Prayer    5 min - worship
                              =====


I would like to tell you a little story:
A man finds in a small town a shop with a sign outside:
" Here is everything, and everything for nothing.  "
He goes in and considers, what he could order for
himself (house, car, wife, etc).  Then he says to himself:
 "I can always order things for me. Let me first think about the others."
He starts: "I  want to take the hunger from  the world away...
stop this is only a symptom, the causes must be eliminated.  
Therefore, first we need the world peace.  
Everyone should put the weapons out of his hand.  Then righteous structures should
be created, so that the poverty and the hunger can be eliminated.  
Also the environment shall become healthy again and all
persons shall understand, tolerate, and accept each other.  "
(Probably we all would say something like that.  ) 

The storekeeper looks at him and says:
"I am sorry, You understood our advertising in a wrong way.
 We have only the seed for everything."

Only the seed.  Which and where must be sowed to get the
world peace?  How does it begin?  Where and what must be
sowed to  eliminate unjust economic structures?

Where and what must be sowed to get mutual understanding and
accepting?

Is it enough to exchange all politicians, to replace
them perhaps by simple citizens?  A complete new beginning ?

Would the corruption be abolished then?  Many dictators were
simple people:
A small painter Hitler, a shoemaker Stalin, etc.
Nearly as many political systems as possible were tried :
From the emporer as a god up to the Communism.  
The democratic kind of capitalism seems to win, but there are still living
90 percent of the world population in poverty.

A shop or a prescription, that the world peace create and 
eliminate the hunger and the poverty, would be great
but unfortunately it does not give something like this.

A shop to get the seed to everything,already exists:
Matth. 7,7.8; 
 " If it asks, and will be given you;  if you look for, and will
  find;  if it knocks, and will be opened you.  For each asking
  receives, and the looking for finds, and the knocking will be
  opened.  "

Here it matters about the praying to God.  Many of you will decline
and say, praying alone does not help, it is also necessary to do
something.
If praying did not help you causes perhaps in the fact that you
prayed the first time when it was already too late. like a farmer,
who begins to pray a week before the harvest:  Lord Jesus give
that the plants increase well, that it becomes a good harvest.
Perhaps someotherone prayed for his relationship that it does not break.
But he did not ask God when choosing this partner.  
Anotherone looses much money in his buisiness but he did not 
include God during planning his businesses.

If you are planning, figuring, sowing your life without handing God
the leading function you must not wonder, if your life fails in many points
and if praying does not help anymore. 
Often you also pray in this case about the wrong things.

The statement we read in the bible text above is rather encouraging:  
"Ask and you will receive."  
But you often will not receive absolutely that about you prayed.  God is no
automat for fullfilling wishes, but he has the goal to get a
personal relationship to you.

We find in this text a sequence:
Ask, look for, knock.
He will use each request of you as a way to get contact to you.
If you ask egoistic for a new luxury car, then he will try to explain to you, 
that the luck of this earth does not lie in the luxury and that he has something
better for you.  
If you ask for the world's peace, he will try to explain to you that he can change 
you to begin with peace in your life and in your environment.

God try to make you curious to look for him.  
And if you find him then you can knock at his door and begin a life with him.
I personally have experienced this and I would like to invite you:
Look for God. 
A possible prayer could be:
'Lord Jesus, if you hear me, please give me that I can know you.'


                   Amen