How to Pray #2

This study is not to complicate your prayer time, it’s to help focus it. It's not for you to make a check list and worry whether or not you're doing everything I have mentioned. As you mature in your walk with the Lord, you should also mature in your prayer life. This study is to get you thinking about how you are growing in that area of your spiritual life.

Prayer is a time of communication with your Lord and Savior. Enjoy Him, because He enjoys you!

According to His Will

1 John 5:14-15, “And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: And if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him.”  “According to His will,” is what I want to talk about here.  How do you begin to find out what God’s will is for your life: be sure you’re a child of God; follow Christ’s leadership into full emersion baptism; study His Word;  meditate on the messages He speaks to you; pray earnestly to Him; and attend a local church that teaches the truth. If you’re following these few commandments of God, He will reveal to you His will, but if you’re not getting His basic will, He’s won’t share His specific will for your life.

For example, His Word teaches you in, James 1:5-8, “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God.”  Does God want you to have wisdom?  Of course, so He will answer that prayer.  Another example, Ephesians 5:22, “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.”  Does God want wives to submit to their husband’s leadership?  Yes, so He will answer a prayer asking for His strength and wisdom in helping you to submit to your husbands.  That’s what it’s talking about.  If you ask for things in His will for your life, He’ll answer them with a “yes.”

When you actively seek God’s will, make sure you’re ready. He’ll show you His will and it’s then you’re responsibility to follow it. Remember God works differently than we think. He may (and probably will) take you outside your comfort zone. That’s when real faith happens. If you stay within your comfort zone, then you’re really not following God. God stretches us, shapes us, and prunes us. You need to be ready for that as best you can. Continue to seek His face while you’re going through it and the blessings will be tremendous.

Praying in the Spirit

Ephesians 6:18, “Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints.”  Jude 20, “But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost,” Nothing can be more foolish in prayer than to rush heedlessly into God's presence, and ask the first thing that comes into your mind. 

Sometimes you just don’t feel like praying. What can you do? Cease praying until you feel like it? Not at all! When you feel least like praying, is the time when you most need to pray. You should wait quietly before God and tell Him how cold and prayerless your heart is, and look up to Him and trust Him and expect Him to send the Holy Spirit to warm your heart and draw the prayers out of you. It will not be long before the glow of the Spirit's presence will fill your heart, and you will begin to pray with freedom, directness, earnestness and power. Many of the most blessed seasons of prayer I have ever known have begun with a feeling of utter deadness and prayerlessness, but in my helplessness and coldness I have cast myself upon God, and looked to Him to send His Holy Spirit to teach me to pray, and He has done it.

Remember the enemy. You know him, Satan. He doesn’t want you to pray. He doesn’t want you to feel like praying. If you’re anything like me, that alone is incentive to keep up praying. Great is He that is in you, than He that is in the world!

Romans 8:26, “Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.”  Have you ever not known what to pray for or start praying and soon end up praying differently than you started?  It’s the Holy Spirit directing you in proper prayer.  You may think someone else needs fixing, so you start praying for them to be fixed, when suddenly you find yourself asking forgiveness for yourself and praying about some shortcoming you have.  That’s the Holy Spirit bringing you back to where you ought to be. Listen to that leadership during your prayer time and following. What sweet fellowship that comes out of those times.

With Faith

In Mark 11:24 Jesus says, "Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them." No matter how positive any promise of God's Word may be, you will not enjoy it in actual experience unless you confidently expect its fulfillment in answer to your prayer. "If any of you lack wisdom," says James, "let him ask of God that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him." Now that promise is as positive as a promise can be, but the next verse adds, "But let him ask in faith, nothing doubting: for he that doubteth is like the surge of the sea driven by the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord." There must then be confident unwavering expectation. But there is a faith that goes beyond expectation, which believes that the prayer is heard and the promise granted. This comes out in the Mark 11:24, "Therefore I say unto you, All things whatsoever ye pray and ask for, believe that ye HAVE received them, and ye shall have them."

How can you have faith and where does faith come from?  Romans 10:17 answers the question: "So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing BY THE WORD OF GOD." If you are to have real faith, you must study the Word of God and find out what is promised, and then simply believe the promises of God. Trying to believe something that you want to believe is not faith. Believing what God says in His Word is faith. If you are to have faith when you pray, you must find some promise in the Word of God on which to rest your faith. Faith furthermore comes through the Spirit. The Spirit knows the will of God, and if you pray in the Spirit, and look to the Spirit to teach you God's will, He will lead you out in prayer along the line of that will, and give you faith that the prayer is to be answered; but in no case does real faith come by simply determining that you are going to get the thing that you want to get.

Always Praying and Not Fainting

Luke 11:5-8, "And He said unto them, Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go unto him at midnight, and say unto him: 'Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine in his journey is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him?' And he from within shall answer and say: 'Trouble me not: the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot rise and give thee.' I say unto you, Though he will not rise and give him because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth.”  Importunity means the fact of being troublesomely demanding or insistent; or a demand made repeatedly or insistently.

Luke 18:1-8, "And He spake a parable unto them to this end, that men always ought to pray and not to faint, saying: There was in a city a judge which feared not God, neither regarded man; and there was a widow in that city; and she came to him, saying:  Avenge me of mine adversary.  And he would not for a while; but afterward he said within himself: 'Though I fear not God, nor regard man, yet because this widow troubleth me I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me.  And the Lord said, Hear what the unjust judge saith. And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto Him, though He bear long with them? I tell you that He will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?"

God does not always let you get things at your first effort. He would train you and make you stronger by forcing you to work hard for the best things. So He does not always give you what you ask in answer to the first prayer; He wants to train you and make you a strong woman of prayer by compelling you to pray hard for the best things. He makes you PRAY THROUGH.

I am glad that this is so. There is no more blessed training in prayer than that which comes through being forced to ask again and again and again even through a long period of years before you obtain what you seek from God. Many people call it submission to the will of God when God does not grant them your requests at the first or second asking, and say:  "Well, perhaps it is not God's will."

I see this type of praying clearly in praying for the salvation of my family.  I cannot ask just once and leave it at that.  Satan isn’t, I can’t either and that clearly isn’t the will of God.

As a rule this is not submission, but spiritual laziness. You do not call it submission to the will of God when you give up after one or two efforts to obtain things by action; you call it lack of strength of character. When the someone starts out to accomplish something, and she doesn’t accomplish it the first, or second or one hundredth time, she keeps trying until she gets it.  So it is in prayer.  When you start to pray for something or someone, you keep on praying until you pray it through, and obtain what you seek. You should be careful about what you ask from God, but when you do begin to pray for something or someone you should never give up praying for it until you get it, or until God makes it very clear and very definite to you that it is not His will to give it.

Some would have you believe that it shows unbelief to pray twice for the same thing, that you ought to "take it" the first time that you ask. Those who have gotten beyond praying twice for the same thing have gotten beyond their Master, (Matthew 26:44, “And he left them, and went away again, and prayed the third time, saying the same words.”). If it's ok for Jesus to ask more than once, then it's ok for you to do so also.

Abide in Christ

"If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you." (John 15:7)  So according to this verse, how do you get what you ask for?  By abiding in Christ and having His word abide in your heart.  Abide means to remain in or not depart.  So you are to keep Christ in your heart and before your mind; and His Word continually before you by studying, meditating and knowing it.  If you do this, you won’t be asking for anything that would be contrary to His will and therefore you will receive what you’re asking, because it’s already a part of His will for your lives.

When you keep Christ before you and look to Him for your guidance, you won’t be asking for silly, unprofitable things in your prayers.  You will recognize His holiness.  You will recognize His authority in your life, and you will turn your lives and your wills over to Him.

You can’t expect power in prayer unless you know Christ through His Word by meditating on His word and letting it sink deep in your hearts and become a part of you.  His Word will not become a part of you if you don’t continue to study and meditate on it.  There are many who wonder why they are so powerless in prayer, but the very simple explanation of it all is found in their neglect of the words of Christ. They have not hidden His words in their hearts; His words do not abide in them.  It is through the study of God’s Word that you even know what you need to pray for.  It is through study that you realize your deficiencies and recognize your shortcomings to know what to pray for.

If you would feed the fire of your prayers with the fuel of God's Word, all your difficulties in prayer would disappear.