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there’s more to prayer than asking, and God is not in a hurry.
nine different paths of prayer: Stillness, Adoration, Petition, Intercession, Perseverance, Contemplation, Listening, Confession, and Spiritual Warfare.
P.R.A.Y.—Pause, Rejoice, Ask, Yield.
Prayer is nothing at all unless it is a matter of vast and all-consuming importance for each one of us.
After decades of night-and-day prayer, I have come to believe that 99 percent of it is just showing up: making the effort to become consciously present to the God who is constantly present to us.
how to pray was this: keep it simple,
keep it real, keep it up.
the Lord’s Prayer is “simple enough to be memorised by small children and yet profound enough to sustain a whole lifetime of prayer.”[6]
A Christian who prays only when they feel like it may survive but will never thrive.
We expect his voice to boom like thunder, but mostly, he whispers.
true prayer is not so much something we say, nor is it something we do: It is something we become.
“life’s basic decision is rarely, if ever, whether to believe in God or not, but whether to worship or compete with him.”[9] One of the main differences between you and God is that God doesn’t think he’s you! Moments of stillness at the start of a prayer time are moments of surrender in which we stop competing with God, relinquish our messiah complexes, and resign from trying to save the planet. We stop expecting everyone and everything else to orbit our preferences; we recenter our priorities on the Lord and acknowledge, with a sigh of relief, that he is in control and we are not.
“Perfect prayer is not to know that you are praying.”[13]
Like an eagle soaring, a horse galloping, or a salmon leaping, worship is the thing God designed you to do.
the opening line of the Lord’s Prayer as if it’s just some kind of pleasantry—a heavenly handshake, a ding-dong at the door
The way we view God affects everything about everything,
“God’s ear hears the heart’s voice,” said Augustine in his commentary on Psalm 148.[6] “It is the heart that prays,” said Father Jean-Nicolas Grou. “It is to the voice of the heart that God listens, and it is the heart that he answers.”[7] “We do not know what we ought to pray for,” admits the apostle Paul, “but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit.”[8]
unemotional worship—the kind that feels a bit forced and fake—is precious to God precisely because it is so costly to us.
having a fixed place for prayer is that it gives you somewhere to show up even when you don’t want to pray!
even when you don’t want to pray, or don’t know how to pray, or can’t find the words to express your heart. By choosing to use a fixed prayer you say to God, “I don’t know what else to say right now, and I don’t really feel like worshiping, but here is my offering anyway.”
Prayer invites us to ask God for everything from “daily bread” to the “kingdom come,” for ourselves (petition) and for others (intercession).
When you pray about the small things in life, you get to live with greater gratitude.
“When I pray, coincidences happen; when I stop praying, the coincidences stop happening.”[1]
The word pray comes from the Middle English “to ask earnestly” and the Latin precari, which means “to entreat.”
asking for today’s needs rather than tomorrow’s wants.
it’s not enough to sit silently in the crowd wishing for a miracle. “What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus inquires. He asks us to ask, invites us to articulate our specific needs.
God asks us to ask for at least three reasons. First, because the act of asking is relational in a way that mere wishing is not.
asking is necessary is that it is vulnerable. To make a request is to admit to some area of personal need. It extends trust toward the person asked.
asking is an expression of faith,
asking is intentional. It involves the activation of our wills.
harness our wills with God’s will
To pray in the name of Jesus means asking for things that are consistent with his character and aligned with his purpose.
When my prayers line up with God’s plan for my life, he says yes, and when they don’t, he says no.
Faith is God’s gift to us; faithfulness is ours to him.
“If a care is too small to be turned into a prayer,” she said, “it is too small to be made into a burden.”[28]
The first step in intercessory prayer is to get informed. Do a little reconnaissance. Find out the facts of the problem you want to address.
the heart of Christ’s prayer in Gethsemane, have given permission to people ever since to pray imperfectly, honestly, and even improperly at times of tribulation.
Some prayers aren’t answered because there is an active enemy at work in our world attacking and opposing the work of God—we live in a battle zone.
Having said that some prayers go unanswered because they oppose the laws of nature and others because they are opposed by satanic powers, still others go unanswered because they are opposed by God himself.
the hardest and most powerful prayer of all: “Not my will, but yours be done.”
Words become less necessary as prayer becomes no longer something I’m doing but something I’m being in the presence of God.
if you are to become the loving person he wants you to be and to see the world the way he sees it, you must make space in your busy life for regular meditation, contemplation, and communion with God.
PRAYER IS A LIVING conversation with a loving God,
the various ways in which God speaks: Hearing God in the Bible. Hearing God in dreams and visions. Hearing God in counsel and common sense. Hearing God in personal reflection. Hearing God in action.
the Bible wasn’t meant to be read through; the Bible was meant to be prayed through.
To confess your sins to God is not to tell God anything God doesn’t already know. Until you confess them, however, they are the abyss between you. When you confess them, they become the Golden Gate Bridge.
Our greatest need and God’s greatest gift are the same thing: forgiveness of sins.
more grace in God than sin in you.
replay your day in as much detail as possible.
Where was God when that happened? Where was God in that person’s behavior? and even, Where was God in that moment of pain?
