Learn to Pray posted by John Sorensen on Mar 25, 2019

You’ve heard that there is power in prayer, and when two or three are gathered in His Name, there Jesus will be, right? But do you believe it? It’s easy to say prayer works because we’ve heard it so much. In fact, when you came to know Jesus, it was probably because someone prayed for you. So, you know it works, but do you spend that much time doing it? Is prayer a priority? If it isn’t, why not?

I think a lot of people don’t spend time praying because they haven’t seen as many prayers answered the way they think they should have been or they just don’t know how.

The Book of Isaiah says, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,

neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

Just because a prayer is prayed and we don’t get what we want, doesn’t mean that God isn’t listening and prayer doesn’t work. It means His ways are higher and we can trust that His answer is for the best.

Now, how do you pray? When do you do it? Do you set time aside to spend with the Lord just in prayer? Throughout the New Testament, we see many times that Jesus would withdraw to a quiet place to pray. If prayer was that important to Jesus, we really need to take note!

First, we need to learn to pray effectively. How many times do you start your prayers with, ‘Lord Jesus, please…I need.. I want…’? While it is important to know that we can come to the Father boldly with our requests because of our faith in Jesus, our requests should not be our focus.

The focus of your prayers should be to look at God. Praise Him for who He is before you ever present a request to Him. Take Isaiah 6 for example. Isaiah looked up and saw angels praising God saying, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy!’ After seeing God’s holiness, he realized the magnitude of his sin, saying, ‘woe is me!’

R.C. Sproul says this, “To be conformed to Jesus, we must first begin to think as Jesus did. We need the “mind of Christ.” We need to value the things He values and despise the things He despises. We need to have the same priorities He has. We need to consider weighty the things He considers weighty.”

So, first, seek His face, and then seek His hand. When you focus on who God is and what He has already done, you’ll find that you enjoy prayer much more because you’ll be in a conversation with Someone you love, rather than staring at a blank wall, going through your to-do-list prayer.

Try going through the alphabet to describe God. He is Awesome, Brilliant, the Creator, Diligent, Exceptional… this will shift your focus from your problems, to realizing the greatness of God and how powerful He really is! Try it and see how your prayer life changes for the better!

This is our focus this week at Evangelism Explosion through our social media channels and our daily broadcast. We’re focusing on the importance of prayer.

Visit ShareLife.Today to find out about the Prayer Network, so you can strengthen your prayer life and your walk with Jesus!

May God richly bless you this week as you learn to pray like Jesus!