Prayer Warriors

Read for This Week’s Study

Dan. 2:20–23; Dan. 6:10, 11; Acts 20:36; Gen. 5:22–24; Exod. 33:15–23; Exod. 32:31, 32.

Memory Text:

“I love the Lord, because He has heard my voice and my supplications. Because He has inclined His ear to me, therefore I will call upon Him as long as I live” (Psalm 116:1, 2, NKJV).

Imagine if you rarely spoke to your best friend or your spouse. Very soon the relationship would break down, and there would be a problem. In the same way, prayer is an essential part of having a close relationship with God. It is a crucial devotional habit, one that each of us needs and can strengthen. If we don’t pray often and continually, we will wander from the Lord sooner or later.

In the Bible, we learn about the lives of different individuals who prayed in different ways. We can step back and catch a glimpse into how their communion with God impacted their relationship with Him, how and for what we might also pray, and how their prayers changed the lives of others. It is true: our prayer life impacts not only ourselves but others as well.

Just like Bible study, this topic of prayer is both huge and important and much broader than what can be covered in just two weeks. This week we’ll learn lessons from some of those in the Bible who prayed and showed us just how central prayer is to having a strong relationship with God. Let’s learn from their examples.

*Study this week’s lesson to prepare for Sabbath, May 9.

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Additional Reading: Selected Quotes from Ellen G. White

Through nature and revelation, through His providence, and by the influence of His Spirit, God speaks to us. But these are not enough; we need also to pour out our hearts to Him. In order to have spiritual life and energy, we must have actual relationship with our heavenly Father. Our minds may be drawn out toward Him; we may meditate upon His works, His mercies, His blessings; but this is not, in the fullest sense, communing with Him. In order to commune with God, we must have something to say to Him concerning our actual life.
Prayer is the opening of the heart to God as to a friend. Not that it is necessary in order to make known to God what we are, but in order to enable us to receive Him. Prayer does not bring God down to us, but brings us up to Him.
When Jesus was upon the earth, He taught His disciples how to pray. He directed them to present their daily needs before God, and to cast all their care upon Him. And the assurance He gave them that their petitions should be heard, is assurance also to us.
Jesus Himself, while He dwelt among men, was often in prayer. Our Saviour identified Himself with our needs and weakness, in that He became a suppliant, a petitioner, seeking from His Father fresh supplies of strength, that He might come forth braced for duty and trial. He is our example in all things. He is a brother in our infirmities, “in all points tempted like as we are;” but as the sinless one His nature recoiled from evil; He endured struggles and torture of soul in a world of sin. His humanity made prayer a necessity and a privilege. He found comfort and joy in communion with His Father. And if the Saviour of men, the Son of God, felt the need of prayer, how much more should feeble, sinful mortals feel the necessity of fervent, constant prayer.
Our heavenly Father waits to bestow upon us the fullness of His blessing. It is our privilege to drink largely at the fountain of boundless love. What a wonder it is that we pray so little! God is ready and willing to hear the sincere prayer of the humblest of His children, and yet there is much manifest reluctance on our part to make known our wants to God. What can the angels of heaven think of poor helpless human beings, who are subject to temptation, when God’s heart of infinite love yearns toward them, ready to give them more than they can ask or think, and yet they pray so little and have so little faith? The angels love to bow before God; they love to be near Him. They regard communion with God as their highest joy; and yet the children of earth, who need so much the help that God only can give, seem satisfied to walk without the light of His Spirit, the companionship of His presence.—Steps to Christ, pp. 93, 94.