Prayer is a responsibility and a privilege. But is it really a priority? How do you make or keep it a priority? I am so thankful to be a child of God. Belonging to God’s family means that I have the privilege of coming boldly into God’s presence. I can open my heart and share […]
It’s interesting, (that’s a kind word for it) to take a walk with me, but will you walk with me. I have something important to share with you. I’m sorta like the little boy in Bil Keane’s “Family Circus” comic strip. I have a hard time staying focused on one thing. Everything intrigues me! I’m […]
They were on skateboards… little guys…two of them one was maybe 8 and the other looked to be about 6 years old. It looked like they were mostly talking… but it was where they choose to have their conversation that annoyed me… They were jawing right in the middle of the road. I was in […]
Prayer Training Keira always offers the same foot first when I offer to help her get her shoes on, as she goes out the door. I haven’t learned her habit so I always offer the wrong shoe. It’s a habit that her mom started very young, left foot first, then the right foot. The routine makes […]
The yellow sausages are rolling down the highways again. They are stuffed with squirming, energetic students armed with shiny new pencils and clean notebooks with only their names scrawled across the front. Dressed in new clothes and sporting fresh haircuts they arrive to face a new school year. Moms exhausted from hearing the incessant”I’m bored” […]
Zany! Bright! Funny! Tasteless? Seems to be the criteria for proper attire for the “Let’s Make a Deal” show. Contestants are there to win the prize. And that means you gotta play the game…and that means you gotta get chosen. First to be in the audience and secondly to play the game and hopefully you […]
Angel shared this story with me last September and I knew it was one I just had to share with you. It is a powerful story and the best part is, it TRUE! Angel is an amazing lady! And her story is fabulous! In February 2000, after too many asthma attacks to count we were […]
The calliope of colors was mesmerizing. The unseasonably cool morning was a great companion as I sipped coffee and watched the sunrise. Curled comfortably on the porch enamored with God’s billboard and the soothing sound of a gentle breeze blowing through the leaves. Soft, little creatures climbed from their hiding places and began their morning […]
Jason and I saw it at the same time. I turned to look at Jason just about the same time that he looked at me to see if I saw what he saw! We just shook our heads. Jason was still in college. If you have experienced a college town as an adult, you […]
December 7, 1941 started off like any normal Sunday morning. Hawaii- a beautiful, tropical paradise! While war raged in Europe, Hawaii was tranquil. The American flag flapped loudly back and forth high on its pole at Ford Island at Pearl Harbor, Oaho, the Pacific headquarters for the American fleet. Even in December, the warm glistening […]
“Just do it” is a motto I live by. Keira has that same mentality. We were unloading a trailer of fill dirt, when Keira found her shovel and joined us. She picked the dirt up by the handfuls and dropped it onto the shovel. She’ll learn. And while I have accomplished a lot by diving in and just doing it, I have also discovered there are benefits that come with increased knowledge. As a little girl I didn’t know anything about prayer, I just talked to God relationally. Later, I discovered examples and clues in Scripture that enriched my prayer time. I still talk with God about everything, but I also enjoy other kinds of prayer too.
Often, different types of prayer get all rolled up into one group like a pot of soup; causing us to miss the benefits that are derived from savoring the unique and distinct flavors of different types of prayer. Let me explain. Most of us know a lot about asking God for things, that’s the “Prayer of Petition.” The Bible gives us a firm foundation for asking boldly and expecting results. But that’s only one kind of prayer.
And like a cook that is given an unfamiliar spice, we struggle with how to use different types. Without embracing and practicing the different kinds of prayer, our prayer time can lack depth and scope. My intention is not to merely put a name on a type of prayer, but enrich your prayer life to include different types of prayer, so you will operate in them with authority, confidence and boldness.
As a believer we each have a right and a responsibility to pray.
Jesus didn’t say, “Well, just in case you want to pray sometime.” No, He said, “When you pray.” Prayer is a right and a responsibility of every believer.
It is a privilege to pray.
As His child you can enjoy all the benefits of belonging to God’s family. You have access into the very presence of God, not because you earned it, but because Jesus paid the price for your sins. And prayer is also a responsibility, and that responsibility includes prayer for others. “1 Timothy 2:1 NIV I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone–” To intercede for someone is to make earnest, heartfelt requests for them. That kind of praying continues until you feel in your spirit you have touched heaven or until the answer arrives.
We get a glimpse of intercession in the story of the widow woman and the unjust judge in Luke 18:9-14. She wanted to save her son so she interceded for him.
When you realize you have a dog in the fight, you’ll intercede.
No, really. I know this is a crude analogy, but when you’ve got a dog in the fight, you care about the results, otherwise you don’t care. Every believer has a dog in the fight, so to speak, because we are part of a family of believers. Family is important! We take care of family and that includes interceding or taking someone else’s need to God in prayer.
Let me explain with a story from Bruce Wilkerson’s powerful book “Beyond Jabez.” He tells about going into a stadium arena early for a Promise Keepers event where he found a small group praying. The presence of God was so real that he slipped into a seat behind the group and waited until they finished. They explained that they were a part of a group of churches in that city that had been praying every Friday night for a hour and a half for the last year for this event.
But why? Why did they pray so hard for so long? It wasn’t their event! They weren’t speaking. It wasn’t held in their church. They weren’t getting paid.
Two reasons:
They prayed because they cared. They cared because they connected with God. In that connection they began to care about the things God cares about. They saw His heart. They saw a glimpse of what God wanted to do with an upcoming men’s event in their city. They got it. God’s vision rubbed off on them. They began to partner with God through prayer for His will to be done. James 4:2b “And yet the reason you don’t have what you want is that you don’t ask God for it.”
Ask God to stretch your vision to include others. Ask God to stretch your faith. Maybe that stretch will be gradual, but keep hanging out with God. Keep praying your relational prayers. Keep asking God to meet your needs, but then pause long enough to expand your prayer to include, “Father, who do you want me to pray for?” Listen. Pray.
More posts on prayer:
Four Lettered Word that Will Change Your Kids
Still Praying Circles Around You
Think MISSIONAL. If you know someone that would enjoy this blog, please pass it on!
Don’t Miss a Single Blog
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She is a very intelligent woman, she never allows a grey hair to emerge without coloring it an appropriately modern sandy blond. She dresses sharp, still cuts her own grass and makes the best coconut pie in the whole world. Others have claimed theirs is the best, but I will vouch for the fact, they don’t even come close. And for Christmas she got a smart phone that made her feel totally stupid instead of smart. She still remembers having her first phone installed in her house. It was a black, rotary dial phone that sat on an end table in the living room. The tech savvy giver gave the very intelligent, elderly lady a quick overview of the basics and sent her home to enjoy her “smartphone”.
But at home, when it rang, she couldn’t figure out how to answer it. She put on her glasses and saw a bright green flashing, “Answer” on the screen, but no matter how hard she pushed what she thought should be a button, the phone continued to ring. It was infuriating! She couldn’t even use the phone to make a call, she had no idea how to turn it on. There was nothing on the phone to push or flip, she wanted to throw it, but instead she got some advice from a five year old. Not really, but we all know tons of two years olds that understand how to operate a smart phone. Not because they are smarter, but because they aren’t afraid to try it.
It’s hard for people that are addicted to smartphones to understand that anyone wouldn’t know how to use one. We know that phones aren’t just for talking anymore. We research everything with them. We experience a plethora of sights and sounds from around the world. We store information. Interact with our friends. Check the weather. Catch up on what’s happening in the world. Send texts. Read our emails. Find restaurants. Get directions. The list is absolutely endless. Smartphone users understand the value of being connected.
And so do smart prayers, they just connect with heaven instead of the internet. They understand how to touch God’s throne instead of a phone. That elderly lady may be struggling with how to use a smartphone, but she will tell you “I pray.” She prayed her way through the great depression. She prayed her way through wars, and drought and sickness. She prayed her way through hard times as a share cropper’s wife, living in a small one roomed house with cracks in the floor big enough to see the chickens scurrying below. She prayed over her children. She prayed over big bills and tiny wages. She praised over victories and wept tear puddles over unbelieving family members. And she did more than survive, she thrived. She thrived because she knew prayer was more than talking, it was connecting. She knew prayer was connecting with a God who healed, who saved, who helped her pay bills, who provided. She connected with God and her life is a testimony that it works. Her life says, I pray.
She didn’t take a course on prayer, she just prayed. She didn’t make a list of prayer postures, or wonderful words that would wow God or grab His attention, she just prayed, like the two year old that shows you how to take a picture with your smartphone, she didn’t talk about prayer, she lived it. What about you? Do you pray?
Yes, we are busy, much busier than she was. She ironed everything with a heavy real cast iron that was heated on the fireplace, gathered and chopped the wood for the fire, started the fire, cooked the meals, not from a box, but jars of foods she had grown, harvested and preserved. I’m too tired to continue describing her day, maybe we aren’t as busy as she was, then why don’t we pray?
Too busy to pray, we insist! Yet we spend hours, tons of hours, regularly, on our smartphones because they connect us with our friends, the world, they entertain us, they inform us, they remind us- enough already, this is not a commercial and I hope you are not picking up your keys to go buy another smartphone so you can double your fun. We use our phones because we enjoy the experience and the benefits. And if you don’t pray, you can’t possibly know it’s benefits.
I can’t answer for you, but it seems that the reasons we don’t pray would include thoughts like:
It all boils down to one thing, if we don’t pray, it’s because it is not important to us.
E.M. Bounds sums up the issue with “The little estimate we put on prayer is evidence from the little time we give to it.”
Prayer gets a lot of bad advertising.
If you listen to the in-crowd, they make it sound like praying is for dilapidated old folks or weird people that can’t help themselves. We don’t want prayer in our schools, or in our government and if we didn’t pray over our food it would be extinct from our homes as well. We don’t understand why divorce rattles the window panes of our homes and unrest and fear rattles our sleep. We shake our heads at shocking acts of violence, wince at the long lines of drug and alcohol abuse that end at the gutters of life, and blame everyone, and everything, including God, for the problem. We blame everything, everything, except our prayerless life for the problem.
Yet the strong voice of John Wesley, echoes down the halls of time to remind us, “God does nothing except in response to believing prayer.”
And the voice of a wealthy young man that traded everything to give his life as a missionary in China extols the secret of prayer “The prayer power has never been tried to its full capacity. If we want to see mighty wonders of divine power and grace wrought in the place of weakness, failure and disappointment, let us answer God’s standing challenge, “Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not!'” (J. Hudson Taylor)
The challenge…God’s challenge from Jer. 33:3 is a call to pray. Not fancy words, not a fancy position, but to call out to Him.
I don’t pray:
I pray:
I know it’s old fashioned, more old fashioned than a black, rotary phone. I know I’ve rambled and rattled on like an old lady myself, but somebody’s got to share the good news. Prayer is not something to dread or hurry through. Prayer connects us to God…it just doesn’t get any better than that.
More Links :
Four Lettered Word that Will Change Your Kids
Still Praying Circles Around You
Think MISSIONAL. If you know someone that would enjoy this blog, please pass it on!
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