Listen, if you can read the Word of God and not be driven to prayer, then you're not listening to what you're reading.

Because whatever you read should be cause for confession of sin in your life, or for praise and gratitude to God for the blessedness of which you read.

Or thankfulness for the plan that's unfolding.

Welcome to Grace to You, the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson.

Pray until you pray.

That means, as D.A. Carson explained, pray long enough and honestly enough at a single session until you get past the feeling of formalism. In other words, when you start praying,

don't stop after a few moments. With focused effort, the right words should come.

Unfortunately, we live in a world that makes it tough to

pray with that kind of tenacity. Phone calls and text messages barrage us, emails overrun our

inbox, a few moments on the internet turn into minutes and possibly even hours, wasted. How do you avoid distractions and consistently pray

the way God intends? And how will your life change when prayer becomes an even greater priority?

Find out as John MacArthur continues his study titled Elements of True Prayer. And with today's

lesson, here's John.

I don't think we can underestimate the need and the value of prayer.

And I think the longer we study the Word of God, the more we're going to come back to this

theme because it is a repeated theme in Scripture.

And I frankly believe that Daniel chapter 9, verses 1 to 19, is perhaps the greatest Old Testament

passage on prayer.

And as we go through, I'm going to give you a little list of eight things that tell us

the nature of true intercessory prayer.

Number one, prayer is in response to the Word of God.

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