Wisdom-Trek / Creating a Legacy

Welcome to Day 569 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom

Prayer - The Tools in Gramps' Backpack

Thank you for joining us for our 5 days per week wisdom and legacy building podcast. This is Day 569 of our trek, and we are hiking a series of trails called The Tools in Gramps’ Backpack.

Each Monday for a total of 20 weeks we will explore a different tool that is needed to motivate and equip parents and grandparents to train their children and grandchildren to be successful on their trek of life. If you don’t have children or grandchildren of your own, use these tools to train others that you do influence. Today the 12th tool from Gramps’ Backpack is prayer.

We are broadcasting from our studio at The Big House in Marietta, Ohio. Communication is so important. We need to continually and effectively communicate with our spouse, our children, our grandchildren, and others that we have the opportunity to impact. It would be a dysfunctional relationship if compassionate and effective communication were not part of it. This is why our next tool is so crucial.

Since God created us, if we do not have continual and effective communication to Him through prayer, then our spiritual relationship will also be dysfunctional. As parents and grandparents, we need to communicate with God, and we also need to demonstrate and teach our children, grandchildren, and others that we mentor what it means to have an effective prayer life. So the tool that we will explore today is…   

Prayer

Every parent and grandparent should make frequent use of God’s indispensable tool - the tool of prayer. As James, the half-brother of Jesus instructed us in James 5:16, "Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results."

“The power of prayer” – these words are used rather lightly within many Christian circles. They are familiar, yet sometimes I think we forget what they really mean. Prayer is a powerful tool for communicating with our Creator. It is the opportunity to commune with the giver of all good things. Prayer helps us to find strength for today and bright hope for our tomorrows. Prayer is not a practice that is to be taken lightly or to use infrequently when we have a crisis.So let me ask you this question, “Is prayer an integral part of your daily life, or is it a hit-or-miss habit?” Do you pray on a consistent and regular basis, or is it an afterthought when the difficult times of life overwhelm you? The Apostle Paul in his letter in 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 encourages us to, "Always be joyful. Never stop praying. Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus."

The strength of your spiritual life will be in direct proportion to the quality of your prayer life. The phrase “prayer changes things” is often misused, but is true. It changes you. Instead of worrying, planning, and plotting your next step, when you have a consistent and effective prayer life with your creator, you can present your petitions to God and ask Him to give you wisdom, insight, and understanding that will give you the direction to take. James once again in chapter James 1:5 instructs us, "If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking." Pray constantly about things great and small. God is listening, and He desires to hear from us. As King David put it in Psalms 19:14, "May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer."Just as Christ was an example to us that we need to pray, we need to be an example to our children, grandchildren, and all that we impact.