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How to Develop a Powerful Prayer Life, Part Two

Last Sunday we began a journey together that we are calling, “A Season of Prayer.” The details about our Season of Prayer are in your bulletin and I hope that you’ll take the time to read through those details very carefully after our time of worship together. But the big picture looks like this—over the course of these next few weeks, I’ll be speaking each Sunday on the subject of prayer; last Sunday evening at 5:00 p.m. we began a new small group study on prayer that will continue for the next 4 weeks—if you missed the first session last Sunday night, you’re still welcome to attend this evening; we’ll also be meeting together on each of the next 2 Friday evenings to pray together as a church family and to hear testimonies of how God is working in us as we share this Season of Prayer; and the foundation of our Season of Prayer is The Prayer Closet—a daily time of private, personal prayer. At the end of the worship service last Sunday I invited each of you to make a Prayer Closet commitment—a commitment to spend a minimum of 10 minutes in private, personal prayer every day through June 15. And to help guide you in those prayer times, I have been sending you via email a daily prayer guide, which I’ve called Prayer Points.

And the response to last weeks’ invitation was just incredible. How many of you made that commitment to daily prayer last Sunday? In fact, the vast majority of those who were here last Sunday made that commitment. They filled out a prayer commitment card and placed them into the collection baskets here at the platform and said, “Yes, I will spend at least 10 minutes with God in prayer for each of the days of our Season of Prayer.”

And with that, our Season of Prayer began with a great sense of expectation and hope that God was up to something big in our midst, that God was going to be mightily honored through our commitment to daily prayer and that He would bless us mightily through our commitment. And we founded our commitment last Sunday on the wonderful promise that we have in James 4:8, which says, “Come near to God and He will come near to you.”

And we have taken God at His word. We are trusting that as we are faithful to come near to God in prayer, He will honor His word by coming near to us. And we are going to be changed by the experience. He’s going to grow us spiritually. He’s going to deepen our love for Him. We’re going to get to know God better than we’ve ever known Him before. And it’s going to make a difference in our lives, both individually and together as a church family.

Now, last week, I asked you if you would extend to me the freedom to bring a different kind of a message to you; the freedom to step a bit outside the box of our usual routine and you were gracious enough to let me do so and God met us and moved among us in a really wonderful way. And, this morning, I’m going to prevail upon your gracious spirit yet again and step even further outside the comfort of our routine because God has, once again, placed a different kind of message on my heart. And to help us get there, I’d like to hear from some of you entered The Prayer Closet each day of this past week and used the daily prayer guides that I sent you in the time you spent with God. I’d like to hear some brief testimonies.

I want to know how were you blessed by the experience? How you sensed God’s presence? Were you stretched in some way? How were you impacted by the daily discipline of spending some quiet, uninterrupted moments focused totally on God? Did the 10 minutes seem to last forever or did they go by really quickly? I’d like a few of you to share with us…very briefly…something about your experience in The Prayer Closet these past 7 days.

(TAKE TIME FOR A FEW SHORT TESTIMONEIS)

As we take another step forward, this morning, through our Season of Prayer, I want to begin by directing your attention to the title that I’ve given this series of messages—“How to Develop a Powerful Prayer Life.” I chose that title by design, to give you a subtle preview of some of the foundational truths upon which this series of messages is built.

Look, first at those words, “PRAYER LIFE.” The point, there, is that prayer is meant to be much more than just an occasional conversation with God. God’s desire is that prayer, for us…His children, would become a way of life. You see, every time we pray we are making a choice. And the choice is this—“For the next few moments, I choose to enter God’s presence.” I am choosing to focus my attention on God. To speak to Him, listen for Him and live intentionally in His presence. That’s really the essence of prayer. Prayer is choosing to live intentionally in God’s presence.

Now, the truth is, we can’t escape God’s presence. There is nowhere that we can go to fall off of God’s radar screen. That’s precisely the truth that David was writing about in Psalm 139:7-8, 11-12 when he said, “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will hide me…;’ even the darkness will not be dark to you…”

So, the point is that our entire life—24/7—is, in fact, lived in the presence of God. It’s just that, most of the time, we forget about that. Most of the time, we live kind of blissfully unaware of God’s constant presence. But every now and then we remember His presence and, for just a few moments, we give Him our attention…we turn our thoughts to God—and we call those moments, prayer.

And as those moments when we are aware of God’s presence begin to occur more and more frequently throughout the day…that is, as we begin to spend more and more of our time being aware of God’s presence and alert to His activity around us and His quiet promptings within us…a process of transformation takes place and the result is that prayer ceases to be merely an occasional activity and grows into a way of life.
And all of that foundational understanding is conveyed in the words, “prayer life.”

Next, notice that word, “POWERFUL.” “How to Develop a Powerful Prayer Life.” I included the word, “powerful” in the title to dispel the false notion that prayer is a kind of last resort to be employed only when we run out of anything useful or effective to do. “Well, nothing else has worked. I guess I might as well pray. What can it hurt?” Folks, that kind of attitude reveals a complete misunderstanding of the biblical teaching about prayer.

Prayer is never presented, in the scriptures, as a last resort. Prayer is consistently presented as the fuel that the engine of our spiritual life runs on. Remove prayer from your spiritual life and you may be able to limp and stumble along maintaining some semblance of the Christian life, but that’s all you’ll ever do.

--There won’t be any power in your spiritual life.

--Yours’ won’t be the kind of Christian life that is fulfilling to you and appealing to others.

There is simply no way to experience the power of the risen Christ in you on a daily basis apart from a continual refilling of your spirit with the Holy Spirit through prayer. Prayer is key to the releasing of spiritual power and vitality in our lives.

Next, look for a moment at the word, “DEVELOP.” “How to Develop a Powerful Prayer Life.” I included the word “develop” to remind us that a powerful prayer life is not something that God hands to us the moment that we’re saved.

--The moment we’re saved we have the privilege of praying in the name of Jesus to God, our Father.

--And our Father finds great delight in the prayers that are offered by brand new, baby Christians.

But a transforming, powerful prayer life is something that has to be developed through practice over time. It doesn’t just happen instantaneously. It develops.
And that leads to the final word I want you to notice in the title and that is the word—“HOW.” “How to Develop a Powerful Prayer Life.” And the point of the word, “how,” is to remind us that the process that leads to a powerful prayer life is not a mystery. It’s not some deep, dark secret that can only be discovered by a select few Super-Christians. The truth is, if you would like to develop a powerful prayer life…the kind of prayer life that can transform your life… I can show you how because there are specific steps that every Christian can follow to get there.

So, let’s get there, together. And that’s what our Season of Prayer is all about. We are now walking along the first stage of a path that is leading us in the direction of a powerful prayer life. And one of the things that we need to discover at this stage of the journey is that there is more than one type of prayer. As we read through the Bible, we discover examples of and instruction in some distinctly different types of prayer. And by “type” of prayer, I’m talking specifically about the content of our prayers; the subject matter of our prayers; the kinds of things about which we pray. And that means that if we want to develop a powerful prayer life, our prayer life must include each of these different types of prayers.

Now, why is it important to incorporate each of these types of prayer into our prayer lives?

--Well, to begin with, it’s important because each of these types of prayers is found in the Bible and God wouldn’t have put them there if they weren’t important for us.

--But it’s also important to incorporate each of these types of prayer into our prayer lives because God uses each type of prayer to accomplish distinct spiritual purposes in our lives. And He works through all of the various types of prayer in concert with one another to bring us to full maturity in our relationship with Him. And that means that if we neglect any of these basic types of prayer, our relationship with God will be weak and under-developed in some significant way.

FIRST PRAYER TYPE—PRAISE

So, with that in mind let’s look, this morning, at the first type of prayer that we want to be sure to incorporate into our own personal prayer lives. And this first type of prayer is called—PRAISE. Others words that describe the kinds of prayers that fall under the general category of “praise” would include: exalt, magnify, glorify, adoration, and thanksgiving. These are all different expressions of praise.

So, the big picture, here, is this—when we are offering prayers of praise to God, the primary desire in our heart and the primary focus of our mind is to worship God. To declare His worth. The purpose of praise is to give God the worship He deserves because of who He is and how He has blessed us. In it’s essence, praise is simply the heartfelt expression of what you…a child of God…have discovered to be true about your Heavenly Father—what you know to be true about His character; true about His plans and purposes; and true about His blessings…past, present and future.

Praise should occupy a significant part of our prayer life. That’s why I put it right at the beginning of the daily guides I’ve written for you. And the reason that praise is such a vitally important part of our prayer lives is because it fulfills the primary command that Jesus gave us. In Mark 12:29-30, Jesus said, “(This is) the most important (commandment): Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” And, folks, when we offer prayers of praise to God, that is exactly what we’re doing. We are loving God with all that we are. We are expressing our love for Him and we are identifying the specific aspects of His character and being that have captured our hearts. We’re not only telling God that we love Him, we’re also telling God why we love Him. And there’s not a Father anywhere who doesn’t delight in hearing those kinds of expressions from his kids.

And that means, among other things, that our prayers of praise ought never to be rushed. When you really love someone…and you really want them to know that you love them and why you love them…you don’t race through your declarations of love. You take your time. You give thought to the things that you are saying. And that means that if our expressions of praise to God are to be meaningful, we need to allow adequate time for our hearts and minds to be fully engaged.

And it’s at this point that it can be very helpful and very meaningful to incorporate scripture into our prayers of praise. Why? Because God reveals Himself to us through His word and as He does so it draws out and gives focus to our praise. So, let’s practice. Let’s read some scripture and then let’s praise God…for real, right now…because of what it tells us about our God. Psalm 100:5 says, “For the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.”
Let’s praise God for His goodness, His love and His faithfulness.

(PAUSE FOR PRAYERS OF PRAISE)

Another practice that I have found to be very helpful and very meaningful is to incorporate songs of worship and praise into my prayer time. As I begin to praise God in my prayers, a worship song will suddenly come to mind and I will shift from speaking words of praise to singing words of praise. And then I’ll go back to speaking and then return to singing and so forth. And I have found this to be a very satisfying way to express my love to God.

So, let’s practice. I’ll lead and you feel free to join me as you feel led.

“Father, what a great morning this has been just resting in Your presence, being fed by Your word and thinking about all the reasons we have to praise You. Father, this must be what heaven’s going be like. What a blessing it is to tell you how much I love You. And how could I not love You as I think about all the ways that You’ve demonstrated Your love for me.”

SING—FOREVER GRATEFUL (CHORUS)

I’m forever grateful to You.
I’m forever grateful for the cross.
I’m forever grateful to You…That You came to seek and save the lost.

“Father, I praise You for saving me. I praise You for forgiving me. I praise You for choosing me. I praise You for claiming me as Your child. I praise You for the work You’re doing in me. I praise You for being patient with me. I praise You for loving me, even when I’m not very lovable. Father, I praise You and I love You.”

SING—I LOVE YOU, LORD

I love You, Lord and I lift my voice…
To worship You, O my soul, rejoice.
Take joy my King in what You hear,
May it be a sweet, sweet sound in Your ear.

“Father, I want to praise You also for the work that You are doing, even now, to build our church into a House of Prayer. I thank You for what You’ve already done and I thank You in advance for the next steps in this journey. All the glory and all the honor is Yours. And we lift our praise, today, in the name of Jesus. Amen.”

What a joy it is to give praise to God. The musicians are now going to come and begin to play. Let’s continue to praise God in whatever ways you feel led to do so.