Prayer For the Benefits of Prayer

Lord God, the Almighty and everlasting God. We, in the strongest way seek Your face today. It is settled with me and a company of others like me that there is no other, nor better place to cast all of our cares today. Truly we have come to believe that there are no other arms strong enough to carry our burdens and cast our sins away from us as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12). Nor are there any other arms that are open so wide as Yours are to us with the standing invitation of Your loving mercy and tender grace to help us in our time of need. Forgive us Father, for another day of forgetting not only all the things You have done for us great and small, but for all the benefits we have inherited and been assured of because they are set forth as promises You have made to us who believe in You. We have prayed this month on such a wide array of things that only touch the surface when we consider the depth, breath, height, and width of so great a love You have shown Your people that passes our fullest understanding as to the reason why! When we measure our prayer lives to the prayers of the Psalms, many of us can only shrink because we forget that prayer is about You first and not ourselves. You have made a way for the vastness of who You are to be personally possessed in us so we can declare with full assurance and joy, “LORD, You are mine”, and on that basis we seek Your face to live with an intimate fellowship that we will guard with all of our heart. May our hearts be yielded to You and our desires be filled with Your ways, and that we are guided by Your thoughts and the motivation of Your desires. Then Oh God, the path of life that we should walk in becomes more and more clearer as the light of You is ever before us.

Please this day teach us not only the words of prayer, but teach us how to live in the benefits of the privilege of prayer. Teach us how there is no secret place with You and no shadow under the wings of Your almightiness without meeting You in the inner sanctum of prayer. It is You that have made prayer unto You to have supernatural impact upon us. Every faithful servant that You have set before us as living examples in the scriptures, You have made it clear through their living testimony that there is no enduring faithfulness that pleases You without meeting You in the necessity of prayer. In prayer You cause us to ponder the direction of our lives before You and even humble ourselves to You and change and even surrender because You have met us in the lowly place of seeking after You. So, our Father, teach us to be better sons and daughters, who will do like the lyrics of the hymn Draw Me Nearer, “rise up in the arms of faith so that our wills will be lost in Thine”. Thank You, and we will always give You the praise, the honor, and the glory, in Jesus’ name, amen and amen.
Pastor Wayne Cockrell