Prayer: Not Just for Emergencies

The impression that one often gets at prayer meetings is that petition is the pivot upon which prayer turns and that the main function of prayer is to handle life's emergencies....If prayer is fostered only by emergencies and is only and always just petition, then...some very important aspects of prayer are being ignored. Prayer is more than the church's ambulance, called out to deal with various crises after the damage has already been done....To pray in an emergency is altogether right. But to pray only in an emergency cannot be right because this limits prayer to the area of our own self-awareness in the events of life. It makes prayer a convenience, something to which we are driven by our human perspective on the crisis, not something in which we are drawn and energized by the Holy Spirit (R. Arthur Mathews, Born For Battle, 65).