Pray Before You Have an Emergency

“Prayer is as natural an expression of faith as breathing is of life.”

—JONATHAN EDWARDS

Let my prayer come before You and really enter into Your presence; incline Your ear to my cry!

—Psalm 88:2

The apostle Paul thanked God for giving him the needed strength to handle every situation in life. I believe he did so as a matter of habit, and not necessarily because he had an emergency. Praying ahead of time gets us the help we need even before we need it. It shows we depend on God and trust Him to take care of things we do not even know about yet.

The way we release our faith is through prayer. Don’t wait until you need faith to try and develop it. It may be too late then. Develop and release your faith before you’re in a situation that requires it. Each morning, I pray God will help me with the day. I don’t even know yet what the day will bring. I have plans all the time, but things happen every day we have not planned, and I want to be ready for them and not taken by surprise. I ask God to release the angels that are assigned to me, to go ahead of me and prepare my way. “You have not because you ask not” (see James 4:2) so why wait until you have problems? Why not pray early and have the help you are going to need already waiting for you?

Praying before you have an emergency is like putting money in the bank. If you have money set aside, then a car problem you were not expecting does not need to upset you. You have provided a way to continue living a simple, joy-filled life before you experienced a need. Start today getting some prayers in reserve. Fill up your prayer tank and you will avoid constantly living in crisis mode.