goodness.  That is the reason he does his best to convince us otherwise.  Do not listen to him!  Keep coming to God and keep praying because He is good, both to us and to those we are praying for.  When we pray, we become God’s fellow workers; we bring the work of God to those in need.  We bring God to those in need.

Pastor Paul