Make Prayer A Priority - 1 Thessalonians 5:17 - Bible Bites
The Bible instructs us to make prayer a priority. In fact, we are told to pray without ceasing! That means we ought to be praying all the time, about everything. At first glance this seems impossible, but prayer is essentially communication with God and God wants us to bring everything to Him.
Sometimes we get hung up on the idea that a certain matter is too small for God to care about, or on the flip-side, we may get bogged down and not able to make a decision without seeing an explicit sign from Heaven.
There is no matter too small to be put into God's hands. Place everything in God's hands with praise, trust, and thanksgiving. Trust Holy Spirit to lead you in the will of the Father as we submit to Him.
If 1 Thessalonians 5:17 wasn't enough to convince us that God wants us to bring everything to Him, regardless of size, we have Philippians 4:6-7 that says, "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."
What an amazing promise! We bring everything to God with thanksgiving and God will handle it and bless us with unmatched peace in our hearts and minds!
There is something important thing I'd like to say about prayer, that I think is often missed. There is a warning about letting worldliness enter into our prayers.
James 4:3-4 says, "You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions, You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. This is a strong reminder that prayer is to be God-centered, not man-centered. Our purpose in prayer is to align with His will, not our own.
This isn't to say that God won't bless us with the good things we desire, Psalm 84:11 says, "...No good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly." We can always approach God with confidence knowing that if we ask anything according to His will He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of Him. (1 John 5:14-15)
We can experience joy by entrusting everything to God, no matter how big or small, with confidence and gratitude. This leads to unparalleled peace as we faithfully surrender all things to Him, aligning ourselves with His will and trusting that He hears our prayers.
