I remember the first time I held one of those silver discs in my hand. It was called a "CD." On it was digitally encoded the music of Robert Palmer. The year was 1985, and I had just purchased my first Compact Disc Player. I recall how fascinated I was that such a little thing could hold so much information. But the world of information would soon say, "You ain't seen nothin' yet!"

We live in the dawn of the "information highway." With fiber optics -- those little strands the size of a human hair that can carry millions of bits of information -- cellular technology, and cable, we have the ability to communicate with astounding speed and to great distances. That CD I held in my hand in 1985 can now be encoded for the computer CDRom drive, enabling even the novice to access thousands of pages of information at the touch of a button!

However amazing these technologies are, they do not begin to compare to the incomprehensible privilege of prayer. Think about it; the ability to directly communicate with God!

Herbert Lockyer said of prayer that "the prescribed way to pray is in the Spirit through the Son and to the Father." He goes on to say "praying in the Divine Name means pleading the merit, power, and work the Name represents."

Then there are the words of R.A. Torrey:

To pray in the Name of Jesus Christ is to recognize that we have no claims on God whatever, that God owes us nothing whatever, that we deserve nothing of God; but, believing that God Himself tells us about Jesus Christ's claim upon Him, we ask God for things on the ground of Jesus Christ's claim upon God.

Prayer is not reserved for merely the hard times, or just for crisis. Isn't it amazing how we pray in an "emergency?" I couldn't help but smile when I walked into our Young Adults Fellowship class a couple of weeks ago. On the board was this question: Is God your steering wheel or your spare tire? It seems that most of us wait until there is a "flat" to call on God.

Last year I mustered up enough courage to get on a motorcycle for the very first time. After a "crash-course," I felt confident enough to operate the monster. So off I went. Out of the drive, into the street, off of the street, over a hill, in the air, and into a tree! You can bet that I was praying while in the air! But we need to learn to make prayer a way of life, an on-going discipline.

The disciples never asked Christ, "teach us how top reach," or "teach us how to lead," but they did ask, "teach us how to pray." Yet before Christ taught the disciples how to pray, He first told them how not to pray. Consider verses five through eight of Matthew chapter six: "And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full...And do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them" (NIV).