We have been instructed to pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18)

Prayer is a communication with God. Communication is a two way process, as we want to speak, we have to be ready to listen too. This is what prayer is all about. Prayer is not just throwing our shopping list [things we want] to God, but we must also be ready to listen to him. Prayer is done by those who trust the power of word and thought. Prayer in the Bible is how believers of God talk to him through praise him and making their requests known. Jesus taught us to say the Lord’s Prayer, showing us we can talk to God.

Prayer can be spoken, silent (no talking), or in a song. It can be used to praise God or to ask for something including help and forgiveness.

God created us so that we can have a relationship with him in Genesis 1: 26-30 ESV

²⁶ Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

²⁷ So God created man in his own image,
    in the image of God he created him;
    male and female he created them.

²⁸ And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” ²⁹ And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. ³⁰ And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so.

But when man sinned, he was thrown out of the garden of Eden. We have since tried to communicate with God due to the following reasons.

Reasons to pray 

We pray due to the following reasons:

• Desperation – cry for help
• Expectation – waiting to receive something
• Relationship – conversing with God without asking for anything [the type in the garden of Eden]

Psalm 115:15 – the heavens are the Lord’s heaven but the earth he has given to the children of man.

Psalm 8: Oh Lord, our Lord how majestic is your name in all the earth.

This psalm talks about the work of creation and that God has given us authority over all that he has created. It was during the fall when Eve and Adam were deceived by the devil that this authority was lost. 

When Adam and Eve started out in the Garden of Eden, they had peace with God. They walked with Him and spent time with Him (Genesis 3:8a). But when Adam and Eve chose to sin by trusting Satan instead of God, the peace that they had with God was broken (Genesis 3:10). The Bible says every person has sinned (Romans 3:23), and every person has lost the peace that God wanted to have with him or her (Isaiah 57:21). So also the authority that gave us over his creation.

Staying in relationship with God brings peace that was what Adam and Eve had in the garden of Eden that they lost.

But God wanted to restore the peace we had with Him, so He promised to send a Saviour to restore that peace (Genesis 3:15). 

That was the reason God had to send his Son, Jesus to bring us back to where we were meant to be, as a child of authority and who is at peace with God.

Jesus walked this earth in authority, prayed with authority, taught with authority and even speak with authority because he knew who he was in God and he wanted to bring us back to that place of authority.

Main Point: Peace comes from knowing that God is in control.

Key Verse: You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in You, all whose thoughts are fixed on You! – Isaiah 26:3 NLT

 I once heard a story where a teacher asked some students to do what our volunteers just did – to draw a picture of what they think peace looked like. One student drew a picture of a large field. Another drew a picture of a sunset. But one student drew a picture of a huge, raging waterfall, with gallons of water crashing on the rocks below. Does that sound peaceful to you? What made the picture peaceful was that above the waterfall, there was a bird sound asleep in its nest! Even though there was danger below, the bird knew he was safe in the tree branch that held him – he was at peace.without ceasing