The Possibilities of Prayer
The Possibilities of Prayer (by Tim Klink of Prison Discipleship Ministry)
When Jesus taught His disciples to pray, He was teaching them to know God. Without knowing that God exists there would be no reason to pray to Him. But just knowing that God exists does nothing to help us establish a personal relationship with Him. We know that the guy who lives down the street exists, but unless we get to know who he is, and what he is all about, he will remain just the guy down the street. It was the mission of Jesus to reveal who God is and how He relates to His creation, especially to man.
John 1:18
No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.
The way we get to know who God truly is, and what we can expect from Him as He relates to us personally is the same way we get to know the guy who lives down the street. We spend time with him. We share things with him, and we allow him to share things about himself with us. We tell him about our work, and he tells us about his. We tell him about our family, and he tells us about his. We tell him about our view of things going on around us, and he gives us his view. And after a relationship of trust has been established, we share the inner most thoughts and concerns we have, and he shares his with us.
The same principles apply to our prayer. At first, our prayer may be cautious, not knowing how to approach God or what the boundaries are that He has set between us. However, as we continue to talk with God in prayer, we soon discover that He is loving, open, interested, fully engaged in what we are sharing with Him, and that the boundaries that we thought might be present do not exist.
Matthew 19:26
But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, “With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.”
God is the Creator of all things, therefore, all things are under His control. He has no limits other than Himself to what is possible in answer to the prayer of His children. Things that we cannot conceive of in our human minds are the things that God has total power and control over.