Introduction

Step 1: Make Sure You Are Saved

Step 2: Tell Someone

Step 3: Establish A Quiet Time

Step 4: Pray

Step 5: Make Christian Friends

Step 6: Find A Church

Step 7: Be Baptized

Step 8: Learn To Give

Step 9: Memorize God's Word

Step 10: Accountability Partner

 

Step Four - Pray

Getting to know God better means spending time talking with Him just as we would get to know a friend. Prayer is simply talking with Him and enjoying Him.

God loves to have intimate and honest conberstaion with us anytime of the day or night--abiut anything.

Prayer is especially good when we are spending time each day reading the Bible and contemplating the things on God's heart.

Psalm 55:17 says "Evening and morning and at noon I will pray." This is not a formula for timing our prayers. God wants to hear from us a anytime. However, if we haven't been in the habit of praying then remembering to pray at these times might be a good place to start. We can tell God how much we love him, talk about the circumstances of our day, thank him for His nearness and His help and confess our failures to Him.

Prayers don't need to be eloquent or long-- we talking to a friend who loves us deeply. He knows us and wants our honest thoughts.

The great news about prayer is that we aren't on our own with it--Jesus and the Holy Spirit have promised to help us with the whole thing.

Romans 8:26 says that even when we don't know what to pray the Holy Spirit prays for us.

When we've failed, Jesus is there helping us by asking God to forgive us because of His sacrifice (1 John 2:1).

We can bring anything to God in prayer and know that He will hear us and answer in the way that is best for us. Prayer is not a "shopping list" of things we want changed; it is a conversationwith someone we know we can trust. He may even leave us in the difficult circumstances we ask to be rid of so that we can grow. Whatever He does in answer to our prayers, we can trust Him to make it work in our lives to make us more like Jesus.

Even though our prayer life is so much more than God simply acting on the things we have requested, out of 667 prayers recorded in the Bible there are an amazing 454 answers also recorded. What an encouragement! God is truly listening to us and responding in love to his children.