Let me ask you a question… how did you learn about prayer? Did you observe it? Was it a teaching? The real question is: what do you understand about prayer? Who are You as a pray-er? Are you still growing as a pray-er? What was the last learning on prayer you experienced? Most important – how do you express prayer? Do you have a kind of ritual? Specific time set aside to pray? On the fly? Whenever you can ‘stick’ it in?
I’ve written about prayer many times… I’d like to share some more of my merging understandings. These ‘observations’ start in 2010 – nearly at the beginning of writing books and blogs. Throughout all this time, it is one of the main ‘subjects’ I keep returning to [thus confirming my point that one never knows everything about prayer and praying]. Personally, I believe the point is how we act on these spiritual matters. If we don’t apply and practice them… what exactly are we doing?
One of the main scriptures I use to evaluate myself (we do intensely dislike the word ‘judge’, don’t we) is how I apply my learning so that I know what I know, how I express the learning, and what I still need to learn (also there are those lessons I learned once but either didn’t apply or ‘forgot’ them).
“… The heartfelt and persistent prayer of a righteous man (believer) can accomplish much [when put into action and made effective by God—it is dynamic and can have tremendous power].” [James 5:16b, AMP].
Do we really know what ‘heartfelt, persistent, righteous mean? In July, 2015 I asked:
“This may sound like a presumption on my part, or, minimally, a stupid question but when you pray, do you pray believing? Or do you pray, hoping? Maybe you pray, unthinkingly and/or rote-like? Do you pray that God will ‘do something’ to change some one or thing? The point is – when you pray, what’s your attitude? A tangential question is – do you think God hears prayers by those who do not pray… believing? These really aren’t speculative questions because they go to the heart of who you are as a pray-er. And my bias is first, that who you are determines what you expect when you pray. Secondly, I believe we ALL are called to pray, that is never a question as it is part and parcel of who we are as Christians.” [Blog, 7-27-15 – ‘Pray Believing?’]
This is an inward looking evaluation. Who we bring (us) to pray is critical. I think we all want to be effective and efficient – so how do we do this? Start with the requirements – when it comes to prayer, it’s being righteous. We can never achieve righteous from our own efforts but we can remember who we are becoming and stand on 1 Corinthians 5:21. And if we have anything we need to do we have 1 John 1:9. When we are then we can ask, intercede for someone else’s situation and remember Hebrews 11:6 and ask according to God’s purposes (found in scripture).
Remember that we enter the devil’s domain when we are praying (2 Corinthians 10: 4…). I believe it is crucial to enter with all the weapons available to us in order to be effective. Just remember that whatever the request we have the ability to be effective.
