The Power of Prayer

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your request to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”-Philippians 4:6-7


The Apostle Paul makes it clear that in all we do we should seek God first, even in the midst of circumstances that are filled with anxiety. Too often we put our anxiety ahead of prayer and in effect our anxiety becomes our god. The anxious moments and stressors in our lives become the moments we bow down to in worship, they command our time, our money and emotions.

In stark contrast when we pause first to pray, we acknowledge that God is ultimately in control of every aspect of our lives. As O. Hardman comments on the lives of individuals who face a challenging world with a desire to pray, in Dallas Willard’s book The Spirit of the Disciplines:

“Continuing instant in prayer…he will set himself to undertake every legitimate risk, to do the right without fear of consequences, and to embrace in loving purpose those who are opposed to him no less than those who are in agreement with him, in the attempt to relies the vision and to exercise the sympathy with which prayer has endowed him…he is caught up to God and filled with the joy of union. Economic, social, political, national, and racial antagonisms are waiting for this sole solution of the deadlock which they present. There is no other way.”

Indeed, prayer is the only way to commune with the God of the universe. He awaits our cry, because it is He, the omniscient ruler who commands the ends as well as the means. God desires that we pray, not in order that He may act, but it is He who will act when we pray.

As the Epistle of James points out, “…the prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.” (James 5:16 NIV) Prayer is effective, precisely because God has ordained it so! It is not the anxious moments which rule our lives, but a loving, powerful, and good God in the Lord Jesus Christ, who invites us to speak to him about every detail, and promises that His peace will be ever present. This is the power of prayer.