(No new sermon this week.)
Are you ready to start praying serious, hardcore prayers, or are you already doing that and want to be sure that you’re covering all the bases? To hopefully provide you with a little bit of guidance, this is the list, with explanations, of all the prayer categories that *I* pray, and yes, I mean every single category every single day:
Thank the Lord for each thing that He has done for you since the last time you prayed.
Ask the Lord to speak to you every day, in such a way that you hear and understand it.
Tell God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, how much you love Them.
Praise Them for Their infinite mercy, grace, goodness, love, forgiveness, blessings, and overall awesomeness.
Ask for forgiveness for any wrongs that you have committed, whether consciously or unconsciously, especially any wrongs committed against the Lord.
Ask God to bless all the people who have done you harm… And yes, ask for this BEFORE you ask for anything for yourself or your loved ones.
Ask for supernatural healing for everyone you know who needs it, whether you like them or not.
Ask for supernatural blessings, financial or otherwise, for every person or entity you know that needs it, including your church, charities you support, regions that have been devastated by disasters, etc.
If you can speak in tongues, it’s a good idea to do it a little bit every day; ask the Holy Spirit to come and speak through you, and THANK him for being there for you.
And then come the two big prayer categories:
1) Prayer about your connection with God: ask for God to make you into the best possible person, into whatever He wants and needs you to be, to give you the ability to serve Him, His church, and His people better, to be able to praise and worship Him better, have more love, trust, and faith, etc.
2) The big prayer for your own needs: whatever the BIG thing is that you’re hoping for, whether it’s a promotion, a relationship, a health issue, whatever it is: Once you have done your duty as a Christian to pray for everyone and everything else, ask for what your heart truly desires, expressing total faith in God’s ability to give it to you, His desire to profit you in this way and many others, and asking Him to tell you whatever it is that YOU need to do to move things along to your desired conclusion. If you believe that the enemy is working against you, claim the power and authority that God gave you against Satan and all of his demons, and command them to depart from the situation
And then, by all means, list the other things you want… but HUMBLY, because God is our sovereign Lord, not a vending machine.
I know, that sounds like a lot, especially if you’re used to just praying for a couple of minutes, but the more you pray, the more you receive; prayers go up, blessings come down. If this seems overwhelming, just add one or two at a time, until you are connecting daily with God in prayer the way that He deserves for all He does for you. You’ll be glad that you did!
isn’t this making prayer a little too ritualistic? I think is good to give pointers on things we can pray for (which you did) and help readers realize that we should pray beyond themselves. But at the same time, prayer with God is something that is intimate and free like how you would communicate with people close to you on Earth.
That’s a great question! What you have to remember, though, is that God is NOT a person, He is infinitely more than we are, not on our level, so your relationship with God is NOT the same as with a person, and so the free-flowing let it all hang out interactions that we have with other people these days should not be applied to our relationship with the Lord.
We also want our prayers to be effective, or what are we praying them for? Not all types of prayer are equally effective, and it makes sense to make sure that we are doing whatever will get us the best results. If all you’re doing is asking for what you want, saying whatever’s on your mind, and leaving it at that, you shouldn’t wonder if you’re not seeing a lot of miracles in response. There are certain things that we OWE to God, and certain things that He wants to see us praying about for others before we focus in on ourselves, and whether or not we include those things in our prayers makes a gigantic difference in the results that we get.
And finally, we should look at the Bible and see what it says about prayer, especially what Jesus had to say on the topic. There is nowhere in the Bible that says that prayer should be free, or resembling how we communicate with other people. There is nowhere in the Bible where it says that ritualistic prayer is wrong; quite to the contrary, the unfortunately only time that Jesus told us HOW we should pray, what he gave us was EXTREMELY ritualistic, down to the exact words we should use:
Matthew 6:9 (KJV)
9 After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name…
Praying with whatever thoughts come into your head is probably the quickest, easiest and most fun way to pray… But we owe God FAR more than doing what is quickest, easiest and most fun, right? We keep asking God for more, so we should GIVE Him more… We should be EAGER to give Him more, eager to give Him everything we can, which is little enough compared to what HE gives US. If all of these things that I have mentioned are already naturally flowing in your prayers every day, you’re all set… But if not, add however much “ritual” is necessary to your prayer life so that you can pray the best possible prayers… And then watch and see what happens!
Thank you lord