Susan's Homeschool Blog

I am under a constant burden of prayer; I feel it like a weight on my shoulders. So few people actually commit themselves to pray for real, doing battle for the souls of other people to grow, for our own souls to be changed. Those of us who are committed to prayer care so much that the believers around us walk closely with Christ, and when we hear that they are doing well, we rejoice. When they are struggling, we get on our knees and beg God for them to have peace and draw closer to Him. Those of us who are committed to pray, when we don’t pray, we feel eerily responsible.

When God moved our family to a new church last year after being at the previous church for over a decade, God allowed me to hand the souls of all those people I was praying for to an elder’s wife before I left. Yet I found out two weeks ago that the moment I stopped praying about someone’s teenaged son, he completely turned away from God. I openly wept when I heard. I felt responsible. My soul was connected to the family through my interceding for them every day for years. And the day I stopped praying, the son strayed and hasn’t come back.

Prayer is thankless work, a huge labor when you’re doing it. But if you stop, then who will take that burden? Who will care as much? Nobody. Nobody cares. Everyone is self-absorbed. Nobody feels more burdened with other people’s requests than their own unless they’ve broken though a huge heavyweight barrier that blocks all people from having any prayer life at all: distractions.

Yes, something as small as distractions will keep nearly 100% of Christians away from prayer. I mean prayer that matters, a commitment to pray for someone every day whether you feel like it or not, whether you’re tired and foggy or feeling great and want to get something tangible done. Prayer is intangible. Prayer is like smoke. God compares it to incense. And it brings delight to God. Who cares if there is no other reward?

Distractions are rampant and come in many forms, but the worst one comes from within our own minds as our minds stray. I’m talking about thinking of something we have to do that day. We forgot to take meat out of the freezer for dinner, so we do that, and then we forget that we were setting aside time to pray. Prayer is swallowed up by the mundane.

Instead I’ve said to myself, “I’m going to do this, so help me God.” There is no option of not setting aside time to pray. And when I’m praying, if a stray thought is important, God will bring it back later. I will shove the thought aside. I whip my mind to focus. It’s called discipline, and we can do this. We don’t have to be prayer wimps, drifting around with every stray thought that comes across our minds. No. I purposely pace the floor, walking back and forth, praying out loud. Because my mind strays less if I’m speaking out loud.

I have godly Christian friends who tell me, “Don’t tell women they have to pray for more than five minutes. Then they’ll be discouraged.” What? God calls us to pray without ceasing, to be involved in the BURDEN of prayer, setting aside time like Jesus did. He set aside big chunks of time. So did Paul, and Timothy, and every great Christian throughout history. I call women to a higher level. Don’t do what is easy. Do what is hard. Be obedient. Know God on a deeper level. Because when you begin to pray with this kind of burden, you begin to feel the heart of God. Yes, God’s heart and your heart become one as you love the people you’re praying for the way Christ loves them. It’s so worth it to get here.

“Epaphras, who is one of your number, a bondslave of Jesus Christ, sends you his greetings, always laboring earnestly for you in his prayers, that you may stand perfect and fully assured in all the will of God.” (Colossians 4:12)

“I appeal to you, brothers, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to strive together with me in your prayers to God on my behalf.” (Romans 15:30)

A catalyst is something that causes or accelerates a chemical reaction, kind of like what starts a fire. What are the catalysts for prayer? What causes us to WANT to pray, and to be burdened to pray? In a recent sermon at my church, the pastor described three catalysts to prayer. While he was preaching, I was scribbling my own thoughts in every margin of my note page. This is the result of all my scribbling:

1. Testimony – A sense of what is happening in people’s lives will give us a desire to pray for them. If we are disconnected from people’s lives and don’t care about them, we will never feel burdened to pray for them. I have to say, though, that sometimes in my own life, I would force myself to pray for someone who was injuring me, and God gave me a supernatural love for those people BECAUSE of prayer, not the other way around. So if you don’t love people, pray anyway, and the love will come. That’s what’s wrong with us. We just don’t love each other. Someone is going through a crisis, and the reason we forget to pray for them is that we are self-absorbed. But once we care about and have a burden for people, we want to know what is happening in their lives, and we have joy to get updates on their lives because our hearts are connected to theirs.
2. Trial – Most trials are spiritual attacks from the enemy. God uses prayer to grow us. We acquire perseverance and patience through waiting upon the Lord through trials. We learn to trust God. We learn our own weaknesses and limitations. Trials drive us to depend on God and be emptied of our own resources so that He can swoosh through us and transform us. When nothing is wrong, for some reason our necks are stiff and we don’t walk by the Spirit. I wish this wasn’t true. This is why prosperity in our lives is usually a curse.
3. Thanksgiving – The more we hear about how God is working in people’s lives, the more thanksgiving we give to God in prayer, because we feel so much joy that God answered our prayers. In my previous church, I was interconnected spiritually with almost every woman in the church. I spent two hours after church just catching up with what God was doing in the lives of those women. I was burdened with their requests and I cared so much that I sometimes wept before the Lord on their behalf. ALL of us ought to care about each other in such a way that we can feel the living pulse of the church. It is Christ emanating from each individual, however imperfectly we do it. God gets glory and thanksgiving and praise when we are praying for each other. He answers our prayers because we are focused on what matters in life, which is the spiritual growth of other believers in our lives. I am so blessed when I spiritually interact with other members in the body of Christ, because they provide what I am lacking. Christ in them is manifested in a way that I need, and Christ in me is what they need. And the result is joy.

People from the Old Testament who walked with God “sought the Lord in prayer.” Ungodly people did not seek the Lord in prayer. I was aghast to realize that Scripture classifies people who seek the Lord in prayer as godly, and people who do not seek the Lord in prayer as evil. That just sends chills down my spine, because I don’t always seek the Lord in prayer.

Early Christians were devoted to the teaching of the Word and to prayer. Those were equals. So if you think that the teaching of the Word of God is important, then prayer is just as important.

Paul started all of his letters stating how he prayed for the people. He bursts into prayer in the middle of his letters. Paul was a man of prayer. He told the churches how different fellow workers were laboring in prayer with him, to give encouragement to the believers in those churches.

Jesus whipped people with righteous rage at the Temple because the priests were extorting the people and keeping them away from God. He screamed, “My House will be called a House of PRAYER!”

Jesus spent huge amounts of time praying to the Father. Why did God need to talk to God? It’s all about yielding. To glorify God maximally in our lives (which is the purpose of our existence and will give us the most joy), we have to know what God wants us to do. Jesus yielded His will to the Father to show us how it can be done. It is done though prayer.

To read more free articles on prayer, click here, and scroll down to the “Prayer” section.