Imagine someone who is in great need for money, and they worry, they try to juggle their debts, they walk past the cash machine without taking out any cash. But they have lots in the bank… they just don’t withdraw it. They have lots of money in the bank, but they do everything else, or nothing, instead of going to the cash machine and making a withdrawal. Now imagine that Christians have a great God who can bless them by answering so many prayers. But instead of receiving numerous blessings, they go without. And all because they don’t ask – all because they don’t pray! Or sometimes it is because we pray for the wrong things: “You want what you don’t have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can’t get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them. Yet you don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it. And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure. ” (James 4:2–3, NLT). We do not have because, instead of relying on God’s power, do we use worldly methods to get what we want? The principle in James 4:2-3 is not only that people can resort to worldly fighting to get their way, but also to worldly methods that are more subtle, including using worldly marketing and attraction techniques to bring people into church, such as to entertain them, instead of bringing them to God in dependence and praise. In the book titled “Teach us to pray: Prayer in the Bible and the World”, edited by Don Carson, F. Heiler notes: … prayer is the centre of religion, the soul of piety … Without prayer faith remains a theoretical conviction; worship is only an external and formal act, moral action is without spiritual depth; man remains at a distance from God. Jesus’ followers have many reasons to pray, many encouragements to pray, many examples of answered prayer, and no excuses not to pray. Let us pray…