How to Pray
What does your prayer life look like? Have you scheduled a time for prayer every day?
The purpose of prayer is not to get things out of God. It’s to build intimacy with God. If you start a conversation with God by asking Him for a new truck, you might get a new truck. However, you would be revealing your misunderstanding of the purpose of a relationship with God. God does give us incredibly good gifts, but He does it to build intimacy with us. Also, if the gift you’re asking for won’t be good for you, He’s not going to give it to you. He loves you too much to hurt you like that.
The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results.
What are the wonderful results that prayer produces? It may seem that God supernaturally interacts with His children less often than He did in the past, but I don’t believe that is the reality. The miracles we read about in Scripture might appear more frequent than they are because Scripture is a summary of thousands of years of God interacting with His creation. When God gave us free will, He chose not to perform miracles every time free will led to negative outcomes.
It is also possible that we are less likely to see miracles because we have spent so much of our time making our lives comfortable and removing the need for God’s help. It seems to me that God performs more miracles in places where people are desperate or where people have put their faith in Him and not in themselves.
With that said, self-serving miracles aren’t necessarily the wonderful result that James was talking about. The ultimate goal of prayer isn’t health and wealth. The goal of prayer is a relationship with God. Communication is a primary key to healthy relationships, and prayer is how we communicate with God.
Start your prayers with some relationship building statements: “Good morning, God. I love you, God.” Then be honest with Him: “God, I’m hurting right now,” or “God, I’m so pumped right now.” Having a regular prayer routine is the best way to build a personal relationship with God. Make a daily plan to pray and use prayer to build a greater relationship with God.
In the Sermon on the Mount, just before Jesus gave us the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus told His followers not to pray in a flashy way to impress people. We don’t need to ask God for things to inform Him of our needs. He already knows everything we need and want. We ask God for things to build a relationship with Him. Then, after some teaching about private prayer, Jesus taught us how to pray.
9 Pray like this:
Our Father in heaven,
may your name be kept holy.
10 May your Kingdom come soon.
May your will be done on earth,
as it is in heaven.
11 Give us today the food we need,
12 and forgive us our sins,
as we have forgiven those who sin against us.
13 And don’t let us yield to temptation,
but rescue us from the evil one.
When we use Jesus’ prayer as an outline, we start with worship then pray that God’s will be done. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus begged His Father to find a different way to save the world, but He then told the Father to do what He knew was right. Jesus asked the Father for something, and the Father rejected Jesus’ request. Jesus then asked that His needs would be provided for, and He asked for forgiveness. We know that Jesus was praying this prayer to teach His disciples how to pray, because Jesus never sinned. He had no need to ask for forgiveness. We are then taught to ask God for help in forgiving others, and we are to pray for safety and protection. When we pray this prayer, God hears us and responds in the best way possible.
Prayer is a conversation with God, and it should amaze us that the creator of the world wants to converse with and have a relationship with those whom He created. When we take for granted the amazing gift of prayer because we have had easy access to it for so long, we fail to experience the gratitude that prayer should produce. Prayer is an amazing gift from God who wants to be in a relationship with each of us.
Always be joyful. Never stop praying. Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.
One day Jesus was talking to His disciples, hoping to get them prepared for His inevitable departure from Earth. He would no longer be with them physically, and He wanted to make sure they knew that his physical departure would not end their relationship.
I am the true grapevine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch of mine that doesn’t produce fruit, and he prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more.
If we are a branch connected to Jesus, we will produce fruit that we can only produce if we are connected to Jesus. We will be people of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
Remain in me, and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me. Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing. Anyone who does not remain in me is thrown away like a useless branch and withers. Such branches are gathered into a pile to be burned. But if you remain in me and my words remain in you, you may ask for anything you want, and it will be granted! When you produce much fruit, you are my true disciples. This brings great glory to my Father. I have loved you even as the Father has loved me. Remain in my love.
Jesus has a gift for you, abundant life. It’s found as you grow more intentionally in your relationship with Him. If you seriously want it, you will be willing to set up the habits that can assist you in finding it. God is going to love you no matter what, but if you choose to be more intentional in your prayer life, you will move one step closer to the blessed life. Find a quiet place. Turn off the notifications and spend time with Jesus.
