What caused me to realize that I was prayerless? What started my journey to becoming a prayer warrior?
It all began when I listened to a sermon about prayer, and how it was labor. I knew I had not experienced that kind of prayer before, since I didn’t feel a heaviness of heart as I interceded for people. I didn’t feel burdened to pray. I didn’t set aside time to pray. I thought prayer was something casual you did whenever you felt like it, to ask God for something.
I knew I wanted to experience a deeper prayer life, so I set myself a prayer bootcamp: the goal of praying for one hour a day for one month to see what happened. Well, the first day I prayed for everything I could think of for way longer than usual, and come to find out at the end of my prayer, it had only been five minutes.
I cried. I realized I didn’t know how to pray, and that I was a wimp. I asked God to teach me how to pray.
Prayer Video #5
I opened my heart and asked God what to pray for each person. Watch the video below to see what happened as a result. This began my journey as a mighty prayer warrior, and I have never been the same:
It’s important at the beginning of your prayer journey to actually block off a specific amount of time, like 10 minutes or whatever, because then you can settle in and relax and not be rushed. We are so rushed in our lives that we can’t hear God. A time set aside can help you to unplug from the world and recharge with God.
Did you know that prayer is worship? It’s true. Many people call it adoration, and Jesus included it in His model prayer for His disciples: “Hallowed be Thy name.”
The Anatomy of a Prayer
Let’s break down the different categories of prayer:
Confession
Supplication
Thanksgiving
Worship
Each of these categories is important, so I will describe each one briefly, but we will be focusing on worship through prayer today. So few people take the time to properly worship God in their prayers.
Prayer Video #4
Confession
You should confess your sins to God, or agree with Him that you have sinned, and turn from those sins in repentance. It is crucial to confess your sins at the beginning of your prayer because otherwise God will not hear you (Psalm 66:18). If your prayer cannot be heard until your sin is confessed, you should always make sure you confess your sins first.
It’s your sin that’s causing your misery. Giving up your sin will unblock you from God and enable Him to live through you and give you love, joy, peace, and all the other evidences of the Spirit.
You should continuously make sure that you have no unconfessed sin. I cannot bear to have my connection with God broken. I usually feel it right away as an uneasiness in my spirit. When I discover that I have sinned, I immediately confess and repent. So when I spend time in prayer, I have no sin blocking me, and I can begin intersession right away.
Supplication
Supplication is laying down requests before the Lord. Another word for supplication is intersession. This is the bulk of your prayer life: lifting others up before the Lord with their requests. Laboring before God for people in the church, for your family members, and even for your enemies is what God requires of us (Colossians 4:12; Matthew 5:44).
Thanksgiving
We are commanded to give thanks in all things (1 Thessalonians 5:18; Philippians 4:6). When God answers our prayers, we should not forget to thank Him. We can also be grateful for all that God has done in our lives. We can thank Him for what He has given us and for who He is. I am thankful for God’s mercy, for example, that in our rebellion He shows kindness and forgives when we come to Him in repentance.
Worship
Adoration is lifting God up and telling Him how wonderful He is. You find worship especially in the Psalms, where God is praised for who He is and for all He has done and will do. I like to sing my worship to God because singing expresses adoration better than words. (You will hear me sing “O the Deep Deep Love of Jesus” in the video above, and I describe why that song means so much to me.)
I will sing to the LORD as long as I live; I will sing praise to my God while I have being. – Psalm 104:33 ESV
Speaking to each other in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord… -Ephesians 5:19 ESV
If I had it to do over again, I would have begun through fasting. The reason we do not connect to God is because we do not seek Him with ALL. We are commanded to seek God with ALL our heart, soul, mind, and strength:
And He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” -Luke 10:27 ESV
When our stomachs are full and we seek Him with all, we are half-hearted. That’s why I believe fasting is a shortcut to entering the heart of God. Years ago when I decided to become a prayer warrior, I was scared of the idea of fasting. I believed it wasn’t for today; it was just a weird thing. Why would you want to suffer by starving yourself for a day? What good would that do? It actually gives you a hunger for God. When you pray, the pain in your stomach causes your prayers to be extremely intense.
With a full stomach, even if you mean what you are saying to God, you are not seeking Him with all because you are not emptied.
Why Hardships Draw Us Closer to God
If you have to endure a brutality, if someone that you dearly love dies, whatever horrendous thing occurs in your life that causes you to seek God with all, that’s when you can experience the tangible presence of God. Why is that? It’s because you are seeking Him with all. A crisis causes you to seek Him with all.
Guess what? You do not have to go through a crisis in order to seek Him with all. You can set aside a day to seek the Lord and give up food. You are saying, “Lord, I want You more than food! I’m more hungry for You than I am for food. I want You and only You! Nothing more!”
Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. – James 4:8 ESV
We commit so many sins all the time. Even if we commit no sins with outer actions, we all have thought sins. We commit sin without thinking because we are selfish. That is our default position: we do things for ourselves all the time.
We are so stubborn that we cannot experience the presence of God unless we are going through suffering because we won’t seek Him. We self-pamper and seek our own pleasure. We indulge ourselves in the things of this world. We pursue those things automatically. We do not pursue God to the same degree that we pursue our own comfort.
So when you take away food, then suddenly all that is stripped and you are emptied. Jesus expects His people to fast, especially in these end times. Watch this third prayer video to find out how to connect to God for real.
How do we actually connect to God in prayer? (Video #3)
What blocks your prayers from being heard? Why do you cry out to God, and it seems like He does not hear you? Are there certain things in your life that need to be in place for you to be heard by God?
“If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.” – Psalm 66:18 KJV
Iniquity is sin. If you have known sin that you are committing that you have not repented and turned from, then you will not be heard by God. He promises not to hear you if you are sinning.
The Seared Conscience
Our morality has gone so far off the course that what we once knew were sins–our consciences are seared to those sins. This happens through the erosion of morals in the people around us and by watching television, movies, and ungodly websites.
I know of a pastor who led many people to the Lord, who because of tens of thousands of hours of television watching, became seared in his conscience. His daughter had been brutally raped by a stranger, but years later he cracked a joke about something similar. The people with unseared consciences were appalled at the joke as they stared in horror at this man. The others in the room with seared consciences laughed.
Even the godliest men fall into depravity when they do not regularly fast and pray before God to purge them from worldly influence. Abstaining from ingesting worldly influence can reverse some of the damage.
Our time belongs to God. But we don’t even consult Him about what to do with our time. Instead we squander it on worthless things that lead us to seared consciences.
We are not devoted to the Lord. We are not wholehearted. We do not care about the things of God except as mental exercises at church that are disconnected from our experience. We have a form of godliness but deny its power (2 Timothy 3:5). God never reaches our souls. We don’t commune.
Do you want your sin more than you want God?
You don’t want a relationship with God if you want your sin more than you want God. Jesus is not Lord if you are continuing in known sin. You don’t know Jesus if you continue to walk in sin because God is holy. The only way to draw near to God is to get rid of sin. Are you broken about sin? Saying some words into the air does not make you saved. Jesus must be functionally Lord of your life in order for you to be saved.
Whatever you are placing higher than God–the sin you are committing–that is Lord. If you are controlled by greed, anger, gossip, lust, ungratefulness, laziness, or complaining, then you are not controlled by God. If you are a man who wants to harm your wife rather than love her–you are under fleshly, demonic, and worldly influence. The reason you are reaching for another drink is that you are miserable and are doing whatever your flesh wants. You are enslaved to it–in chains. You are in bondage to whatever you are overcome by. You will never be satisfied by gratifying your flesh. It is an insatiable pit. There is nothing there but misery for the people around you.
“They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity–for people are slaves to whatever has mastered them.” – 2 Peter 2:19 NIV
So what blocks your prayers from being heard by God? Sin. If you want a real relationship with God, ask Him to expose your sin, and then get rid of it.
Hi! I'm Susan Evans. I speak at homeschool conferences about hands-on learning and run a huge unit study membership site. I also speak at women's retreats on the topic of prayer.
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