FAITH CAPSULE: Communication or your speech before God is communicating with God.

1 Kings 8:22-61  

Prayer is a personal communication or petition addressed to God.
Communicating before or with God can be in verbal or non-verbal.
It is done in the form of supplication, adoration, praise, contrition (sincere remorse) or Thanksgiving. Prayer with no understanding will lack to have the reason why or what praying to get an expected answer.
Prayer is also a devotion which can be done either public or private.
Bishop David Oyedepo of the Winners’ Fellowship once stated that “Prayer is like a labor room where undeniable proofs are given birth to.” Prayer is indeed labor and, when it is actively engaged, it delivers undeniable miracles.
Prayer with patience will answer as the antidote for suffering. Job, in the time of his suffering, patience, and prayer (communication with God) was continual. The Bible encourages us, “Is anyone suffering let him pray” (James 5:13). Give self to prayer as a way of lifestyle with continual communication with God in every moment of life which is the evidence of not ignoring nearness of God to all man.
Prayer always demands earnest engagement (serious intention, purpose or effort). The seriousness, which prayer demands is evident in the testimony of how Elijah prayed for rain. James 5:17-18 “Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth produced its fruit” Elijah prayed earnestly (he prayed with seriousness and purpose).
Is your prayer with seriousness or is it to gain the attention of a man?
Jesus, our Lord, and savior was not exempted from earnest praying. He was at praying ground when His betrayals came to arrest him. Luke 22:44 recorded Jesus’ earnest prayer in labor: “And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly. Then His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” Are you striving to pray laboriously or to pray lazily? Jesus prayed in sweating like great drops of blood falling, the evidence of laborious prayer. Are you one that is expecting to engage prayer differently from God’s way and get a result? Prayer that is labor is seeking God diligently to be rewarded by God. (Hebrews 11:6).
Prayer is labor that builds up before God with answers as hedges like a wall for one with prayer’s protection from enemies accessible. Job’s constant prayer over his household answered as hedges which denied Satan’s access for his evil. The Bible recorded Satan’s complain before God after failure not to do evil for Job: “Have You not made a hedge around him, around his household, and around all that he has on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land.” (Job 1:10) With the prayer of labor that is continual, build up hedges of God’s protection. Just like King David, let prayer be your lifestyle and be known by God for hedges of protection. (Psalm 139:5)

Prayer for today: Ask from God for the strength to increase you on your prayer altar.