Why Pray?

As natural as breathing. That's how people describe something that just happens, something you don't have to think about it, something your body looks after for you. Nobody asks Why breathe? It's obvious. If you don't breathe you're going to die. And we don't ask, "Why breathe?" because, generally, that's not much chance of us deciding not to.

The thing is, that prayer is as vital for our spiritual life as breathing is for our physical life. In the same way that breathing brings in the oxygen that allows our bodies to function, and gets rid of the poisons that our bodies produce, so prayer brings in the power of God to our spirit and allows God to take away the poisons that build up in our spirit.

There is, however, one big problem. Prayer is not as natural as breathing. It does not come easy and we do have to think about it and make an act of will to meet with God and communicate. And, even worse, it's not enough to know in our heads, we have to allow our spiritual gasping for breath to change the way we act and do things.

We need the conviction and inspiration of the Holy Spirit to enable us to do the thing we want to do, to meet with our Father, our friend, our comforter, our lover, day by day and communicate about life and living. Until it does become as natural as breathing. What we're going to do this morning is look at three modifications of the question, "Why pray", the answers to which might help us to move a little more of our head knowledge to our hearts and help us breathe a little easier.

Continued here...