Is your prayer life anemic? "When it is hardest to pray, one should pray the hardest," according to Bill Bright. Are those prayer muscles deteriorating and atrophying? If you start out small in manageable exercise, you will get where you want to be with effectual prayer--"The effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man accomplishes much" (James 5:16). For some people they know enough about prayer, they just need to pray; for others, they need a little stimulus to get them in the mood or to find a starting point of encouragement. This post may help you to hone your innate potential as a natural prayer warrior that Satan has just discouraged and you need to get back into the swing of things--I cannot emphasize enough: Prayer is where the action is! If you want growing intimacy with the Almighty, read on!
It is said that God is sovereign and will get His way regardless, so why bother? Don't forget that we are his moral agents representing Him and are the means to His ends. God ordains the means as well as the ends--He has willed or decreed that prayer to be His channel of blessing. The greatest prayer we can pray is of relinquishment ("Thy will be done!"). Jesus prayed this in the garden of Gethsemane--much more should we! Surrender is the key to an effective prayer life--it has yet to be seen what a fully surrendered life can do! If you want to be a prayer warrior extraordinaire, and that is where the action is, you must be a fully devoted follower of Jesus (good leaders have first learned to be good followers).
What kind of things should we pray for? "Let your requests be made known unto God..." (Phil. 4:6). There is nothing too big for God's omnipotence and nothing too small or trivial for His love. Habakkuk complained to God in His book (which is a prayer or dialogue with God)--if we do complain, it should be to God, and we shouldn't become whiners, but be ready to accept His will. The goal is to pray God's will, but most believers don't know that they just think God is a vending machine and we can go to Him with a wish list of carte blanche (Jesus said in John 14:14, "If you ask anything in My name..."). And the only way to know God's will, and I am not talking about God micromanaging your life, but the divine viewpoint that comes from an understanding of Scripture and a deep relationship with God--knowing God.
Wisdom is the gift of God and freely bestowed on His children who ask and seek for it diligently according to Proverbs. For example: Don't pray for an easy life, but to be made strong! We shouldn't pray the easy path but the path that Jesus would take (narrow is the way that leads to eternal life--the road less traveled). Jesus dared to march to the beat of a different drum and upset the applecart, invading the turf and job security of the praying Pharisees. Practice usually makes perfect, but in their case, they only got showier and didn't even know it!
God is concerned about all our legitimate needs, but has nowhere promised to make provision for our felt needs or wants (Paul says in Phil. 4:19: "My God shall supply all your needs..."). In my experience, it is good to pray about everything, just to get the prayer muscle in shape and getting used to using that faculty. For instance, keep telling Jesus how much you love Him and make intercession for every person you see in need if you cannot directly come to their aid. God wants to give us direction in life but expects faith and common sense and He doesn't want us to ask about every little detail (e.g., "Should I go to bed now, or stay up?" and "Should I skip breakfast or go out to eat?") The commonsensical and saintly Quaker woman, Hannah Whitall Smith, said she knew of a woman who prayed about every detail so exactly like that she stunted her ability to make decisions.
Prayer is not about a wish list to get our will done on earth but to get God's will done on earth as it is in heaven. The better informed you are of God's will, the better your prayers--be in step with God and in tune with His dimension! It is not about praying hard, but smart, and to keep on praying without giving up. "It is better to have a heart without words than to have words without a heart," says John Bunyan. eloquent with no passion. The more you see God answering your prayers, the more encouraged you will be to be a consistent and, more importantly, faithful prayer warrior. It's fun to pray and to see God's answers, but remember, if you are a skeptic, God makes it so that answers can be explained away.
Someone has said, "All I can do is pray!" (I can't help but think of those commercials where they say, "This is all we do, and we do it well!") I'd like to meet that person! This is the greatest of all ministries in my estimation because that is where the power is to get God's will done. Sometimes, God is just testing us to see if we are willing to do His will: God will grant our request, but we must submit to His will first and be surrendered in spirit. We learn to trust Him and grow in our faith by accepting God's answers and His will.
They say that the way to become a success is to find a need and fulfill it: The M.O. to effective prayer life is to see need and pray for it! Talk to God like you know Him! Exercise your prayer muscles, because prayer doesn't come naturally, but is a divine trait. To illustrate: Muslims don't really pray, they must prostrate and face Mecca five times daily and repeat rote verses or confessions (called the salat), not even believing they can know God, or that He is a personal God that loves us.
Knowing God is not just a matter of Bible knowledge, because prayer is a two-way dialogue--God mostly speaks to us in the Word and we must keep up the conversation with prayer. Brother Lawrence, a Carmelite monk in a Paris monastery, wrote a book, The Practice of the Presence of God, in which he demonstrated how to keep the conversation going and the line open to God, no matter what--to pray with ceasing means just that! There are many things you can pray for if you have a Christian worldview and divine viewpoint and know basic Bible doctrine. We can see God's will in relationships, circumstances, crises, personal problems, major decisions, et al.
The point in prayer is not to impress us or others, but to impress God! If you aim to impress others it goes contrary to the Spirit, is counter spiritual, and cannot be Spirit-led. Be yourself in prayer, and not an imitation of a leader. We don't want to pray like the Pharisees, who were very wordy and thought that this was impressive. We should pray as we are, and not as we aren't--be ourselves and know that God's power is made perfect in weakness. Let's not assume we know God's will for someone else and try to tell them what we think God's will is, but bring it to the throne room in prayer and boldly approach the Father and leave it to Him to run His universe--we are all wired differently and cannot project God's will onto others--they have their own unique relationship with God.
Only when you are familiar with God in prayer can you say you "know the Lord" and not just because you know what the Bible teaches "about" Him. We must put our learning into action (turn our creeds into deeds) and learn to wrestle with God at times. I like Abraham Lincoln who said, "I have often gone to my knees, simply because I had nowhere else to go." C. S. Lewis said, "Satan laughs at our toiling, mocks at our wisdom, but trembles when he sees the weakest saint on his knees." Crises are meant to keep us on our knees--they say that if you can't stand life, kneel!
The main constituents of prayer are praise, thanksgiving, confession, petition or supplication, and intercession. To neglect prayer is a sin according to 1 Sam. 12:23 because we are all believer-priests called to the ministry of prayer for one another. We have the privilege to go to the Father without a priest and to represent someone or some cause to God. We are a kingdom of priests in other words and God has called us into fellowship with Him through prayer as the avenue. God always answers prayer either yes, no, or wait. Sometimes He has something better in mind: We would mess up our lives if we had our way all the time--why not trust the Creator? The Greeks would say that when the gods are angry at us they answer our prayers. Some of the philosophers said to only pray for good things and let God decide what is good! We simply don't know how to pray as we ought and need the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
Yes, prayer is a privilege too and we have the God-given, divine right to go directly to the Father in the name and authority of the Son, in the power of the Holy Spirit. We are "family" and God wants to hear from us, it is not a bother or bummer to Him! Whenever we close our prayers, we should pray "Thy will be done" and be praying in Jesus' name is actually asserting that it is not a formula to tack onto our prayers--God wants us to know if we have His interests in mind or ours. Never feel you are out of your league in praying, because God hears all the prayers of the saints and is no respecter of persons and plays no favorites--it is the prayer in faith that can move mountains. In sum, prayer is the acid test or the litmus test of our relationship with God--is it all in our head or do we actually love God? Soli Deo Gloria!
It is said that God is sovereign and will get His way regardless, so why bother? Don't forget that we are his moral agents representing Him and are the means to His ends. God ordains the means as well as the ends--He has willed or decreed that prayer to be His channel of blessing. The greatest prayer we can pray is of relinquishment ("Thy will be done!"). Jesus prayed this in the garden of Gethsemane--much more should we! Surrender is the key to an effective prayer life--it has yet to be seen what a fully surrendered life can do! If you want to be a prayer warrior extraordinaire, and that is where the action is, you must be a fully devoted follower of Jesus (good leaders have first learned to be good followers).
What kind of things should we pray for? "Let your requests be made known unto God..." (Phil. 4:6). There is nothing too big for God's omnipotence and nothing too small or trivial for His love. Habakkuk complained to God in His book (which is a prayer or dialogue with God)--if we do complain, it should be to God, and we shouldn't become whiners, but be ready to accept His will. The goal is to pray God's will, but most believers don't know that they just think God is a vending machine and we can go to Him with a wish list of carte blanche (Jesus said in John 14:14, "If you ask anything in My name..."). And the only way to know God's will, and I am not talking about God micromanaging your life, but the divine viewpoint that comes from an understanding of Scripture and a deep relationship with God--knowing God.
Wisdom is the gift of God and freely bestowed on His children who ask and seek for it diligently according to Proverbs. For example: Don't pray for an easy life, but to be made strong! We shouldn't pray the easy path but the path that Jesus would take (narrow is the way that leads to eternal life--the road less traveled). Jesus dared to march to the beat of a different drum and upset the applecart, invading the turf and job security of the praying Pharisees. Practice usually makes perfect, but in their case, they only got showier and didn't even know it!
God is concerned about all our legitimate needs, but has nowhere promised to make provision for our felt needs or wants (Paul says in Phil. 4:19: "My God shall supply all your needs..."). In my experience, it is good to pray about everything, just to get the prayer muscle in shape and getting used to using that faculty. For instance, keep telling Jesus how much you love Him and make intercession for every person you see in need if you cannot directly come to their aid. God wants to give us direction in life but expects faith and common sense and He doesn't want us to ask about every little detail (e.g., "Should I go to bed now, or stay up?" and "Should I skip breakfast or go out to eat?") The commonsensical and saintly Quaker woman, Hannah Whitall Smith, said she knew of a woman who prayed about every detail so exactly like that she stunted her ability to make decisions.
Prayer is not about a wish list to get our will done on earth but to get God's will done on earth as it is in heaven. The better informed you are of God's will, the better your prayers--be in step with God and in tune with His dimension! It is not about praying hard, but smart, and to keep on praying without giving up. "It is better to have a heart without words than to have words without a heart," says John Bunyan. eloquent with no passion. The more you see God answering your prayers, the more encouraged you will be to be a consistent and, more importantly, faithful prayer warrior. It's fun to pray and to see God's answers, but remember, if you are a skeptic, God makes it so that answers can be explained away.
Someone has said, "All I can do is pray!" (I can't help but think of those commercials where they say, "This is all we do, and we do it well!") I'd like to meet that person! This is the greatest of all ministries in my estimation because that is where the power is to get God's will done. Sometimes, God is just testing us to see if we are willing to do His will: God will grant our request, but we must submit to His will first and be surrendered in spirit. We learn to trust Him and grow in our faith by accepting God's answers and His will.
They say that the way to become a success is to find a need and fulfill it: The M.O. to effective prayer life is to see need and pray for it! Talk to God like you know Him! Exercise your prayer muscles, because prayer doesn't come naturally, but is a divine trait. To illustrate: Muslims don't really pray, they must prostrate and face Mecca five times daily and repeat rote verses or confessions (called the salat), not even believing they can know God, or that He is a personal God that loves us.
Knowing God is not just a matter of Bible knowledge, because prayer is a two-way dialogue--God mostly speaks to us in the Word and we must keep up the conversation with prayer. Brother Lawrence, a Carmelite monk in a Paris monastery, wrote a book, The Practice of the Presence of God, in which he demonstrated how to keep the conversation going and the line open to God, no matter what--to pray with ceasing means just that! There are many things you can pray for if you have a Christian worldview and divine viewpoint and know basic Bible doctrine. We can see God's will in relationships, circumstances, crises, personal problems, major decisions, et al.
The point in prayer is not to impress us or others, but to impress God! If you aim to impress others it goes contrary to the Spirit, is counter spiritual, and cannot be Spirit-led. Be yourself in prayer, and not an imitation of a leader. We don't want to pray like the Pharisees, who were very wordy and thought that this was impressive. We should pray as we are, and not as we aren't--be ourselves and know that God's power is made perfect in weakness. Let's not assume we know God's will for someone else and try to tell them what we think God's will is, but bring it to the throne room in prayer and boldly approach the Father and leave it to Him to run His universe--we are all wired differently and cannot project God's will onto others--they have their own unique relationship with God.
Only when you are familiar with God in prayer can you say you "know the Lord" and not just because you know what the Bible teaches "about" Him. We must put our learning into action (turn our creeds into deeds) and learn to wrestle with God at times. I like Abraham Lincoln who said, "I have often gone to my knees, simply because I had nowhere else to go." C. S. Lewis said, "Satan laughs at our toiling, mocks at our wisdom, but trembles when he sees the weakest saint on his knees." Crises are meant to keep us on our knees--they say that if you can't stand life, kneel!
The main constituents of prayer are praise, thanksgiving, confession, petition or supplication, and intercession. To neglect prayer is a sin according to 1 Sam. 12:23 because we are all believer-priests called to the ministry of prayer for one another. We have the privilege to go to the Father without a priest and to represent someone or some cause to God. We are a kingdom of priests in other words and God has called us into fellowship with Him through prayer as the avenue. God always answers prayer either yes, no, or wait. Sometimes He has something better in mind: We would mess up our lives if we had our way all the time--why not trust the Creator? The Greeks would say that when the gods are angry at us they answer our prayers. Some of the philosophers said to only pray for good things and let God decide what is good! We simply don't know how to pray as we ought and need the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
Yes, prayer is a privilege too and we have the God-given, divine right to go directly to the Father in the name and authority of the Son, in the power of the Holy Spirit. We are "family" and God wants to hear from us, it is not a bother or bummer to Him! Whenever we close our prayers, we should pray "Thy will be done" and be praying in Jesus' name is actually asserting that it is not a formula to tack onto our prayers--God wants us to know if we have His interests in mind or ours. Never feel you are out of your league in praying, because God hears all the prayers of the saints and is no respecter of persons and plays no favorites--it is the prayer in faith that can move mountains. In sum, prayer is the acid test or the litmus test of our relationship with God--is it all in our head or do we actually love God? Soli Deo Gloria!
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