One Guaranteed Way to Improve Your Relationship with God

I know of one simple thing that we can all do right now to greatly deepen and strengthen our  relationship with God–it’s praying for ourselves.

Do you pray for yourself? Do you think it’s selfish? I am amazed at the number of people I meet who think it’s sinful to pray for themselves.

And I want to be very clear–that’s a lie from the devil. Praying for yourself is nothing more than discipling yourself. It gives the Holy Spirit permission to work on you.

Years ago I wrote a book as part of the Pray Big series about how to pray for yourself. It is basically a book about how to disciple yourself by praying for yourself. I feel so strongly about this topic and praying for myself has had such an impact in my life, that I’m going to publish the entire book here for you, one little section at a time.

 

The book is currently being published by Guidepost Books under the title Pray Big for Your Life. They’ve done a great job producing the book in a beautiful, hardback format. It makes a great gift for new believers, those getting baptized, and any believer who wants to turn up the heat on his or her relationship with God. Click here for more info.

 

Here’s today’s entry:

Section 1

Learning to Pray for Yourself

 Welcome to Pray Big for Yourself. In the following pages, you will learn why it’s important to pray for yourself. You’ll discover how to pray big, hairy, audacious prayers for very specific areas of your life. You will also be reminded of some extremely helpful spiritual disciplines that will boost your own personal prayer habits.

In this first section, let’s talk about pinpoint praying and why you need to pray pinpoint prayers for yourself.  

Chapter 1

Tired of Just Hanging Around?

Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. Mark 1:35

It’s amazing how quickly your prayer life kicks in when you’re suspended eighty feet above a rocky riverbank by a thin rope. Actually, suspended and stuck. With all that time to gaze at the rocks below, prayer is bound to happen.

When I was a college student, I fell in love with the sport of rappelling. You know rappelling: You tie a rope onto something very high, run it through a harness on your waist, and then proceed to walk, run or skip down the face of a sheer drop-off. I actually kept ropes and a harness in my car just in case I saw a ledge, a building, a cliff, a bridge or a mountain face that was just begging to be walked down.

The hills near my college campus provided a great spot for serious rappelling. The Brazos River flowed about 120 feet below an overhanging cliff. Several large trees and even part of an old wall provided many secure places to which I could tie my rope. After the first few steps down the face of the cliff, the wall dropped away and formed a huge overhang, about 30 feet deep. In order to touch the wall, you actually had to swing in big arcs like a giant pendulum. You could get a good 40 or 50-foot swing going on that overhang. Let me tell you, hanging 100 feet over the riverbank and acting like a pendulum is quite a wild ride.

And it was that wild ride that had lured me and a buddy to the cliff early on a Saturday morning. My friend was a rappelling instructor at a Christian camp in the summertime, so I felt pretty safe. So safe, in fact, that I decided to go first. I hooked on to the rope, checked my harness, and then leaned back out over the ledge. I took a couple of quick hops down the face, and then I started into my big swinging motions. Few things can compete with the sensation of swinging in the wind over a beautiful riverbank in the fresh morning air.

That is, until I came to a sudden, jerking stop. A piece of small masking tape that I had wrapped around my rappelling rope to mark its 75-foot point got caught in the small safety line I was using. The result was that the safety line locked into place and froze me in midair. It worked too well. I was totally stuck. My weight on the rope kept the safety line taut. The good news was that I wasn’t going to fall. The bad news was that I wasn’t going anywhere. I was hanging about 80 feet above the riverbank, with absolutely no way to free myself.

As I hung there, the harness that was wrapped around my waist and thighs began to cut off my circulation. Within just a few minutes, I couldn’t feel my legs. I knew that I was in real trouble.

So, what do you do when you’re dangling nearly eight stories above the rocks below? How do you pass the time? After a while, the view got old, so I started thinking. I thought about my friends, my girlfriend and my parents. I thought about how mad they would all be at me if I didn’t come out of this little escapade in one piece. I thought about how stupid I was to not know that the tape would catch on the safety line. And, I thought about God. I even talked to him.

Sometimes you have to get really stuck before you realize how much you need God.

Going Nowhere Fast?

Maybe you can relate to being stuck. I don’t mean stuck like I was above the river; I mean stuck spiritually, stuck in your relationship with God. I certainly can. I know what it feels like to have the spiritual doldrums. When I’m stuck spiritually I have little or no momentum in my walk with Christ. I know he loves me and that I’m going to heaven, but that’s about it.

Some people live years suspended in the Christian life. The view is nice enough—they can see God’s Kingdom-work, they see others moving and growing in their relationships with Christ, they even have a hope of heaven. They’re suspended somewhere between spiritual infancy and becoming a true disciple of Jesus. They’re stuck, and their faith is suffering because of it.

So, what’s the cure for this spiritual rut? Prayer. That’s right—good, biblical, bended-knee prayer. If you want to jolt your life out of its spiritual rut and really begin to see God’s presence and power take hold in your relationships, your job, your ministry and your own attitudes and actions, then start praying for yourself. Even if you’re not good at prayer, even if you feel like you tried prayer and failed miserably, even if you don’t know where or how to start, don’t fret. Prayer is still your answer. You really can learn how to change your life through personal prayer.

 

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