Being a Christian means that we are in a battle. Ever since he fell from heaven, Satan has made himself an enemy to God and to His prized creation, mankind. In Ephesians 6, our Father has given us the tools that we need to win. One of our weapons is prayer. The disciples only had one request of Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray.” Luke 11:1
There are 3 principles to a successful prayer life.
There is a time to talk.
God is our source. He holds the keys to the universe in His hands. He is the Creator. When we have doubts, concerns, and questions, He is the one that we should run to. In fact, He is anxiously waiting to hear from His children. It is a shame that some of us only talk to Him before we eat or only when there is a dire emergency.
I believe that God desires to have a running, consistent, conversation with us just like He did with Adam and Eve in the garden. You shouldn’t just always run to Him with your laundry list of requests. Prayer is our opportunity to tell God how much we love Him and how grateful we are for all that He has done in our lives. During this time we should tell Him how much we look forward to what He is going to do in the future. Jeremiah 29:11-14 tells us, “I know well the plans I have in mind for you.”
We should most definitely tell God how we feel if there are things in our lives that are making us nervous or afraid. As a matter of fact, we should bring all of our burdens and concerns to Him. The great thing about this transaction is that we can bring them to Him and leave them right there. He will deal with everything that concerns us and perfect them all.
There is also a time to listen.
Conversations between two parties are usually more effective when there is only one person speaking at a time. Sometimes our problem is that we spend all of our prayer time talking. We have to tell God all about everyone and everything that has been getting on our nerves. We have to tell Him about the guy that honked his horn at us on the expressway. And we also have to tell Him about our mean boss and nosy neighbors.
We even spend a great deal of time in prayer telling God how wonderful He is and thanking Him for all His wonderful blessings. The moment we get exhausted from talking for 30 minutes straight, our time in prayer is over. We never even give God 5 seconds to talk to us. There are many examples of listening to God in the Bible. My favorite one is found in 1 Samuel 3:4-10. Verse 10 states “Now the Lord came, and stood, and called as at other times, Samuel! Samuel!” and Samuel answered,” Speak; for your servant hears.” Isn’t that a beautiful way to listen and answer God?
Prayer is a 2-way street, and we have to give God ample opportunity to speak to us. We should never jump to our feet without getting some sort of response. He may not always respond in the way we want but we must give Him room to be God. Sometimes we are afraid of what the answer might be. Sometimes we jump to conclusions about what He was going to say.
There is a time to act.
Once we have brought our petitions to God and once we have given Him room to respond, we must not stop there. We must allow the connection to God through prayer to give us the strength to act upon what He has said to us. James 1: 22-23 tells us that we are to be doers of the word. There may be a time after prayer that we may need to call a friend or loved one that we haven’t spoken to in years. There also may be opportunities to witness to a co-worker.
On the flip side, there may be times of distress coming where we need to act calm and rational. Our connection with God through prayer will show us how to act peaceful. Whatever the situation may call for, like in any war or battle, we must be prepared for action.
There is an ongoing effort by our enemy to destroy us or, at the very least, hinder our progress. When we learn who we are and all the advantages we have with prayer as a weapon we can cause mountains of despair and confusion to be cast into the sea of forgetfulness. When we connect to God through prayer we maintain our status as more than conquerors. The power of prayer is our weapon of choice.
I suggest you write your prayers down every day in your notebook or daily log book and then review them to see when God answered. You will be amazed – God always answers prayer from His children that love Him.
