When you Pray AUDIOBOOK only 5$ until TOMORROW!

What follows is an extract from chapter 3 of When You Pray, by Herman Hanko, pages 22-23, published by the RFPA.
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Prayer is always the way in which we consciously receive God’s blessings. The more we pray, the more these blessings are ours. The more perfectly we pray, the more perfectly do we receive God’s favor and love. The closer we live to God, the greater is the flood of grace that comes from his throne as a stream of living water. The more thankful we are, the more we are the heirs of salvation in Jesus Christ.

Anyone who prays knows that a certain tension exists in our prayers. On the one hand, God always takes the initiative in prayer and draws us to himself; on the other hand, blessings come to us only when we pray.

I hope you will appreciate the wonder of this. The prodigal son who wandered far from his father’s house and squandered his father’s possessions in wicked living forfeited all claim to his father’s favor. But when he decided to return home, it was through famine and starvation in the land of his flight that he was brought to his senses. So God reaches down to us when we have strayed far from him to chastise us and restore us to himself.

On the way home, the wayward son had prepared a nice speech to present to his father and had undoubtedly rehearsed that speech again and again so that he would get it just right and perhaps persuade his father to receive him. But the father, seeing him afar off, ran to meet him, fell on his neck, and kissed him. And when the son began his little speech the father, as it were, cut him short and said, “Yes, yes, I know. But you are my son.”

So our heavenly Father reaches out to us, embraces us with arms of love, assures us of his favor as we, hesitant and afraid, start our prayer to confess before him our sins. The words of our feeble prayers are hardly out of our mouths before we are overwhelmed with the assurance of forgiveness. The wonder of it all is that even before we can get our little prayers out of our mouths, he assures us that his love is everlasting, that it is a love even which brought us back to him, a love which drew us irresistibly to him. The best part is that moment of prayer itself, the moment of being again with God, the moment of being embraced by his everlasting arms. The blessings will surely follow. But just to be there, there with Father, there even after our horrible sins—that is blessing indeed.

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The AUDIOBOOK of When You Pray

is ONLY $5 

until September 30!