When you stop to think about it, our modern means of communication would probably be totally incomprehensible to someone living only a few generations ago. Yet without a second thought we pick up the telephone and talk with someone thousands of miles away, or send a letter via e-mail to a colleague on the other side of the world, which were confident they’ll receive in a matter of minutes.

Although the concept is probably as inconceivable to those who have never tried it as the telephone or the Internet would be to our ancestors, connecting with Jesus through prayer is just as simple, just as real, and just as practical as picking up the phone and calling your closest friend. And you’ll never hear a busy signal, you’ll never get an answering machine, and there are no long distance charges!

Feedback
Seeing the life I live now compared to my life before, I know I am happy! I was missing something throughout my whole life, but when I started reading the Bible, all my emptiness was filled. I now feel peace and calmness inside like never before.
–Timothy, Ireland
 
Since I started making it a habit to read God’s Word daily, I am finding myself more peaceful and happy. I’ve changed my old outlook on life and I’m seeing that the most important thing is God’s Word. Reading the Word has brought me peace, comfort, inspiration and healing. Prayer helps me to be in good connection with the eternal, perfect, beautiful Savior. Through these articles, I am getting to know God deep in my heart. Truth is love. Love is God. –Gregori, Russia

SAVED BY A PRAYER
  When disaster, tragedy or sudden fear strikes, its wonderful to know that divine help is only a prayer away. The Bible promises, “God is a very present help in trouble” (Psalm 46:1 ) and sometimes He works in mysterious and wonderful ways!
 
One House Left Standing
My brother, who lives in Israel, wrote me about how God miraculously protected him during the Gulf War. He and his wife and children had received Jesus when I visited them several years ago. They have all been trying to share their faith with their neighbors, but the response has been very negative. Its even taking a toll on his business. But in spite of these new troubles, he says he is happier than he has ever been and that his wife, who had been very sick, was healed after prayer.

Needless to say, they also did a lot of praying during the Gulf War. An Iraqi Scud missile exploded right next door to their house. All of the other houses on their street were flattened, but theirs wasn’t touched. My brother and his family were all safe! He wrote, “Everyone in our neighborhood was amazed. They all have to take me seriously when I tell them that it was a miracle, and that they should believe in Jesus too!”

Streams that Never Run Dry
  I can never forget the day when it dawned upon my consciousness as a reality, a fact, that the promises of the Bible were practical, that they could actually be applied to my everyday needs. It was a revelation to me that God meant exactly what He said in the numerous promises given in His Word, and that He would fulfill them to the very letter if I, in faith, would reach out and claim them in a definite manner.

Gods Word said that I had been given “exceedingly great and precious promises,” that through them I might be “partaker of the divine nature.” (See 2 Peter 1:4.) But to my limited understanding, those promises were only beautiful scripture language, never meant to be taken seriously or applied practically.

I was like the very ignorant woman many years ago who had lived most of her life hidden way back in the highlands of Scotland, and who was so poor that her church had to pay her rent for her.

One day when her pastor brought the monthly rent, he said, “Mrs. McKintrick, why is it that your boy does not support you? I understand he has a very good job in Australia, and that he is a good boy who loves you dearly. Is this not the case?”

“Oh yes,” said the mother, “and he never forgets me. Every week he writes me the most loving letter.”

Curious to know more about a son who could so love his mother and yet leave her without support, the pastor asked to see some of the letters.

Soon the woman returned with two packages. “These are his letters,” she said, handing him the first package, “and these are the pretty pictures he sends me with every letter. They fit nicely in the letter, and it shows he thinks about me.”

“A picture in every letter.” The pastor was more curious than ever. “May I see them also?”

“Oh, surely,” she answered. “Some are of a mans head, some of a man sitting on a horse, and some have the kings picture on them. See, this one here has the King of England. Long live the king!”

“Long live your son!” said the astonished pastor. “Why, my dear friend, do you know that you are a rich woman? This is money. You have wealth here! And to think of how you have suffered and done without, when right here in the house all the time you had riches that you thought were just pretty pictures!”

This was surely my trouble when it came to the promises in Gods Word. I thought they were just pretty pictures, just beautiful language. Little did I realize just how literal they truly are!

God’s Word says, “By which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises” (2 Peter 1:4)and there are hundreds of them. Limitless resources! Streams that never run dry.

Expectancy
Christians are divided into two different classes: those who pray and really expect something to happen, and those who just pray and do not expect anything to happen.

Prayer is first a means to an end, a connecting link between our human needs and Gods divine resources. Prayer is not meant to be a “pious reverie” that has only a subconscious effect on us. Prayer is an intensely practical thing, as real, as uniform, as genuine as using the telephone. And the party at the other end of the line–God Himself–says to us, “Ask and it will be given to you. You do not have because you do not ask” (Matthew 7:7; James 4:2).
 
Acceptance
It is our part to do the taking, His to do the giving. The Scripture says, “Whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them” (Mark 11:24). When we ask in prayer, then is the time to believe, and if we do, we will receive.

“Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him” (1 John 5:14-15). It does not say we are going to have, but it says we have. We have it now, not because any of our senses testify to it, but because God has said so.

“Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). Faith is believing that God is going to answer, even if you can’t see the answer yet. It is not what we think about it, but what God says about it that counts. It is not what we feel, but what faith claims.