Scripture tells us, “The prayers of the righteous person are powerful and effective,” (James 5:16, NIV). Why, then, do so many Christians describe their prayer life as weak, ineffectual, or nonexistent?

Today we will examine ways to improve or strengthen our prayer life. Our discussion is based on the understanding that God cares about and faithfully answers our prayers.

Invite the Holy Spirit to Guide Our Prayers

My heart breaks whenever I hear someone say, “I am not good at praying.” Chances are, they have a preconceived idea of how a “good” prayer sounds. Or they have fallen into the performance trap and are comparing their prayers with those of their neighbors.

God is unmoved by “production prayers” that are filled with empty words and designed to impress others.  Jesus warned against such prayers in his Sermon on the Mount:

 “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others… And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words., (Matthew 6:5, 7 ESV). 

“Good” prayers have nothing to do with lofty words and empty phrases. The prayers God loves are those in which the Holy Spirit guides us to a place of honesty and transparency. 

Do you remember Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman? When our Lord tells her to get her husband, she replies that she isn’t married. Commending her for her honesty, Jesus says, “You are right… you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband” (John 4:17-18, NIV). Feeling uncomfortable, the woman quickly changes the subject by asking where she should worship.

Jesus’ answer to her question goes straight to the heart of prayer. “Believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem… a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship in Spirit and truth,” (John 4:21,23, NIV).

A major step we can take in strengthening our prayer life and discovering the power of prayer is to invite the Holy Spirit to guide our prayers.

Delight in the Lord

The Psalmist writes, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4, ESV). 

I do not believe in, nor do I teach about, a prosperity gospel. From experience, however, I know that the more we delight in Jesus, the more we depend upon him; and the more we depend upon him, the more we delight in him. 

In 2016, our world was turned upside down by an unexpected phone call. In eighteen months, my husband’s new CEO ran the corporation millions of dollars in debt. As a partner, Sammy needed to pay his share of the debt. Facing financial ruin, we had nothing to do but cling to God in prayer. We decided that we would delight in Jesus every evening by thanking him for the manna he provided us that day. 

Sometimes the manna we received was a word of Scripture. For example, someone who didn’t know our financial situation told Sammy that she felt led to pray Deuteronomy 28:12, (NIV) for us: “The LORD will open the heavens, the storehouse of his bounty, to send rain on your land in season and to bless the work of your hands… [you] will borrow from none.”

God brought us through that season of debt and brought us into a place of abundance. The abundance wasn’t in dollars and cents, however. The abundance was in God himself.

Examine Our Hearts

Sin is an icy slope. We deceive ourselves into thinking that we can dabble in sin without losing control. What we don’t realize is that sin’s slippery slope is like a snow-covered hill. The more we walk in it, the more unmanageable it becomes.

Our prayers are priceless to God. However, when they are buried in iniquity, they become like treasures lost among our trash.

The Psalmist writes, “If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened” (Psalm 66:18, ESV). Did you notice the word cherished? According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, to cherish means “to hold something dear; cultivate it with care and affection; and entertain or harbor in the mind deeply and resolutely.” If we cultivate iniquity in our minds and embrace it affectionately with our hearts, God will not listen to our prayers.

The writer of Hebrews tells us that we need to “throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles,” (Hebrews 12:1, NIV). Otherwise, our hearts become hardened, and our iniquities separate us from God.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the fact that there are sins of commission and sins of omission. Unforgiveness is a sin of omission. A question we need to ask ourselves: “Is there someone whom I am refusing to forgive? Is that someone the person in the mirror?

We need to take an honest inventory of our hearts daily, confessing and repenting of our sin.

Closing:

This is a two-part series. We hope you will join us next week as we examine more ways to strengthen our prayer life and discover the power of prayer.

Christian grandparents around the world are being asked to commit Sunday, September 7th, as a day of prayer. For information about Grandparents Day of Prayer, please see  Home – Christian Grandparenting Network