Praying with Purpose

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Prayer is our “key to success,” to use a business term; you can think of it as a skill—something you learn to do and get better at doing the more you practice it and learn about it.

In your business life, you wouldn’t dare “wing it” with an important sales presentation or some project you’re working on. When something is important to your life, you plan and prepare and give it a lot of attention. Yet, it could be that your approach to prayer is rather careless and undisciplined, and then you wonder why your prayers don’t seem to make much difference.

In Luke 11 one of the disciples asked Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples” (Luke 11:1b). If prayer was something so essential and important that Jesus prayed a lot and John taught his disciples to pray, they reasoned, and rightly so, that it would be important for them to pray and pray well. Hence their request: “Lord, teach us to pray.”

Notice that Jesus didn’t respond by saying, “Oh, prayer is a personal thing. It can be done in any way as long as you are sincere.” No, he said, “Here’s the way to pray,” and he gave them a format for prayer that we have called The Lord’s Prayer. In other words, by his response he said, “Learning to pray is a very worthwhile thing; you need to learn. And I will teach you.”

I want to tackle the question, “How do I pray?” Actually, it’s presumptuous of me to even suggest I could teach anyone how to pray, since I haven’t graduated or received my degree in prayer as yet! Furthermore, you can’t learn in a few short minutes.

But what I hope to do is, first, make you aware that you need to learn how to pray. It is something to be studied. Then I want to give you some basic beginnings that have been helpful to me. I find that many Christians stumble in their attempts to pray for lack of any structure or procedure.

So, here are my simple first-step suggestions to enroll you in Prayer 101:

Study The Lord’s Prayer. Since Jesus is the Master Teacher, his prayer instructions are the most important ones. The model he gave us for prayer is the best. You’ll find it in Matthew 6 and Luke 11. There are many excellent books on The Lord’s Prayer; I recommend you read one.

Briefly, The Lord’s Prayer teaches us that prayer should contain:

• Praise and Adoration – “Our Father, Which art in heaven, hallowed be your name”
• Commitment – “Your kingdom come; your will be done on earth as in heaven.”
• Petition – “Give us this day our daily bread”
• Repentance and Forgiveness – “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

Use a prayer journal. There are as many different ways to do this as there are people, but I strongly encourage you to keep a journal as you pray. It will do at least three good things for your prayer life:

• It will structure your praise and prayer time so that you don’t forget the many prayer needs and praise items.
• It will give you a record of answered prayer.
• It will help you pray, especially on those days when you don’t want to pray or the feelings are missing.

You can structure your journal in any way that suits you. Mine is divided into four sections:

Section 1–Praise and Adoration

In this section I have listed the attributes of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and I go through this list in my praise of God. I also have a list to remind me of all that I personally have to be thankful for.

Section 2–Confession and Dedication

After praise, I confess any known, specific areas of sin, and also ask God to show me hidden sins of which I’m not aware. Then, I commit my life to him for the day ahead and dedicate anew my time and resources to his service.

Section 3–Intercession

I have many people and organizations that I want to pray for, so I have assigned them to different days of the week. Mondays I pray for my family, Tuesdays for close friends, Wednesdays for my ministry and staff, Thursdays for my church, Fridays for the ministries and organizations that I care about, and Saturday for world needs. In this way, I can get around to everyone I want to intercede for on a regular basis. These are all written down, just to help me remember.

Section 4–Prayer Requests and Answers

I then bring to God all the needs I have personally, the needs of the ministry, etc. And I have a list of specific requests I’ve brought to God, with a notation when and how he answered. That’s a great encouragement to me.

Pray scripture into your life. More and more I’m praying scripture, because then I know I’m praying in the right way for the right things. I pray scripture in three ways:

• I pray back the Word of God as I’m reading it. For example, as I read James chapter 1 recently, I prayed, “Lord, teach me how to consider trials joyful. Help me develop perseverance. I ask you for wisdom which I need very much. Help me be quick to listen and slow to speak today.” Those are just a few of the prayers that I prayed as I read that chapter. This really transforms your Bible reading and your prayer life as well.
• As God speaks to me through his Word, I write down those verses in my journal to address any area of need in my life. And then I pray them often. Here are some examples of what I’ve noted in my journal:

“Lord, teach me to pray.” That’s a good place to start.

Romans 12:1-2 is a passage I pray with great regularity. “Lord, today I present my body as a living sacrifice, that it may be holy and acceptable to you, which is only reasonable. And I pray that I shall not be conformed to this world today, but shall be transformed by a renewed mind, so that I can prove your perfect will in my life today.” I strongly urge you to pray this passage often.

Philippians 3:10 is a powerful prayer: “I want to know God, and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his suffering, becoming like him in his death.”

I pray Philippians 4:8 often: “Today, Lord, help me to think only what is true, noble, right, pure, lovely and admirable.” It’s very important to pray about your thought life.

I pray on the armor of God as outlined in Ephesians 6.

Proverbs 18:21 is an important prayer: “Guard my words today, Lord. May they be words of life, not death.”

John 5:44 says, “Teach me to seek the praise of God, not of people,” and I pray that often.

These are just a few of the scriptures I have written in my journal which I pray as a commitment and dedication of my life. Now, let me tell you what happens when you start to pray scripture like this into your life:

Little by little progress is made in all these areas.

You drill these passages into your mind because you pray them often. They are written down for your eyes to see frequently. Therefore, you remember them. I can pray most of these without looking at my journal any longer; I’ve practically memorized them. Then throughout the day, the Holy Spirit brings them back into my mind when I need them. What a difference this kind of praying makes in your everyday life!

• The third way I pray scripture is to use the prayers of the great people in the Bible. For example, David’s prayer in I Chronicles 17:16 is a great one to use as thanksgiving to God. Have you ever felt like you didn’t know how to pray for other people? Maybe you end up with lots of “Lord, bless so and so” prayers. Well, for your friends and relatives who are believers, the best thing you can do for them is pray some of the Apostle Paul’s prayers. Just personalize it to your friends and relatives. I’ll give you one example, using Annie as substitute name:  Philippians 1:9-11: “And this is my prayer: that Annie’s love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that she may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ – to the glory and praise of God.”

You can’t pray better prayers for your friends and relatives that that, and there are many others as well…to name a few, Hebrews 13:20-21, 2 Thessalonians 1:11-12, and Ephesians 3:16.

Set aside a time for prayer. Discipline is required. That time should be your highest priority. Set aside enough time for prayer. Five quick minutes won’t do it. It takes longer than that just to get your mind centered and focused. And then lastly, pray whether you feel like it or not. Feelings are not to be trusted. Usually, the feelings come once you start praying, but even if they don’t, pray.

These are just a few highlights on praying with purpose, but I hope that if you know you need to have a more effective prayer life, you will begin today to make that a high priority in your life.