Our devotion this week, Pray Effectively, comes from the YouVersion Bible App. It was provided by Answers with Bayless Conley. For more information, please visit: http://www.answersbc.org
PRAISE: The First Step in Effective Prayer
Praying consistently will change your life. In fact, many of the blessings God wants you to enjoy will never be realized unless you pray.
I think all Christians know they are supposed to pray, and all Christians want to pray. But many of God’s people, if they are completely frank and transparent about the issue, would have to admit their prayer life is somewhere between mediocre and non-existent.
Over the next few devotionals, I want to share with you four simple points which I have put into an acronym: P-R-A-Y. If you can spell the word pray, hopefully you will be able to remember how to make your prayer life more effective, and you will be inspired to pray more consistently.
Psalm 100 helps us understand the first letter, “P”, in the word P-R-A-Y, which stands for praise.
Psalm 100:1-4 states it well,
1Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth.
2Worship the Lord with gladness;
come before him with joyful songs.
3 Know that the Lord is God.
It is he who made us, and we are his;
we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.
4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving
and his courts with praise;
give thanks to him and praise his name.
Verse 2 tells us, Come before His presence with singing. And in verse 4 notice the words “enter into.” In other words, praise is how you are to enter God’s presence. It is the best way to begin your prayer.
When you want to come to God, you start with thanksgiving. You start with singing. You start with praise. Or, as The Message says, Enter with the password: “Thank you!”
Today, and every day, make praise the starting point of every conversation with God.
