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Let us pray. Be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving. Let your requests be made known unto God. Philippians 4.6 Dear God, there are so many things that I want to accomplish today. I have to take care of my family, pay bills, keep my house in order, and work on top of it all. Remind me to pray to you instead of worrying about what the day will hold.
Grant me the energy to complete my daily tasks. Help me to lean on you instead of allowing feelings of anxiety to take over. I cast all my cares and concerns onto you so that my heart can be joyful and remain at peace today. Amen. Thank you for listening to today's daily prayer. For more inspiration and an incredible message from our feature pastor, stay tuned to Pray.com's Sunday service.
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Shalom, this is Yael Eckstein. I'm president and CEO of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, the largest nonprofit in Israel, providing humanitarian aid to those in need. I am so glad to be speaking to you, the Pray.com community. As you can imagine, with the current situation here in Israel, the Jewish people certainly need our prayers now more than ever.
And in this spirit of coming together in prayer, I would like to share with you one of my teachings about how we can make our prayers even more powerful based on ancient biblical teachings. Join me now. Most of us know that prayer is very powerful. For me, prayer is how I get through each day from the moment I wake up until I go to sleep.
On today's episode, we're going to talk about how we can make our prayers even more powerful than they already are. We'll look at the first official prayer in the Bible, in the book of Genesis, and I'll share the hidden secret to getting our prayers answered.
We all want to get our prayers answered, and on this episode, you'll learn some techniques from the Jewish tradition that have been used for thousands of years and are available to all of us today. With so much to pray for these days, I'm so excited to explore these ideas with you. Genesis chapters 18 through 22.
full of some of the Bible's best known stories. It begins with the three men who visited Abraham and foretold the birth of Isaac and follows with the destruction of the wicked city of Sodom. In the next story, we learn that Abraham moved to a place called Gerar and that the king of Gerar, Abimelech, took Sarah to his palace because she was beautiful.
Abraham had told Abimelech that Sarah was his sister, but God came to Abimelech in a dream and warned him that he would die unless Sarah was returned to her husband. When Abimelech confronted Abraham for not telling him the truth, he explained that he was afraid that he would have been killed over Sarah's beauty had the king known that he was Sarah's husband.
Ultimately, Abimelech returned Sarah to Abraham along with many gifts. The verse that I want to focus on today records what happened next. They are the last verses of Genesis 20 and the first verses of Genesis 21.
First, I'll read Genesis 20 verses 17 and 18. Then Abraham prayed to God and God healed Abimelech, his wife and his female slaves, so that they could have children again. For the Lord had kept all the women in Abimelech's household from conceiving because of Abraham's wife, Sarah.
These verses reveal that while Sarah was being held captive, God brought an affliction on Abimelech and the members of his household, which prevented them from having children. The verses also tell us that Abraham prayed on their behalf and that God healed them, making it possible for the people to have children again.
This is the first official prayer in the Bible. The first time that we see the Hebrew word vayit palel, which means, and he prayed. Now, I'll read the first three verses of Genesis 21.
Now the Lord was gracious to Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah what he had promised. Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his old age at the very time God had promised him. Abraham gave the name Isaac to the son Sarah bore him.
These verses tell us that finally, after decades of waiting, Sarah became pregnant in her old age and gave birth to Isaac.
According to Jewish tradition, when two events appear in the Bible back to back, it means that there is a connection between them, not just chronologically, but also in a deeper way. In this case, the rabbis explain that the fact that we read about Sarah's pregnancy immediately after Abraham prayed for Abimelech's wife to conceive teaches us a powerful secret about prayer. You might have guessed it.
When we pray for others, are prayers answered? Judaism has a lot to say about prayer, and I could easily fill 10 podcast episodes on this specific topic. But for now, I want to focus on three of the most valuable things
practical Jewish insights into how we can get our prayers answered. One of the best ways to get our own prayers answered is to pray for someone else who has the very same need that we do.
This means that if I need a job, instead of just praying that I get a job, I should pray for someone I know who is also out of work. Or if I need healing, instead of just praying for God to heal me, I should pray, really pray with all of my heart for someone else who is sick.
Can you imagine what the world would look like if every time we needed something, we prayed for someone else in need? Can you imagine how that might change our relationship, not only with God, but with each other and connect us on a deeper level?
I remember learning about this idea when I was in high school and thinking, what a beautiful concept it is. But then one of my classmates asked a really good question. She said, does this work even if we pray for someone else only for the sake of getting our own prayer answered? Abraham's prayer was selfless and sincere. What happens if we pray for someone else only so that we can benefit ourselves?
Our teacher answered that yes, the concept still holds true, even if our motives are essentially selfish. He explained with an analogy. He said, grass needs the blessing of water in order to survive and grow. One way for grass to receive water is for the water to travel from a faucet through a hose to the garden where the grass is.
Since the hose is the channel for the water to reach the grass, it inevitably gets wet from the water too. In the same way, when we bring blessings to someone else through our prayers, we are inevitably touched by the blessing as well. God is the source of all blessings. But through prayer, we can be the channel that brings God's blessings into the world.
When we pray for ourselves, we connect ourselves to God. But when we pray for others, we become the channel that connects someone else to God. Then when God sends down the blessings that we prayed for, we are filled with blessings too. Wow, this is such a powerful way to give and receive.
By praying for others, we can serve as a conduit of God's blessing for other people and to reap the benefits ourselves too. When we become aware of someone in need, it is a privilege to pray for that person. Our prayers can bring countless blessings to people in need. And you know what? It starts with ourselves.
This prayer tip is tried and true. There are countless stories of childless couples that prayed for other childless couples. And you know what? They both ended up with children. Or someone who wanted to get married so bad, and they prayed for someone else trying to find a spouse. And you guessed it, they both ended up finding their soulmates.
But don't take my word for it. Try it out yourself. So my first tip for getting your prayers answered is pray for other people. And my second prayer tip for you is to pray with other people.
Judaism has a really unique concept called a minyan, which is a prayer quorum made up of 10 men over the age of 13. This is what biblically is looked at as the age of becoming a man. Ideally, Jews pray together with a minyan, a quorum, three times a day.
This practice isn't modern. It actually goes back to biblical times. But one of the amazing things about the state of Israel today is seeing how this practice plays out in modern times. It's not unusual to witness a group of men gathering for afternoon prayer services inside the halls of a cutting-edge tech company or in a designated room inside a mall built especially for this purpose.
And if you've ever flown to Israel, you might have noticed a group of Jews gathering in the back of an airplane, praying together. They do that in order to pray with a minyan, with a group of at least 10 men, even when traveling.
I remember being in the Knesset, in the parliamentary government building in Israel, and seeing a minyan there. Ten men made up of security officials, bodyguards, MKs, congresspeople, everyone getting together to pray in a quorum.
The biblical source for the prayer quorum is Leviticus 22, 32, where God says that I may be sanctified among the people of Israel.
This teaches us that God's name should be sanctified in prayer among a group of people. Of course, we can and should pray to God on our own all day long, and some of our deepest prayers come out when we are alone. But according to Jewish tradition, there is a certain power that comes from praying together with a group that you can't reach when you're praying alone.
Have you ever felt this before? Have you felt the holiness that comes from a group of people all praising God at the same time? Some of us only realize the power of praying together when we couldn't do that during the coronavirus pandemic.
Suddenly, we realized what a privilege it is to pray together in our church or in our synagogue or even with just a group of friends. This is why we started to hold monthly fellowship prayer calls in 2020. We realized that so many of us were suffering by not being able to pray together with our communities. And we recognize the tremendous power in coming together in prayer.
And these virtual prayer gatherings have been so successful with thousands of people joining each one that we decided to continue them even as things have returned back to normal. There is so much power, my friends, in people coming together to pray both for each other and with each other.
Jewish tradition teaches that the benefits of praying with others is so great that a person should make every effort to do so. When we pray together, we strengthen each other's prayers. One person might pray with an incredible amount of love for God. Another person might pray with an extraordinary amount of faith. And another person might have tremendous passion in prayer. And you know what? As a group,
Each of our individual strengths benefit everyone else's prayers. Recently, I witnessed the power of a group prayer firsthand. I have a friend who waited a long time to find a wife. He finally got married in his early 40s and everyone was so happy for him.
All of his friends from his entire life, from the people he knew in high school to the people he knew in college to the workforce, everyone was just so happy for him, rejoicing that he finally got married.
But just a year later, my friend's wife became very sick from a rare allergic reaction that was life-threatening. At one point, the doctors told my friend that the situation was just about hopeless. His wife, who was by that time in a coma, would never recover. She had 1% rate of survival.
When I heard the news, I just broke down. I was crying. I was devastated. And so were hundreds of people around the world who knew and loved this special couple. I saw all over Facebook and Instagram, all my messages were to pray for this amazing woman who had 1% chance to live. We arranged prayer groups all over the world and prayed together for miraculous healing.
There were online spiritual prayer groups and groups of us went directly to the hospital, standing outside together, praying for not only her survival, but her full recovery. We knew it didn't matter what the doctor said. Nothing is too big for God. And you know what?
Praise God, Baruch Hashem, our prayers were answered. My friend's wife made a miraculous and full recovery that the doctors couldn't even believe. And just a few months later, she became pregnant and had a beautiful, healthy baby. Just recently, they were at my home for a visit, and all I could think was, wow, God is great.
Prayer is so powerful and no one should ever give up hope. Anything is possible with God. And when we pray together, miracles are even more likely to manifest in our own lives. The third and final tip that I want to share with you today is simply to keep praying. To pray again and again and again, never to stop.
In Deuteronomy chapter 3, scripture tells us how Moses prayed to God to let him enter the Holy Land. According to Jewish tradition, Moses begged God and prayed the same prayer to let him enter the land of Israel 515 times. But in verse 26, God told Moses to stop praying. He said, "'That is enough. Do not speak to me any more about this matter.'"
The implication is that if Moses continued praying, God would have relented. Moses would have forced God's hand, so to speak. For reasons we can't understand, God didn't want to answer Moses' prayer. But the lesson for us is that if we haven't received an answer to our prayer, we should keep praying.
Sometimes we pray for something and God answers us right away. But other times we pray and what we asked for doesn't happen. Sometimes we give up right then and there. Other times we pray a second time or a third. But how many of us have prayed 515 times like Moses did?
The rabbis taught that prayer is like digging a tunnel between us and what we are praying for. Every prayer brings us closer to what we are asking for. Some things take a few prayers and other things take a lifetime of prayer. But if we keep praying, we will eventually see a breakthrough.
This is also something that I've witnessed in my own life recently. Fifteen years ago, my amazing sister Talia was divorced, living in Florida and bringing up two of the most incredible children. I would pray to God that she would meet someone in Israel, get married, and move here to Israel near me.
I wanted to just go out to coffee with her, to see my niece and nephew, to have the cousins get together, to be together for holidays and birthdays. I envisioned this and it felt like a dream. Prayed for it over and over and over again for one year, for five years, for 10 years, for 12 years. I would pray nonstop.
And then, just when I began to lose hope that my prayer would never be answered, a wonderful man in Israel reached out to Talia, seemingly the blue. Somehow he came across Talia online, and the second he saw her picture, he thought to himself, I'm going to marry her. And you know what? That's exactly what happened. And just a few months ago, Talia and her beautiful family moved to Israel.
Wow, we suddenly get to have the holidays together, celebrate birthdays together, go out to coffee, all those things that I prayed about and I know that she prayed about as well. I look at her living in Israel and she is so happy and I'm so grateful to God for answering our prayers. It may have taken a while, 15 years, but eventually it
Our prayers, me and my sisters, were answered in exactly the right way at exactly the right time. If you have been praying for something and it hasn't happened yet, don't give. Pray, pray, and pray again. You never know. The next prayer just might be the one that changes everything.
So these are my three tips from the Jewish tradition for getting your prayers answered. Pray for others, pray with others, and pray yet another prayer. But before we wrap up, I need to add an important disclaimer. God is not a vending machine.
We can press all of the right buttons and do all of the right things, and still we may not receive what we have asked for. And you know what? God is not obligated to give it to us. The topic of unanswered prayers is a topic unto itself, and I hope to do an episode on that in the future. But for now, I'll say this.
According to Jewish tradition, no prayer is ever wasted. God hears all prayers and answers them all in the right way and at the right time, and sometimes in ways that we cannot see or understand. But know with full confidence that every single prayer brings blessings to the world. We can never give up or ever stop praying.
Prayer is our greatest source of power. It's our only real source of power in life. It's up to us to make the most of it. In Psalm 17, 6, we read,
The fact that we can speak directly to the master of the universe and that he hears every single one of our words is truly amazing. Take time this week to check in with your prayer life. Do you have enough space and time in your daily schedule to really pray and connect with God?
Can you upgrade your prayers with one of the tips that we mentioned today, like praying for someone else or praying with a group? Is there something that you've stopped praying about that you might consider praying for again with renewed hope and confidence? What else can you do to help bring your prayers to the next level?
I hope that the ideas that I shared with you today inspire your prayers. And if you try out any of these tips, I want to know. I want to hear about it. Write to me. I pray that God answers all of the prayers in your heart. And may he answer our collective prayers for shalom, for peace, for refuah, for healing, and for geulah, for redemption.
Shavua Tov, my friends. Have a wonderful week from here in the Holy Land.
On behalf of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, this is Yael Eckstein saying thank you, todah rabah, for listening to this podcast. On behalf of the Fellowship and the people of Israel, thank you for your prayers and support for God's people in our time of need. Please join me for more ancient biblical teachings that will surely uplift and enrich your faith and prayer life by visiting my channel on pray.com or the Fellowship website at
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