Daily Prayer

 

I’ve been a woman of prayer most of my life. My parents taught me the importance of prayer. I prayed at church, before meals, usually before bed, and whenever I thought I could use God’s help for something. I didn’t practice the discipline of prayer though.

Many challenges too big for me to handle on my own are part of my story. This is true of everyone. My husband and I suffered through thirteen years of infertility before God answered our prayers and blessed us with our daughter. We experienced car accidents, financial pressures, job losses and changes, health crisis, and so much more. Each new threat prompted me to turn to God for comfort, direction, and help.

I only understood the first level of the meaning of prayer. God showed me prayer is conversation with Him. My interpretation primarily involved me doing all the talking. I was treating it more as a step in a process to get what I wanted. When I didn’t like what was going on around me and couldn’t change it, I turned to God to do it for me. It was all about me without regard to my Heavenly Father. This is okay as a starting point for a young believer, but there comes a point when we should realize a conversation means it involves someone other than ourselves. We need to listen to someone else in a conversation, and respond to someone else’s thoughts, ideas, or questions too.

This realization changed my perception of prayer. God created us to be in relationship with Him. Relationships include involvement with and emotional connection with another person. Creating and establishing a relationship with someone requires an investment of our time, energy, and building trust. It’s forging a level of intimacy by building respect. The more important a relationship is to us, the more we open up our heart and share. When we are with a casual friendship, we keep things light and guard our personal feelings and thoughts.

Daily prayer is something I choose to do now. I want to grow and mature in my relationship with my Heavenly Father. I’m intentional about how I approach my prayer time and the way I interact with Him. When we have our time together, I don’t do all the talking. I take time to listen to what He wants to tell me. If I ask Him a question, I expect Him to answer me. Not expect Him as in being in demand of Him, but expect Him as in waiting in anticipation for His answer. I’m still growing in my understanding of this and making adjustments as I learn along the way.

My approach right now for my dedicated prayer time is to put on some instrumental praise music on low to saturate the atmosphere with peace. I spend about ten minutes or so thanking God for the things He does for me and my family and loved ones. Then I like to pray in tongues for at least ten minutes. Praying in tongues is the best way to ensure perfect prayers are offered when I yield myself to the Holy Spirit to pray through me.

I spend time in God’s Word by reading a chapter from Proverbs every day. There are 31 chapters in Proverbs, so I can read the entire book through every month. On the months that have less than 31 days, I read an extra one on one of the days, so I am always ready to begin again on the first of the month at the beginning. I read through the entire Bible by reading at least a chapter a day. I follow a reading plan on Bible.com to help me stay on track where I am. I also ask God if there is something He wants me read other than what I’ve set and read it if He gives me something.

Finally, I read prayers I have written out on a document in my computer. I’m constantly adjusting and changing this as God leads me. It includes passages of Scripture that read as prayers as well as things God brings to my attention as I go through my day. I will share portions of this in future posts here.

There are two passages from Ephesians I read every day. The Bible is God’s Word written down for us to teach us and to share His love for us. He uses His Word as one way He speaks to us. When I read His Word, it is one of the ways I let God do some of the talking in this relationship I am building with Him. Since God showed me these to read, it has had quite an impact on my life. I see Him answering these prayers in remarkable ways. I encourage you to try it. I adapt His Word to make it personal. This is from the Passion Translation, a favorite of mine because it expresses God’s Word with beautiful declarations and sparks feelings and images that inspire my heart.

Ephesians 1: 17- 23

Father of glory, the God of my Lord Jesus Christ, impart to me the riches of the Spirit of wisdom and the Spirit of revelation to know You through my deepening intimacy with You. Light of God, illuminate the eyes of my imagination, flooding me with light, until I experience the full revelation of the hope of Your calling—that is, the wealth of God’s glorious inheritance He finds in me, His holy one!

I pray I will continually experience the immeasurable greatness of God’s power made available to me through faith. Then my life will be an advertisement of this immense power as it works through me! This is the mighty power released when God raised Christ from the dead and exalted Him to the place of highest honor and supreme authority in the heavenly realm! Now He is exalted as first above every ruler, authority, government, and realm of power in existence! He is gloriously enthroned over every name that is ever praised, not only in this age, but in the age that is coming!

He alone is the leader and source of everything needed in the church. God put everything beneath the authority of Jesus Christ and gave Him the highest rank above all others. Now we, His church, are His body on the earth and that which fills Him who is being filled by it!

Ephesians 3: 14-21

I kneel humbly in awe before the Father of my Lord Jesus, the Messiah, the perfect Father of every father and child in heaven and on the earth. I pray He would unveil within me the unlimited riches of His glory and favor until supernatural strength floods my innermost being with His divine might and explosive power.

Then, by constantly using my faith, the life of Christ will be released deep inside me, and the resting place of His love will become the very source and root of my life. I will be empowered to discover what every holy one experiences—the great magnitude of the astonishing love of Christ in all its dimensions. How deeply intimate and far-reaching is His love! How enduring and inclusive it is! Endless love beyond measurement that transcends my understanding—this extravagant love pours into me until I am filled to overflowing with the fullness of God!

I will never doubt God’s mighty power to work in me and accomplish all this. He will achieve infinitely more than my greatest request, my most unbelievable dream, and exceed my wildest imagination! He will outdo them all, for His miraculous power constantly energizes me.

I offer up to God all the glorious praise that rises from every church in every generation through Jesus Christ—and all that will yet be manifest through time and eternity. Amen!

I still pray at other times during the day as well. I carry on conversations with God all the time. I still immediately seek Him when trials and troubles come up during all the normal life activities. This is perfectly fine. We don’t have to be so rigid we only pray during our set time. After all, we don’t make our other friends and family members wait for a set appointment to talk to them do we? Of course not. That’s what I like about describing prayer as conversation. Conversation can happen anytime we are together.