Please enjoy this excerpt from Manage Your Mission – Living wisely and abundantly for today and eternity. This book will help craft your life mission, establish its priorities, and succeed in each area: Faith – Family – Fitness – Field – Friends – Fun – Finances.
“What a man is on his knees before God, that he is, and nothing more.” — Robert Murray M’Cheyne
Full disclosure: Prayer is not my strong suit. Prayer can involve sweet and beautiful times with God but can be challenging, frustrating, and humiliating. But I still pray daily, and I’ve picked up some practices that have helped.
Prayer should be a joy and an opportunity. After all, you have not only permission but an invitation to speak directly to the Creator of the universe, and he hears you. He commands us to pray, so it pleases him when we obey. He listens to us much better than we listen to our children when they offer us thanks and ask for help.
But we often turn it into drudgery. We also tend to over-complicate it. You can pray in any position (kneeling, sitting, standing), out loud or in your head, short or long, etc. Prayer should be specific, expectant (though acknowledging God’s sovereignty), humble but confident, and earnest. The Lord’s prayer takes less than a minute. Of course, you can pray much longer if you like, but don’t use vain repetition (Matthew 6:7).
You have a lot of freedom in prayer, but there are limits. You should only pray to God — generally to the Father by the Son and through the Holy Spirit, but you can pray to any member of the Trinity at any time. But don’t pray to anyone else. Some people think they can pray to saints, but communicating with the dead is forbidden in Scripture (Deuteronomy 18:10-12 and more). You don’t need to pray to the Patron Saint of Lost Stuff if you lose your keys. God isn’t too busy, so if he wants to help you find them, he will. Remember that Satan knows where your keys are, so if you get an answer when you pray to a “saint,” it was probably from Satan’s team. Don’t open that door.
You also don’t want to pray for show, as the hypocrites did (Matthew 6:5) or as the scribes did when they made long prayers for a pretense (Luke 20:47). Just pray humbly, authentically, and with confidence.
Hebrews 4:16 Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
I have found the free PrayerMate phone app to be very helpful when praying. I have it set up with various categories: adoration, confession, gratitude, family, church, evangelism, current requests, etc. It gives me a mix of prayer topics each day. When the names of various people come up, it reminds me to pray for them and check how they are doing. Some people may be able to remember all of their prayer requests, but I know I’d inevitably forget many without this app. I immediately add it to the app if I tell someone I’ll pray for them. Or I pray with them then and there.
Another option is the classic A-C-T-S model, which stands for Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication (humble requests). It is a simple model that anyone can use.
Adoration acknowledges God for who he is. That’s why Jesus said, “Hallowed be thy name,” in the Lord’s prayer.
Confession clears your conscience. Psalm 51, which King David wrote after sinning with Bathsheba and killing her husband, Uriah, is a classic that everyone should read carefully (and memorize, if you can). If you have repented and trusted in Jesus, then your past, present, and future sins are forgiven, but you still need to get right with God regularly.
Thanksgiving — Thank God for any of the countless things he has done and continues to do for you. When you approach life with gratitude, many other things fall into place.
Supplication — Request what you like, knowing he will provide it if it is in his will. “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” (John 15:7)
I love praying the Scriptures. You can take God’s Word and pray back to him. For example, if you see a promise in Scripture, you can thank him. I enjoyed using Kenneth Boa’s book Face to Face: Praying the Scriptures for Intimate Worship for many years.
Be candid in your prayers. As Kevin DeYoung once said on social media, if Jesus sees and he knows, we might as well be honest with him about our struggles. There is no need to be overly pious with him. God already knows your hopes, fears, sins, and everything else. Saying it directly won’t enlighten him, but it will help you. If you aren’t a Christian, that’s a good reason to repent, believe, and pray to him for forgiveness. If you are a believer, that’s a good reason to be free to share your struggles with him. As Romans 8:1 says, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
Praying honors God and reminds you that you do believe in him. Conversely, not praying implies that you don’t believe in him. If you do outward things that people see (prayer, worship, acts of service) but never pray alone, you should ask yourself why.
Hebrews 11:6 And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.
Beware of the barriers to successful prayers, such as holding iniquity in your heart or not treating your wife correctly.
Psalm 66:18 If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.
1 Peter 3:7 Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.
Don’t be shy about praying for big and specific things, but also remember that God is perfect, holy, and sovereign. If he doesn’t answer your prayer the way you’d like, he has good reasons for it. Sometimes you learn those reasons in this life, but you may not understand the rest until “Heaven Orientation.” So don’t let it rock your faith. Your prayer isn’t designed to change his mind but to make you attuned to his blessings. Your prayers may not change your immediate circumstances but can change your perspective. As always, there is the mystery of God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility. He tells us to pray, so we should, whether we completely understand the process or not.
Despite what some people teach, prayer is not a conversation. It is you talking to God. God speaks to you through his Word, and you speak to him through prayer. You don’t need to listen for any responses. Again, if he isn’t talking to you, there is nothing to hear; if he is speaking to you, there will be no mistaking it. In the Lord’s Prayer, when Jesus answered the disciple’s explicit request for how to pray, he did not mention listening. It wasn’t an oversight. There are zero verses telling you to listen when praying. That said, the Holy Spirit does live in believers and can convict them of sin, guide them, and more.
If you have trouble praying, don’t give up. Just keep trying. Make it a priority and a key part of your mission. Pray without ceasing. Fight the distractions that Satan throws your way. You don’t need to be eloquent. Some of the best news on prayer is that the Holy Spirit will fill in the gaps for you. During the many times I didn’t know what to pray for, I asked for the Holy Spirit’s help.
Romans 8:26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.
Copyright 2022
Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible
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