90% of Prayer Should Be This
I guess we all know how important prayer is. But, the big questions are: How do we pray? How long should we pray? Where should we pray? Well, today I want to make a suggestion that will be a massive game changer. You see, I’ve taught on prayer and I could give a pretty standard answer that there are different methods of prayer, and here are just a few:
- Prayer of Consecration
- Prayer of Faith
- Prayer of Agreement
- Prayer of Supplication or Petition
- Prayer of Intercession
- Prayer in the Spirit
- Prayer of Praise & Thanksgiving
However, I think the vast majority of our prayer life should be that we are just in conversation with the Lord; we are in constant fellowship with Him.
There is a time and place for al those ‘methods of prayer’ as listed above. But, I think we should be spending, maybe 90% of our time, just communing with Lord and treating Him as though He was actually with us (and indeed He is!).
Let’s look at this a bit deeper and you may be glad to read that we shall prove this from the bible.
Now, we all know and can probably repeat by memory, John 3:16:
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
Yes, Jesus was crucified on a cross and rose again so that we would not perish; that is we can be saved from the terrible consequences of sin. But, the really good news is that we can have eternal life. But, what is “eternal life”? Good question. Let’s see how the bible defines “eternal life” in John 17:3:
“Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”
Eternal life is not some future event when we die and go to heaven. No, it begins the moment we confess and accept the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Eternal life is to KNOW God.
How do we get to know God? Yes, I know that predominately we can do this from reading the bible but we need to go beyond just head knowledge. It’s a personal relationship with God. Now, I can read a lot about a person by reading books or watching media clips etc. But, if I can truly say that I know a person, I will be in a relationship with them and that would involve talking and conversation. How did you get to know your partner, spouse or best friend? I bet you spent time with them and you talked and listened. Can you remember when you first fell in love? Bet you couldn’t stop thinking about that person? Every time you weren’t with them and you saw or heard something great, I bet you wanted to share it with them straight away?
I believe and have been really challenged that my prayer life needs to change. I need to, what was it that Brother Lawrence wrote about? “Practising the Presence of God”. I need to be communing with Him far more than what I do.
I was thinking the other day about Adam & Eve and the relationship they had with God before The Fall. You can obviously read that for yourself in the beginning of Genesis, but they just walked and talked with God. I’ve really been trying to do this more often, in every aspect of my daily life; if I’m driving, walking and just last night I was sitting outside having a cuppa before bed and I just looked around and thanked Him for His awesome creation as I looked at flowers, trees, the variety of birds flying about etc. It was awesome and I just thanked God for them all.
Here’s another very interesting passage in the bible that will hopefully cement this thought in Ephesians 3:16-19:
“I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”
Notice how Paul prays that we may know God’s love for us that surpasses knowledge. How do you “know something that surpasses knowledge”. Well, it’s a knowing that goes way beyond just mere head knowledge. It’s something the we realise in our very inner being because we have experienced it.
So many times we get hung up on things like posture; should I kneel, bow down, clasp my hands or maybe lift my hands up in the air? Should I prostrate myself or stand up? Should I fast? Should I always pray in private? Do I need to back a prayer up with a specific verse? Should I change the tone of my voice? Should I speak in King James language? All of these, with exception of the last one! All could be appropriate at certain times. BUT, I think the vast majority of our prayer life should consist of just having a real conversation with God. Maybe not even necessarily talking so much. Hey, we all know that with people we really get on with, when we are on a journey with them, say in the car, we are comfortable in moments of silence – you get my meaning don’t you?
The overwhelming majority of our prayer life should just be having real communion and fellowship with the Lord. And hey, that makes the following verse very doable, I think, don’t you?
1 Thessalonians 5:17
“Pray without ceasing.”
