Prayer is... a gift

“You’ve got to pray just to make it today” were the words of a song made popular a couple of decades ago by rapper MC Hammer. 

Prayer has been part of every religion and every culture since the dawn of man. 

Christianity is no exception. 

Prayer has been part of what it means to be a Christian since the Day of Pentecost. “And they continued steadfastly in the Apostles doctrine, fellowship, the breaking of bread and prayers.” Acts 2:47

Prayer is written in the code of our DNA. 

Humans pray. 

We always have and we always will. 

The atheist long for a day when all religion is put away and all praying will be silenced. 

That day will never come. 

As long as there has been man walking on the earth, and tests in school, there has been prayer. 

Before we knew the One True Living God, we fashioned gods with our own hands, bowed to them and prayed to them.

So if prayer is in our DNA, in every religion and part of the founding of Christianity why don’t Christians pray? 

Now, it is true that there are those among us who are prayer warriors. 

But as a whole, most Christians spend very little time in prayer. 

Why is that?

Is it because we don’t understand prayer? 

Nope. We all know what prayer is. 

Is it because we don’t believe in its power? 

We can’t be a believer for very long and not see some significant answer to prayer in a powerful way. So I do not believe we don’t pray because we don’t see the results of prayer.

So what is it? 

Why don’t we pray more? 

One word; GUILT.

It was sin that made prayer necessary to begin with. 

Adam didn't need to pray; he spoke with God face to face daily. (How cool would that be?) 

But after the fall man was separated from God so prayer became the only means of communication between Creator and created. 

Christianity, then, was founded on and spread across the globe with the message that Jesus saves us from our sin.

Jesus came to forever deal with sin and bring us back safely to God.

We preach against sin, tell how sin sends us to hell, 

We tell how God hates sin, and how sin caused Jesus to go the cross. 

So what does the Enemy do? 

He reminds us of our sin and makes us feel unworthy to approach God. 

And to be honest, we don’t do much to assuage all the sin talk. 

In fact, we sometimes double down.

I often hear people complain that today’s preachers don’t preach against sin enough.

Is it any wonder than that people feel guilty and unworthy to pray? 

We all look in the mirror and what we see looking back at us is the refection of a sinner.

So how can we realize that we are sinners in need of saving and yet find a Holy,Sinless God approachable and wanting us to pray often?

Prayer is a gift.

We make the mistake of thinking we have to earn the right to pray. “If I’m good enough and say all the right words and have all the right attitudes, God might listen to me when I pray.” 

But we cannot earn the right to pray any more than we can earn salvation. 

We are given the gift of prayer not because of what we do but because of who we are in. 

We are born in Adam but we are reborn in Christ. 

Jesus gives us the standing we need to pray anytime, anywhere, in any situation. 

Prayer is a matter of standing and not a matter of kneeling. 

We have been given the gift of prayer not because we do right but because Jesus has forever made us right and as such we have the Father’s ear anytime we want it.