5 Thoughts For Being More Prayerful
Be persistent in prayer
-Romans 12:12
Every Christian likes the thought of being a man or woman of prayer. Here are five thoughts to help you cultivate a life of prayer.
1- Prayer is hard for everyone
The acknowledgement that prayer is hard for everyone is often a freeing one. We are prone to place guilt upon ourselves that we are the only ones who struggle to maintain a vibrant prayer life. But the sheer number of times the Bible instructs us and encourages us to pray should be freeing; prayer is hard for everyone. Are there other areas of life you continue in even though they are hard?
Isn’t it interesting that out of all the things Jesus taught his disciples, the one recorded for us in the scriptures is about how to pray? And then consider all the admonitions in the New Testament. (Around 338 mentions of prayer in the NT) Prayer is hard for us all but the Bible is clear: cultivate a life of prayer.
2- Slow down
There are many distractions that come our way in this world. Our digital age has shortened our attention spans leading to difficulty in steadying our minds and our hearts. To place your attention on one central thing for an extended period of time is no longer normative. With social media and TV we’ve become accustomed to flicking through information, from one piece of content to another, quickly. But prayer is not this. Prayer is like making tea. Steeping takes time. It’s a slow process.
Maybe one of the reasons you’ve not enjoyed prayer nor had much success in it is because you treat it like a microwave. I’m not saying we all have the capacity to spend 3 hours a day in prayer. But the time you do allot should be marked by slowness. A practical tip that’s been helpful for me in this area is to set a 10 minute timer on my phone, then go place it a few steps away from me. Then I say “I’m not going to worry about anything else until my timer goes off.” This has helped me stay focused, be intentional with the time, and slow down. Prayer is meant to be restful.
Rushed prayer is not peaceful prayer.
3- Prayer is more than just shopping lists
Many of us struggle with continued times of prayer because we never explore what prayer means beyond simply asking for things.
God delights in our petitions, but prayer must include a deeper reality for us if we are to fall in love with it. Tim Keller helps us see prayer in a new light when he says:
“Prayer is the only entryway into genuine self-knowledge. It is also the main way we experience deep change—the reordering of our loves. Prayer is how God gives us so many of the unimaginable things he has for us. Indeed, prayer makes it safe for God to give us many of the things we most desire. It is the way we know God, the way we finally treat God as God. Prayer is simply the key to everything we need to do and be in life.”
- Tim Keller, Prayer 18.
Prayer is a bit like a relationship, to keep it vibrant we must stoke the flames of affection. Most people don’t fall in love with the act of dating, they fall in love with someone, and dating is the avenue to which they grow with that person. This is how prayer works in our relationship with God.
View prayer as a way to be with God, to commune with Him.
4- Prayer is a ministry
If a transcript of your prayer life of the past year were to be printed off, what would it look like?
Is it mainly about you? Again, it’s ok to pray for ourselves. But if you never pray for family, friends, your church, other ministries, missionaries, governments, people you meet, your hairdresser, your waiter, or your spouse… that could be a good indicator that your life is centered around you.
Prayer is a ministry. Charles Spurgeon reminds us of this with a sobering quote to young preachers:
A certain preacher, whose sermons converted men by scores, received a revelation from heaven that not one of the conversions was owing to his talents or eloquence, but all to the prayers of an illiterate lay-brother, who sat on the pulpit steps, pleading all the time for the success of the sermon. It may in the all-revealing day be so with us. We may discover, after having labored long and wearily in preaching, that all the honor belongs to another builder, whose prayers were gold, silver, and precious stones, while our sermonising’s being apart from prayer, were but hay and stubble.
Lectures To My Students, The Preachers Private Prayer
How will you use your prayer life to pray for others? I’ve recently started a notepad on my computer of 3-4 things I want to pray for that month. One include the pastors of my church. Prayer is a ministry of the unseen.
5- Be realistic, small changes set trajectories.
If two boats are traveling the same straight line, and one boat turns their rudder .5 degrees off course, the day by day change won’t seem that drastic. But as time moves on small trajectories move great distances. A great prayer life is not created in a day, they are cultivated over many years of small growth.
What is one way you can begin today to cultivate a life of prayer?
Cultivating a prayer life of my own,
Josh.
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