Jesus urged His disciples to “Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation” (Matthew 26:41).
David and Daniel prayed three times a day (Psalm 55:17; Daniel 6:10).
Jesus prayed all night before making a major decision (Luke 6:12-13), and when He prayed, He prayed earnestly (Luke 22:44). When Jesus’ disciples asked, “Lord, teach us to pray,” Jesus gave an outline of a model prayer (Luke 11:1-4).
In this model prayer, the focus at the beginning and at the end of the prayer is on God and His coming Kingdom—personal requests are sandwiched in-between. This helps us keep our personal issues in a proper perspective. As we see prophesied earth-shaking events beginning to occur and the suffering that comes with these events, we need to develop the compassion expressed by Jesus as He looked over Jerusalem (Matthew 23:37), and pray more earnestly “Thy Kingdom come” (Matthew 6:9-13, KJV).
We see in the New Testament that when the early Church members prayed earnestly, God answered those prayers in dramatic and powerful ways (Acts 4:24-31).
