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Creating and Sustaining a Life of Prayer, Part 3

This week is part three of my four-part series on prayer. How are you doing on your prayer life? Prayer is essential for our relationship with God. I have already said it is a conversation with God, so open up to Him about anything.

Last week, I talked about sin and confessing those sins to God. He is good and he hears what we have to say. If we are truly sorrowful, He will surely heal a contrite heart.

This week I want to talk about being thankful in your praying. So when you pray, you can also be intentional. Count your blessings to cultivate a grateful a heart. Some ways you can do that is to stop and smell the roses (thank God for creation), smile (thank God for what we have), don’t stop believing (remember what Jesus did for us, keep the faith).

Here’s a little exercise for you to do over the course of five days. In those five days, begin thanking God for your blessings. Do this by organizing circles of people to pray for. Divide them into three groups – Inner Circle, Middle Circle and Outer Circle.

Your Inner Circle should be your smallest circle and should consist of a close group of friends and family. Your next circle – the Middle – should be a little bigger and would consist of good friends, acquaintances and extended family. Your largest circle would be your Outer Circle. This circle is comprised of people we don’t know or have few interactions with. For example, these people could be a celebrity, delivery person, neighbor down the street, etc.

Spend time organizing your circles and make a plan to go to God on their behalf regularly. Once you make a plan to do this for five days, then make it part of your daily prayer routine. Keep this in mind as your are creating your circles and forming your daily prayer life, Philemon 1:4-6 says, “I thank my God always when I remember you in my prayers, because I hear of your love and of the faith that you have toward the Lord Jesus and for all the saints, and I pray that the sharing of your faith may become effective for the full knowledge of every good thing that is in us for the sake of Christ.“

Another note on prayer is that God answers our prayers. Sometimes, though, it may not seem like it. So the important thing is to remember to not be negative if it doesn’t appear your prayer was answered in the way you wanted. God has a plan. Change your “why” into “how.” Ask yourself, “How am I going to use this?” The objective, remember, is to have an intimate relationship with God. Philippians 4:6-7 says, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

I will conclude this series next week. Be sure to follow my YouTube channel as I post a short video there on every topic that’s talked about here on my blog. I also post other short videos throughout the week and share a verse of the day. I usually post a new video on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

Until next week, have a good week and may God bless you!

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Creating and Sustaining a Life of Prayer, Part 2

This week I am continuing my four-part series on prayer. Last week I introduced prayer as a communication between you and God. Prayer can take many forms, but it is essentially a conversation to have with God.

I stated last week in part one to go to God about everything. Use it as a way of getting to know God, communicating our desires to God, listening to God speak truths to our spirit, voicing our needs for God to help us, observing God in creation and praising Him, sitting with God in our pain and asking Him to comfort us, and expressing our gratitude by thanking God. And you can simply do this by keeping prayer as an open-ended conversation with God. Another important part of prayer is confessing our sins. So the topic this week will be about confession/sin as part of praying. Psalm 103:11-12 reads, “For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.”

He does remove our transgressions. He cleanses us from our sins through the blood of his son Jesus Christ. We are not perfect. Therefore, we can come to God messy, in our impure, sinful state. C. S. Lewis said confession is like “the threshold of prayer.” We should confess first. Pray and confess for all sins and transgressions, be sorrowful, and ask for help to move away from those sinful ways.

If there is an issue that keeps tripping you up, what do you need to adjust, remove, or add to halp you turn from it?

I know in my life, there have been some things where I seem to keep repeating. I prayed to God for guidance and courage to break away from those sinful ways. I have also tried saying little prayers when I might have felt the urge to commit a sin. I ask for peace to flow over me so that I can turn away. It has helped. I know I just need to be persistent in my desire and need to change. John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” We know that, through Jesus Christ, we have eternal life with God.

As it says in 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” We have a forgiving, loving heavenly Father. When we fall, he can pick us up. God gave Jesus as the final covenant for all mankind.

“Learning to pray doesn’t offer us a less busy life; it offers us a less busy heart.” – Paul E. Miller.
Praying helps us stay on track. It helps guide us in our ways. It helps us sustain our relationship with our God.