Prayer - A Commandment

This article is in response to the question of Tikno about prayer.He said " I would like to know your opinion about praying with facing the holy-statue like in some particular society. For example, ritual in the temples". I should say in my opinion that there is nothing wrong when and where we pray, the question is "to whom we are praying to" and "how we pray".

The first two of the Ten Commandments the Lord gave the children of Israel were "Thou shalt have no other gods before me" and "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth". The term idolatry usually refers to the worship of a fetish, a graven image, or an imagined, unseen deity. Some people do not bow before graven images or statues but instead replace the living God with other idols, such as money, material possessions, ideas, or prestige.

Worshipping modern graven images still results in confusion, corruption, and a divided heart. The worship of graven images is reflected in the way our children are living their lives. Guarding against idolatry as a key to countering the influence of modern images is keeping our hearts centered on God.

In this commandment, the Lord condemns the worship of idols.

I wonder if we ever know how to pray. If we say that we knew the Lord’s Prayer. That is good! but let me share you how to do a personal prayer.First we habve to go to a quite place and prepare ourselves to invite the Holy Spirit. We get on our knees in an attitude of humility before the God of heaven. With our thoughts and hearts focus to our Father in Heaven, we may start to recognize His presence and give thanks to all the blessings we receive since He is the source of everything. Then, we have to lift the petition of our hearts, and after we say what we wanted to say we want to close it "in the name of Jesus Christ, amen". Why? because Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, and no one commeth to the Father but through Him (John 14: 6). Also we have to remember that everything comes through the Father's will and not ours.

Although we cannot be continuously on our knees, always offering a personal, private prayer, we can let our hearts be "full, drawn out in prayer unto [God] continually. At times we may be asked to offer a public prayer, perhaps in a Church meeting or class.

And even though we recognize the importance of prayer, all of us can improve the consistency and efficacy of our personal and family prayers. Blessings require some effort on our part before we can obtain them, and prayer, as “a form of work, … is an appointed means for obtaining the highest of all blessings”

“Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire, uttered or unexpressed” When we remember that each of us is literally a spirit son or daughter of God, we will not find it difficult to approach Him in prayer.