HOW TO PRAY EFFECTIVELY

Part- 1

There are many ways to connect with God, ways in which to create a space for deeper intimacy and open the doors of your heart to allow Him to speak to you and for you to speak to Him. 

Prayer is communion with the Lord, the coming before the creator of the universe to know Him and to share with Him.  In response to know His heart for you and to listen for His voice.

Prayers should be a priority and a privilege to a Christian instead of an option.  We are invited into God’s presence when we pray and, as a result, will experience His blessings in our lives.

Every true follower of Christ wants a powerful and consistent prayer life.

1. FOCUS

One of the biggest reasons why believers have trouble establishing a prayer life or going deeper into prayer is because of distraction. 

Have you ever noticed when you go to pray, suddenly your mind is bombarded with all of the cares and concerns of this world?  You start thinking of your responsibilities, your worries, your to-do- list, relationships.

All of a sudden, these thoughts seem to come when you pray and again because of this many believers have trouble establishing that consistency or that depth in their prayer life.

If prayer is to be effective.  It must be focused.  The wandering mind keeps the believer bound to the natural realm.  The excess of distracting thoughts is too heavy to allow for heavenly ascension.

How do you focus on how to get your mind to be disciplined while praying?

• You must practice silence

Matthew 6:6

When you pray, go away by yourself, shut the door behind you, and pray to your father in private.  Then your Father who sees everything, will reward you.

This is a very practical but effective means to establish a focused mind when you pray.  Jesus here is talking about going to a private place.

Now there are two kinds of distraction.

1. Exterior distraction

Exterior distractions are things like cell phone conversations.  The cares of the world around you.  To eliminate exterior distractions, you must have a scheduled time when you pray and you go away privately. 

You must practice both spontaneous and scheduled prayer.  Spontaneous prayer is throughout the day.

You can be working, you can be conversing, you can be eating while you are in prayer talking to the Lord even sometimes internally.

But scheduled prayer is when you set aside that time to go and just focus on the presence of the Lord. 

Jesus gives us this powerful key to shut that door.  Tell your loved ones this is my time to pray, to turn off the cell phone, put away the laptop, put away the work, put away the concerns and that takes care of exterior distraction.

• Internal distraction

How do you focus the mind when you have things going on inside of you internally that are causing you to lose focus when you pray?

The next two methods I will give will help you focus and fight against those internal distractions.

• Prayer request

Philippians 4:6-7

Don’t worry about anything, instead pray about everything.  Tell God what you need, and thank Him for all He has done.  Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand.  His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.

Worry is the flesh’s powerless counterfeit for prayer.  Worry is how your flesh prays. 

But the scripture tells us that when we tell God what we need and when we thank Him for everything that He has done then we will experience God’s peace.

When you unburden yourself by giving God your to-do list by giving Him all your responsibilities that is when you experience perfect peace. 

Now I am not saying,” Lord please take care of all my responsibilities and I leave them to you and I am not ever going to do them.”

That is not what I am saying.  What I am saying is the worry over those responsibilities.  The concern over those tasks is what you give to Him.  When you submit your prayer request to God you are lifting those burdens of life from off your shoulders and placing them in God’s hands.

And in doing that you experience the peace of God that fills your heart.  Now this is the mistake many believers make.

They make their prayer request.  They tell Him what they need.  Then they feel that burden lifted from off them they’re filled with peace and they say I feel much better.  Thank you, Lord, and then they walk out of the prayer room.

But peace is not the conclusion of prayer.  It’s the beginning of prayer.  It’s when you are filled with that peace that you can now focus the mind to go deeper into the places of prayer than ever before.

Peace is not the conclusion of prayer.  It’s the entryway.  I am talking about focusing on the first key to prayer.  How do you do that?

Silence.  Put away the exterior distractions by shutting yourself in for a moment to just be alone with the Lord., second is the prayer request.  This helps to silence those internal distractions.

Isaiah 26:3

Thou will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee because he trusted in thee.

When you focus your mind on the Lord you are filled with peace.  When you focus your mind on the Lord the cares of this world fade into the background.

• Worship

Worship is a key to focus.  Because when you are worshiping Him looking at Him.  When you are worshipping Him, you are not worried about your problems you are in awe of the presence of God.

The Glory of God is so brilliant, beautiful, and blinding that when you’re focused on the light of His presence, it washes away everything around you.  You get lost in that moment raptured in His presence if you will.

And all of the cares and concerns of the world fade into the background.  I am not saying that you set aside your responsibilities and never again pick them up.

What I am saying is that when you go before the Lord that is the time to lay things down that you might ascend to higher places.

• FAITH

Luke 10: 38-42

As Jesus and the disciples continued on their way to Jerusalem, they came to a certain village where a woman named Martha welcomed Him into her home.  Her sister, Mary, sat at the Lord’s feet, listening to what He taught.  But Martha was distracted by the big dinner she was preparing.  She came to Jesus and said,” Lord, doesn’t it seem unfair to you that my sister just sits here while I do all the work?  Tell her to come and help me.

But the Lord said to her, “My dear Martha, you are worried and upset over all these details! There is only one thing worth being concerned about.  Mary has discovered it, and it will not be taken away from her.”

Some believers approach the Lord like Martha from a work-based mentality.  Others approach the Lord like Mary from a fellowship-based mentality.

Often, we think that prayer is our work to connect with God and we are so distracted by the work.  We are so consumed with what we think we have to do that we forget that the way was already paid.

Matthew 6: 9-13

Pray like this: Our Father in Heaven, may your name be kept holy.  May your kingdom come soon.  May your will be done on earth, as it is in Heaven.  Give us today the food we need, and forgive us our sins, as we have forgiven those who sin against us.  And don’t let us yield to temptation, but rescue us from the evil one.

This is the Lord’s prayer and He is teaching us how to pray.  Notice here that the Lord begins His prayer by saying our Father in Heaven.  He recognizes who His father is.

He doesn’t doubt that connection with God.  He doesn’t even doubt that God hears Him.  He didn’t begin prayer by saying,” Lord do you hear me, which is how many of us begin.

He didn’t begin that prayer by saying God are you there?  He didn’t begin prayer by imagining that He had to work up some connection.

We do not pray to connect with God.  We pray from connection with God.  It’s because we are already connected with Him that we can pray.

Believers have issues with this because they imagine that their past sin disqualifies them or they think that because they skipped a few days of reading their bible or maybe skipped Church on Sunday.

Because they think they made a mistake now they have to work to gain back that relationship with God but it’s not a point-based system.

It’s not as though for every day that you miss prayer God takes another step away from you.  How could He ever leave you? if He lives within you. 

what happens when we make mistakes?  What happens when we neglect prayer?

It is not that God distances Himself from us, it’s that we become less aware of the presence that’s always abiding with us.

Instead of seeing prayer like a point-based system, instead of looking at prayer like an obligation that you have to check off the box to please God.

Look at it as an opportunity.  See it for the opportunity that it is.  Many believers neglect prayer because of this very reason.  They think that it’s going to work.  They think they have to exhaust themselves to conjure a connection with God.

But there’s nothing that you and I can do in our power or strength to ever connect with God.  It’s all Him in the first place.

When you pray go boldly.  Don’t let the enemy lie to you.  Don’t let the enemy tell you that God doesn’t hear you.  Don’t let the enemy tell you that you have to work for that connection with God.

Don’t let the enemy shame you because of your past but do what the scripture says,

Hebrews 4:16

So, let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God.  There we will receive His mercy and we will find grace to help us when we need it most.

Imagine how much time you could save in prayer if instead of begging God to hear you, you simply believe that He already does.

I am not saying save time in prayer as in spending less time in prayer.  I am talking about those wasted moments of pleading and begging. 

We come to Him in an orphaned mentality trying to work up that relationship that’s already ours to keep.

You could be enjoying more of your time in prayer instead of going through that initial moment of working and trying as I said like Martha who imagined that she had to work for that connection with the Lord.

• FAITHFULNESS

To become a man or woman of faithfulness in daily prayer you must make up your mind concerning prayer.

Choose to pray more.  There are spiritual disciplines that we must choose to practice every single day.  Prayer is a spiritual act.  It’s also a practical discipline. That’s the partnership that we have with God.

God will do the impossible we’ve done the possible.  Every sincere believer wants to pray consistently but some believers have a certain view of prayer that keeps them from praying consistently.

We imagine that daily prayer is like climbing a ladder.  While praying consistently we miss a day of prayer and we feel that we have fallen off the ladder and lost all of our progress, everything is gone now, and our connection with God is gone now and we are filled with guilt and shame and we’re even filled with great regrets because we think that we have somehow messed-up or blemished our record.

If you think of prayer in that way it’s going to be very difficult to pray faithfully because as you go to pray or re-establish your prayer life, you are just going to be thinking of all the days that you have missed.

Here is something liberating.  When we go to pray after days of missing prayer the Lord runs to us.  He embraces us.  He throws His arms around us and welcomes us home.

Sometimes the guilt of having missed days of prayer can affect your faithfulness to prayer.

Matthew 26:40-41

Then He returned to the disciples and found them asleep.  He said to Peter,” Couldn’t you watch with me for even one hour?  Keep watch and pray, so that you will not give in to temptation. For the spirit is willing but the body is weak.”

We must commit to praying faithfully every single day establishing that spiritual well in our lives if you will.

We must make that decision and we must arrange our entire schedule around it.

Guard your prayer life and don’t let anybody touch it. 

Schedule your workflow, and schedule your time with your spouse and your family.

Schedule your time with your friends, and ministers, and schedule your time in ministry.  Around your prayer life.

Don’t compromise that for anyone or anything.  Let that be a sacred time and then faithfully commit to doing this.  Arrange everything.  You may even have to drop some commitments and hobbies to establish your prayer life.

But do whatever it takes to establish this faithfulness.  Prioritize prayer and you will begin to see your life completely transformed.  You will see your prayer life established and you will go to deeper places than you ever thought possible.

Prayer

Father, I pray you help us to do it.  Give us Lord a praying spirit.  Make us willing Lord.  Give us that fire that passion that zeal that only comes by the Holy Spirit that we might be people of prayer.

We thank you, Lord, that we can be your tabernacle.  Let us host your presence with grace and obedience to you.  We honor you and we love you.

In the mighty name of Jesus, we pray. 

Amen