{"id":427,"date":"2010-08-12T19:34:02","date_gmt":"2010-08-13T00:34:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ucog.org\/blog\/?p=427"},"modified":"2010-08-12T19:34:02","modified_gmt":"2010-08-13T00:34:02","slug":"the-importance-of-prayer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ucog.org\/blog\/index.php\/2010\/08\/12\/the-importance-of-prayer\/","title":{"rendered":"The importance of prayer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As Christians we all know that prayer is an important part of our relationship with God. <!--more--><\/p>\n<p>In the parable of the unrighteous judge, Jesus describes the righteous in this manner: &quot;And will God not grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night?&quot; (Luke 18:7).<\/p>\n<p>The scriptures emphasize the importance of prayer.  <\/p>\n<p>We are told that David and Daniel prayed three times a day (Psalm 55:17; Daniel 6:10).  <\/p>\n<p>Jesus began His day with prayer (Mark 1:35), and even prayed all night before making important decisions (Luke 6:12-13).  Jesus also took time to teach His disciples how to pray and provided an outline of a model prayer so that they would not blindly follow the vain and repetitive prayers of other religious leaders (Luke 11:1-4; Matthew 6:5-15).  <\/p>\n<p>The Apostle Paul exhorts us to &quot;pray without ceasing&quot; (1 Thessalonians 5:17).  <\/p>\n<p>The New Testament reveals that the prayers of the saints are like sweet incense to God (Revelation 5:8), and that the ears of the Lord are open to the prayers of the righteous (1 Peter 3:12).  <\/p>\n<p>Peter also admonishes believers, &quot;the end of all things is at hand; therefore be serious and watchful in your prayers&quot; (1 Peter 4:7). <\/p>\n<p>The end of this age is approaching. Let&#8217;s be mindful of the Bible&#8217;s teaching on the subject of prayer and follow these examples and heed God&#39;s instructions about the importance of prayer.<\/p>\n<p>With these thoughts I wish us all a rewarding Sabbath!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As Christians we all know that prayer is an important part of our relationship with God.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sabbath-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucog.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucog.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucog.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucog.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucog.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ucog.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucog.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucog.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucog.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}