The importance of prayer

Prayer is so, so important to living all for God. There is no way we could do it on our own – we need God’s help.
And the way to get that is to ask Him for it, through prayer.
We need to base all we do in prayer, we need to bring everything to God in prayer – our hopes, fears, plans, thanks, requests, everything; but we cannot fall into the trap of thinking “I’ve prayed for a bit today, that’s all I really need to do.”
Prayer should lead to action as we spend time with God, experiencing his compassion for the broken and being compelled to act by it.
As we breathe in His presence we need to breathe it out to the hurting, broken world we live in.
We need to be an “army that marches on its knees” (Pete Grieg, Red Moon Rising)
As we pray we need to be moving forward in action, not staying stationary waiting for God to act. He’s waiting for us to act!
James 2 v15-16 “Suppose you see a brother or sister who needs food or clothing and you say “Well goodbye and God bless you; stay warm and eat well” – but then you don’t give that person any food or clothing. What good does that do?”
Praying for help for the starving in Africa, aid for those suffering from HIV, relief for those dying from drought, but not doing anything about it is not enough!
When you see something in this world that you don’t like, that needs to stop (such as HIV, famine when in the West there is an excess of food, extreme poverty etc) instead of asking God to do something about it, ask Him what YOU can do about it.
We can’t become spiritual reservoirs – we need to let the blessings and love we get from God in times of prayer flow out into the world. And by doing so we are making room for Him to pour out more blessings and love on us