We have seen that our Lord Jesus Christ has taught us how we should pray. A prayer is not a narration or story telling words, Philippians 4:6 prayer s making a request to God.
A prayer has specific contents according to the bible. Prayer is making a request to God. This is proven from Philippians 4:6, let your request be made known unto God. In giving example of a specific request, Bro Eli used the story of Judas. When he (Judas) betrayed Christ and took his own life, the apostles needed a replacement so they prayed Acts 1:25. They prayed for Judas replacement so as to complete the 12 tribes of Judah.
In this prayer, they asked for only what the needed ,they had two options but Matthias was the answer to their prayer. From this, I learnt that when we pray, we should be specific, precise, brief and not repetitive.1 Timothy 4:5, I learnt that prayer is needed in everything. Before we eat, every creature of God is good, so we should pray and give thanks to God. God is always ready to hear prayers.
When should we pray?
Christians should pray and not to faint pray without season 2 Timothy 1:3 and when we are praying we should make our prayers as brief as possible.
We should pray in both difficulty and comfort. That communication with God is needed. God wants us to pray day and night, praying without season as referred to in 1 theselonian 5:17.
How can we be sure that our prayers will be answer by God?
2Timothy 2:22 Our prayers are heard by God if we make them out of pure hearts. He stated that if our heart is evil, even if we pray day and night, God will not listen. Referencing the bible he said, the sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination unto God but the prayer of the righteous is his delight. God listens to a pure hearted man.
There are conditions given to us by God for our prayers to be answered and is in accordance of 2 chronicles 7:14. God wants us to repent of our sins, live a holy life, then he will render answers to our prayers. So today teaches us to take away the evil in our hearts before we pray.
The word of God cleanse our hearts psalm 119:11, and we are purified by obeying God's commands.1 Peter 1:22. Bro Eli made us understand that for our hearts to be purified, we need to depart from sin and take away the work of the flesh, such as fornication, adultery, witchcraft, hatred, Jealousy, and envy. He noted that these are the limiting factors to our prayers.