What a huge blessing to have steadily grown more and more over the years in a personal understanding of two of our most powerful weapons in life - prayer and faith. Their value and potency I suspect are misunderstood and certainly underestimated. They are in the realm of the supernatural and are therefore not understood by mere logic. They can lift you above mere church attendance, to another realm. 

These weapons are available to all of us. Not in the sense that they are placed on a platter and we simply take them up. They are gifts, more to be developed and exercised by continuous use. The more we are engaged in and with them, the more effectual they become  and make us stronger persons in God.

Much of what I have learnt about prayer and faith I have discovered in my personal  reading. I have well over fifty books on prayer. My mother also left me a good pile!! 

Authors like Andrew Murray, Charles Spurgeon, Dwight Moody, Oswald Chambers, Morris Venden and of course Ellen White ( and many more) have shaped and influenced my thinking on the arena of prayer and faith. 

I am very careful to say that I place no man's work above the Word of God. Spiritual writers who are obviously under the influence of the Spirit always take you back to the Bible and give fresh and deeper understandings of the Word so that you are able to apply what you have read.

Application is the key!

You can read the Bible and lots of books and still do apply what you have read. Therein lies failure. How to apply the spiritual knowledge we acquire is what makes the telling difference.

My understandings about prayer and faith have led me to feel very comfortable with God, in taking my requests to Him, in believing that He hears me and will respond in His time and way, always for my best good. It is as simple as that.

One of my most important understandings is praying in the will of God. Of course what is most exciting for me is the whole arena of claiming the promises of God. And while we can become quite enthused about that, it is good to keep a balanced view so we do not go off the deep end. This divinely inspired statement not only provides balance but also separates the sheep from the goats:

"Those who bring their petitions to God, claiming His promise while they do not comply with the conditions, insult Jehovah. They bring the name of Christ as their authority for the fulfillment of the promise, but they do not those things that would show faith in Christ and love for Him." COL 143.2}

Very very powerful statement!!

Faith and prayer are inextricably connected. You cannot have one without the other. It's like having a one foot cock. Poor thing ....he can go no where! 

We are called to live lives of prayer not and see prayer as an obligatory discipline, something to be engaged in, akin to  eating spinach, or worse yet taking castor oil. Not at all! Prayer allows us to have spiritual intercourse with God and deepens our intimacy with Him. 

Faith opens up the way for us to receive His proffered blessings and to achieve the dreams He placed in our hearts, the ones He wrote in our book of life even before we were born!