“Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.’” —Luke 11:1
We need to saturate everything we do in prayer. Too often, we see a need and feel the urge to act, but we forget to pray first. It’s good to go out and do what we feel led to do, but it all has to start with spending time with God in prayer.
Prayer is a difficult thing to do, and it’s even more difficult to get right. I remember a client I had once. She was a devout Christian lady who took her prayer life very seriously. I asked her if she would pray for me, and you know what she said? “I‘ll have to think about it.”
This woman took her prayer life seriously. She knew it was a commitment to pray for someone, and she didn’t want to go about it lightly. She later told me that she would pray for me and even committed to doing so for a certain period of time. I was thankful for that, and it taught me a lot about what a serious thing prayer really is.
I’m thankful for those who’ve prayed for me over the years because those prayers make a difference. I don’t know where I’d be right now if it wasn’t for them. Let me ask you: Where might you be if someone hadn’t been praying for you?
Today, I’d like to simply encourage you to invest more in your prayer life and to let Jesus teach you how.
If you continue reading in Luke 11 after the verse quoted above, you’ll see Jesus giving His disciples a model for how to pray. They asked Him to teach them how to pray, and He did! It’s definitely a passage you should check out.
For today, though, I’d like to go back to Matthew 7, the chapter we’ve been reading over the past several weeks. There are a few nuggets in that chapter on prayer, and I’d like for us to dig into them.
The Input
“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” —Matthew 7:7
One thing I’ve learned in life is that if you want to get something out of something, you have to put something into it first. And if we want to get the right things out of our prayer lives, then we have to start by putting the right things in.
There are three things Jesus instructs us to do here:
- ask — When we have a need, we need to ask Him. When we have a question, we need to ask Him. We should be bringing all of our cares and concerns to God in prayer.
- seek — This is taking things to the next level. We need to not only express what we want, but actively seek what He wants for us. God has a plan for us, and following that plan begins with seeking it.
- knock — An important part of prayer is persistence. Do you feel like you’ve hit a wall in your personal or spiritual life? Talk to God about it!
These are the key ingredients to starting a healthy prayer life. Once we start coming to God in these ways, we’ll start to see the fruits of spending time with Him.
The Output
“For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.” —Matthew 7:8
When we ask, seek, and knock, we can expect the following things to happen:
- We will receive what we’ve been asking for.
- We will find what we’ve been searching for.
- Doors that were previously closed will be opened to us.
These outputs come from God, and they’re the result of us putting the right things into our prayer life.
Does that mean that everything will always be perfect and we’ll always get what we want? No. Prayer isn’t about getting what we want all the time. Rather, it’s about building up our relationships with God and aligning ourselves more and more with what He wants for us.
The Key Element: Trust
“Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!” —Matthew 7:9-11
Like any good parent, God wants what is best for us. When we come to Him and ask for good things, we can trust that He will provide them. Sometimes, we might ask for something, and He might tell us, “No, you don’t need that. That isn’t good for you.” But we can always trust Him to give us what’s best for us and lead us to where we need to go.
Ultimately, it’s not about what we want. We should be seeking to want the same things God does, because His plans are perfect. When we grow in our relationship with Him through prayer, we’re moving closer to His perfect plan for our lives every step of the way.
I hope this post has given you a good understanding of why we pray and how to start going deeper in your prayer life with God. I’d like to leave you with a poem by Richard Chenevix Trench about prayer called “One Short Hour.” I believe it beautifully sums up what we’ve discussed today:
Lord, what a change within us one short hour
Spent in Thy presence will prevail to make;
What heavy burdens from our bosoms take,
What parched fields refresh as with a shower.
We kneel, and all around us seems to lower;
We rise, and all, the distant and the near,
Stands forth in sunny outline, brave and clear;
We kneel how weak; we rise how full of power!
Why should we ever weak or heartless be,
Why are we ever overborne with care,
Anxious or troubled, when with us is prayer,
And joy, and strength, and courage are with Thee?
To your fitness!