Do you want to live in pursuit of God, or do you want to die not knowing God?”

In the beginning God created people to enjoy a relationship with Him, to rule over all creation, and to reflect and multiply His glory to the ends of the earth.

We know how devastating were the consequences of man’s sin, leading to the destruction of all mankind save eight people with Noah’s Flood.

We also know the enormous cost God, the Trinity, was prepared to make, to provide us with an opportunity to get back into a right relationship with our heavenly Father.

We all have sinned against God and we all deserve judgement for our sin. The only way any one of us can come before God is by trusting in the sacrifice of Jesus for our sin. That’s how a relationship with God begins. Fortunately, a relationship with God begins not with our pursuit of God, but with His pursuit of us. The God who pursued you out of love in the past has not stopped pursuing you out of love today.

God saves His people so that they might “seek His face in worship.” Remember we enter His gates with thanksgiving, we enter His courts with praise but we enter His presence with worship.

Many Christians struggle to pray because they don’t understand how their prayers fit with the purposes of a sovereign God.

Does prayer change God’s mind? And does prayer change anything, for that matter? If God is sovereign, if God’s in control of all things, and all of God’s promises will come to pass, then why pray?

To answer that question, one must know four things about God:

1. The perfections of God are unchanging;
2. The purposes of God are unchanging;
3. God’s promises are unchanging,
4. The plans of God are unfolding.

God has designed prayer to be a powerful means by which we participate in His plans in the world. God brings about a remarkable change in the world in response to the prayers of His people. When we pray, God acts. Read Exodus 8:13, “God did according to the word of Moses.” Read that again. What a testimony to prayer. Prayer is an invitation to join with God in effectively shaping the course of history. God has called you and me not to watch history, but to shape history for the glory of His great name. That should change the way you pray.

All of us have an assignment from God, but unless we pray, we may never know what it is, none of us can be who God has called us to be without prayer. This is the way it’s designed to be, it’s a massive moment when we realise we can’t do anything worthwhile without God’s help. This will drive us to pray.

When we fail to pray, we essentially say we’re content with a little knowledge of God’s glory. Reality is, we can’t help but become like what we behold.

Because God is holy, we must approach Him with a humble and contrite heart. Sin is no small thing in the sight of a Holy God, The propensity to sin is strong, and the Bible reveals that the punishment for sin is severe. For the severity of how God’s punishes sin, just look at the history of God’s nation Israel.

Our goal in prayer must be to know, love, and enjoy God,. Only then will it satisfy. Prayer will not be very satisfying if you just want things, prayer is the pursuit of God, not just His gifts.

As a result of prayer, we will walk away changed by God, We will come to know Him better as we experience His answers to our prayers. God wants to bless us, He wants to bless His people, He invites us to experience His blessing through prayer.