Grow While You Pray
Prayer is essential in every believers walk with God. If you think about it, communication is the basis for all human relationships. Imagine if you never talked to your best friend, would you be close friends? No, because you wouldn?t know anything about each other, nor would you have anything to do together. Well, our relationship with God is the same. It?s easy to forget the necessary role prayer plays in our lives on a daily basis. We get caught up in the rush of life, and can find ourselves ?to busy? to pray. Are we too busy to talk to our significant others, or our siblings? No, because if we ignored them like we often do to God then we would be friendless!
Prayer is essential to getting to know God more, and in developing a personal relationship with him. Here are 8 easy steps to implement in your life, if you have found your prayer life to be lacking.
1. Pray without ceasing
1 Thessalonians 5:16-18?instructs us to, ?Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.? Our prayer life should keep us in constant communication with God. It allows us to go to him whenever we want or whenever we need to. Prayer shouldn?t be a scheduled, mandatory act that we do each day, but a constant weave of communication with God.
2. Pray for others
It is important to pray for yourself and your needs, but it is also important to pray for others as well. Whether you are praying for your wife, your children, your friends, or your neighbor, everyone around you needs constant prayer too. Even that annoying cousin you have that is constantly sending you degrading text messages; she needs prayer too. You can pray for specific problems, or you can prayer for the general well being of others too.
3. Thank God for what he has given you
Our prayer life can be filled with requests to God, but we should also be thankful for all the blessings he has put in our lives. Being thankful is something easy for humans to struggle with, and even easier to forget to be thankful towards the one who gave us everything. Even if everything around you seems to be going wrong, you can still be thankful solely on the fact that God has given us the joy of salvation.
4. Let God talk to you
Prayer is important because it allows us to communicate with God, but it also lets him communicate with us. When in prayer, it?s important to not just listen to what we are saying to God, but what he might be saying to us. In order to hear from God, we must open our ears to Him and tune our hearts to Him.
5. Prayer is not supposed to be a check list
Prayer is a conversation, that people tend to turn into a check list. Prayer goes from a conversation with God to a list of points you must address. If you want to grow in your prayer life then you must learn that prayer is to be a conversation, not a list of things to command to God. He yearns to know us, and having a candid conversation is one way to get to know Him better.
6. Prayer is also not supposed to be a wish list
Like the previous point, prayer is not a wish list. It?s not a means to simply ask God for things. So many times people make the mistake of simply asking God for things, instead of consulting with Him on matters. Learn to talk to God about your decisions, your actions, and your desires not just things you want.
7. Read the Bible, and see how Jesus prayed
If you are questioning how to pray, or what a prayer life should look like, just look to the Word of God. In the Bible, we are told in Luke 11 how a believer should pray. We can also look to the way Jesus prayed, and see how earnest he was when praying to His father.
8. Pray with an open mind, heart, and soul
When you pray, remember that God already knows what?s on your heart. He knows your deepest desires, your insecurities, your heartbreaks, etcetera. Because of His all-knowing attributes, you should feel secure in being completely honest with Him. If you need prayer for something you don?t feel fine with telling others about, you still should bring it to God. He will guide you in your earnest prayer, and he will also bring to light things that need prayer.
When in prayer, it?s important to not just listen to what we are saying to God, but what he might be saying to us.