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Prayer is easier than you think and more important than you realize.
While sometimes prayer is the only thing we can do, it is always the best thing we can do. Too often, prayer becomes our last resort. But God wants prayer to be our first response.
Prayer overcomes anxiety and fear. Prayer keeps us anchored in truth and helps us maintain an eternal perspective, freeing us from circumstantial worries and temporary trials.
Prayer connects us with God. Prayer keeps your faith alive, your hope in Christ strong, and your relationship with God healthy. If prayer is the lifeblood of the Christian faith, then I’m afraid many believers are anemic.
God wants us to view prayer as the vibrant foundation of our relationship with Him. A lifestyle of prayer is the secret to an authentic Christian life.
Prayer reveals God’s purpose for our lives. Prayer can change us from the inside out as we experience more of who God is and less of who we are.
Prayer empowers us to live supernaturally. Relying on our relationship with God is the only way to accomplish all that He has created us to do in this life.
What would it look like if you brought God into every area of your life throughout each day?
God wants us to pray first in any and all situations. He wants us to thank Him, ask Him, trust Him, seek Him, listen to Him, and enjoy all the blessings He gives.
No matter what you’re doing throughout your day, praying first keeps you tethered to the One who loves you most.
Prayer is the difference between the best you can do and the best God can do.
It’s not “all’s well that ends well”—it’s “all’s well that begins well”!
We honor God by our first practices.
When the unexpected happens, before you start panicking and wondering how you will pay the bill, heal the wound, fix the fridge, find your next job, or repair the relationship—you guessed it—pray first.
Indifference to God is worse than your anger, resentment, or frustration.
What if you’re moody one day and happy the next? God still wants you to pray. When you do something you know you shouldn’t have? He still wants to talk to you. Whatever you’re going through, wherever you are, prayer can always be your priority. It’s time to start praying before you act, not after. No matter what you’re doing, pray first!
First, where you pray on a consistent basis is important.
Keep in mind, though, that you can have all kinds of tech assistance to facilitate your prayer time without actually praying. You can assemble dozens of books on prayer, scented candles, and praise-and-worship music and still not truly connect intimately with God in prayer. You can decorate a dedicated room in your home with beautiful pictures, a giant cross, and stained glass windows, but those details may mean nothing if you’re not regularly going there to pray.
We don’t begin conversations with friends this way, and we shouldn’t begin our time with God this way either. It’s thoughtless, rude, and disrespectful to the relationship. It reflects an attitude that God is just there for what He can do for you. Such discourtesy treats God not as your Abba Father but like a genie.
There has never been a spiritual awakening in any country or locality that did not begin in united prayer. —A. T. Pierson
If our prayers are possible for us to fulfill, then they disrespect God because we don’t really require His divine intervention or supernatural power. God honors bold prayers because bold prayers honor God.
The whole threefold life of the three-personal Being is actually going on in that ordinary little bedroom where an ordinary man is saying his prayers. —C. S. Lewis
Nothing will determine your relationship with God more than your view of Him.
He doesn’t need to be reminded of who He is—but we do.
If you’re not fighting the devil every day, then he’s working harder than you!
Transgressions reflect what we’ve done and said and how we’ve behaved toward others. Iniquities refer to who we are, our identity apart from Christ, including all the lust, pride, deceit, and bitterness. Through His suffering and death on the cross, Jesus covers both our transgressions and our iniquities.
“Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe, sin had left a crimson stain, he washed it white as snow.”
I always include scripture in my prayer time, so the table of showbread compels me to find a promise in God’s Word and feed on it. The Lord speaks through His Word and strengthens us. We receive nourishment and power from the truth of His Word. “For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12 NIV).
Worship facilitates intimacy with the Father. You just sing and love Him with all your heart. You celebrate God for lavishly loving you as His child.
Aim at Heaven and you will get Earth “thrown in”: aim at Earth and you will get neither. —C. S. Lewis
In ancient times, your name often defined you, possibly in a prophetic way as you became what you had been labeled at birth. This tendency endures even now. Perhaps the role you played in childhood—the troublemaker, the clown, the bully, the outsider—has followed you into adulthood.
God granted the four requests Jabez made—for blessing, influence, presence, and protection—and He will do the same for you. Prayer isn’t about God moving toward you. Prayer is about you moving toward God. Remember, prayer isn’t about God moving toward you. Prayer is about you moving toward God.
Prayer is not overcoming God’s reluctance, but laying hold of His willingness. —Martin Luther
When you pray, “The Lord is my shepherd,” you’re placing yourself under His care by acknowledging and worshiping Him. Jesus wants to be in a relationship with you by pastoring you as His follower. As your shepherd, He speaks and you listen, He guides and you follow, He corrects and you obey, He encourages and you rest in His love.
Financial security, however, is an illusion. If you ask most people what it would take for them to feel financially secure, they usually answer, “More than I have right now.” Security based on dollar amounts is a trick of the Enemy to entice you to trust yourself instead of God. When you’re relying on money, enough is never enough.
They tend to forget that He aligns before He assigns.
It may seem counterintuitive, but our needs are met as we let go of them and focus completely on who God is in all His glorious dimensions.
The measure of our love for others can largely be determined by the frequency and earnestness of our prayers for them. —A. W. Pink
Satan laughs at our toil, mocks at our wisdom, but trembles when we pray. —Samuel Chadwick
We are far from defenseless, however. You’ll recall that prayer is not only communion with God—it is confrontation with the Enemy.
After submitting to God, the second key is to resist the Enemy by closing any doors in your life that give him access.
Prayer does not fit us for the greater works; prayer is the greater work. —Oswald Chambers
The psalmist tells us, “Those who are planted in the house of the LORD shall flourish in the courts of our God” (Psalm 92:13 NKJV).
