Most believers, if you ask them, say they don’t feel they pray enough. So through the month of April we will be focusing on EVERYTHING PRAYER. Our goal is to inspire and build you up to be more confident in prayer!
Everyone wants to know at some point if they’re praying correctly. So, we listen and watch others pray to see if we are doing it right.
I cannot tell you how many times I’ve listened to someone else pray and thought ‘Oh they sound so good!’ or made a mental note – next time I’m saying that! If the truth be told, most of us pray a certain way because we’ve heard someone else praying that way and figured – that’s how it’s done!
The disciples even asked Jesus to teach them how to pray. They, too, wanted an example to follow. So, I guess we’re not as strange as we may feel sometimes, especially if the chosen 12 needed examples, too!
I would venture to say prayer is the most difficult discipline to develop, and it’s the most important thing between a Believer and God. Everything rises and falls upon prayer. It moves God, it reforms us, and it shapes heaven.
Jesus said,
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Since prayer holds so much power, then there must be a special formula to pray correctly, right?
Is the prayer Jesus prayed to his disciples, as an example, the secret sauce to correctly praying? Is that what we should be saying in our prayer time, and if so, which translation – The King James or the New International Version? Or should we learn it in Aramaic or Greek?
No, not exactly. While the Lord’s prayer in Luke 11:2-4 was an example, it’s not a formula. Jesus showed us through that prayer four important things:
- How to pray with praise
- How to pray surrendered to God’s will
- How to pray for needs
- How to pray with pure hearts
The deeper teaching on prayer came in verses 5-13 when He spoke about the visitor showing up unexpectedly, and how the man went to his neighbor for help.
The formula to pray correctly comes straight from our hearts.
It’s not in our words, but in our motives to pray.
- Praying correctly is to pray UNSELFISHLY: The neighbor went to another house in the middle of the night disregarding his own needs and desires, but went asking for the sake of another. Praying correctly is sacrificial. If will cost us something – maybe sleep, maybe time with others, but it’s never without a cost.
- Praying correctly is to pray PERSISTENTLY: Scripture said the neighbor got what he wanted because of his “shameless persistence.” Praying correctly is to pray for something until we see the prayer answered, or God releases us from praying. We will know we’ve been released when we don’t sense the intense pressure to pray for it.
- Praying correctly is to pray EXPECTANTLY: Jesus told them to keep asking, seeking, knocking and they will receive, find, and doors will be opened. Don’t give up prematurely in prayer. A delay isn’t necessarily ‘no’, a delay can just mean ‘not yet’. I have found my prayers are not only moving heaven and earth in the spirit realm, but they are growing and refining me in the process. Often times, our prayers shape us as much as they shape history!
- Praying correctly is to pray POWERFULLY: Jesus compares the heart of an earthly father to the heart of our heavenly Father, and at the very end the passage says, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him. It seems like an odd thing at the end of the prayer lesson, no one was really speaking about the Holy Spirit in that whole passage. However, it’s the crux of the entire message in prayer. We can only pray correctly by the power of the Holy Spirit.
The power to pray correctly comes straight from the Holy Spirit.
By design we need the presence of the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit that will guide us to praying correctly:
Pray in the spirit at all times on every occasion and stay alert and be persistent in your prayers for all believers everywhere. Ephesians 6:18 (emphasis mine)
To pray unselfishly, persistently, expectantly, and powerfully we must have the Holy Spirit. He guides us in all truth, He shows us what to pray for the future, and teaches us what we do not know.
{NOW YOUR TURN} What are some of the ways you’ve learned to pray? You can continue this conversation on prayer in the comment section below or at our Remade Facebook page!
