{"id":1630,"date":"2021-08-27T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-08-26T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/?p=1630"},"modified":"2021-08-27T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2021-08-26T14:00:00","slug":"the-four-fundamental-elements-of-prayer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/the-four-fundamental-elements-of-prayer\/","title":{"rendered":"The Four Fundamental Elements Of Prayer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>To help you remember these four fundamental elements, think of the acrostic <b>P-R-A-Y.<\/b> <\/p>\n<p>(1) <b>P<\/b> \u2014 <i>praise the Lord.<\/i>  Before you petition God, spend time praising Him. There\u2019s a specific protocol involved when approaching a president or prime minister, and it\u2019s the same when you approach God. The psalmist said, <i>\u2018Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise; give thanks to Him.\u2019<\/i> (Psalm\u00a0100:4\u00a0NIV) <\/p>\n<p>(2) <b>R<\/b> \u2014 <i>repent of your sins.<\/i>  Just like the heat from a furnace forces the impurities in metal to surface so that the refiner can remove them, prayer brings to light attitudes that must be changed, habits that need to be broken, and barriers to spiritual progress that must be removed. And what if you forget some of your sins? Paul tells us, <i>\u2018The Spirit helps us in our weakness\u2026 He who searches our hearts\u2026 intercedes for God\u2019s people in accordance with the will of God.\u2019<\/i> (Romans\u00a08:26\u201327\u00a0NIV)<\/p>\n<p>(3) <b>A<\/b> \u2014 <i>ask for yourself and for others.<\/i> Your prayers invite God into the situation, and your faith activates His power to change it. There\u2019s no distance in prayer, and no language barrier it can\u2019t overcome. Like throwing a switch and getting power, light and heat, things start to change when you pray. Jesus said, <i>\u2018I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven\u2026 whatever doors you open on earth shall be open in Heaven!\u2019<\/i> (Matthew\u00a016:19\u00a0TLB)<\/p>\n<p>(4) <b>Y<\/b> \u2014 <i>yield to God\u2019s will.<\/i>  If you don\u2019t know what God\u2019s will is, prayer is the starting point. And if you already know and you\u2019re not doing it, prayer will convict, correct, and channel you in the right direction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To help you remember these four fundamental elements, think of the acrostic P-R-A-Y. (1) P \u2014 praise the Lord. Before you petition God, spend time praising Him. There\u2019s a specific protocol involved when approaching a president or prime minister, and it\u2019s the same when you approach God. The psalmist said, \u2018Enter His gates with thanksgiving [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1630"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1630\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}