Introduction – Seven Steps for Better Prayer
Introduction – Seven Steps for Better Prayer
Prayer is like eating. We need to eat, but if we don’t plan what we’re going to eat, we end up eating junk. We need to pray, but if we don’t plan our prayer, we end up praying junk.
Think about it. How do you decide what you’re going to eat for dinner every night? I have an incredible wife who cooks dinner almost every night that we’re home, and she plans a menu out in advance so we always something good that’s good for us. When Cyndi’s gone, and I’m Mr. Mom, things go down a few notches. It might be hot dogs or nachos or chili and rice for dinner. There will be some carrots on the plate, probably some apples too, but it’s not going to be gourmet.
Then when Cyndi and the kids are all gone, and I’m at home by myself, I don’t even think about dinner until my stomach starts growling. “It’s 6:30. I’m hungry. What am I going to eat for dinner?” That’s when I end up eating whatever frozen thing is in the freezer, or I stop at whatever fast-food place is closest to where I happen to be at that moment.
If you don’t plan what you’re going to eat for dinner, you always just go down the path of least resistance. The fastest, or the cheapest, or the most convenient. When you don’t plan your dinner, you eat junk. And that’s exactly what happens with prayer.
We get up in the morning and try to spend some time in prayer, but we’re never prepared for it. We think we can just wing it. But we don’t know where to go, we don’t know what to pray for. And so we just end up saying the same things we said the day before, and 3 or 4 minutes later, we’re all pau. We’ve run out of things to say. We think that prayer should be free, and spontaneous, and flowing, but instead we just keep falling back into the same old rut of meaningless Christianese phrases.
If we want to grow in prayerfulness, we need to plan for it. We need to prepare our hearts and minds for it. We need to practice it, and expect that we’ll get better at it over time. And so this week, we’re going to learn how to do that, and we’re going to learn from Paul. We’re going to explore one of his prayers, and see how learned to be a better pray-er.
Start praying now for God to increase your prayerfulness.
7. Pray Through Scripture (Seven Steps for Better Prayer)
So you’ve taken some of the steps we’ve been talking about this week. You’re planning out your prayer. You’re finding specific things to pray about that you’re passionate about. You’re prayer-walking or you’re journaling. You’re praying in community. You’re doing all...
6. Pray In Community (Seven Steps for Better Prayer)
We've been looking at Paul's prayer in 1 Thessalonians 3, and what's striking is how much joy Paul has, simply because of his relationship with the Christians in Thessalonica. Look at this: Now that Timothy has come to us from you, and has brought us the good news of...
5. Get Your Prayers Outside Your Head (Seven Steps for Better Prayer)
We've been learning from Paul's example of prayer in 1 Thessalonians. And the only reason we have that prayer is because Paul took the time to get his prayers outside his head. He didn’t just pray his prayers silently by himself. I don’t know about you, but I can’t...
4. Get Passionate in Prayer (Seven Steps for Better Prayer)
As we saw yesterday, if you plan specific things to pray for and you keep track of how God has answered those prayers, you’re just going to pray more. But here’s the thing: you need to make it things you actually care about. If you try to pray for the missionaries in...
3. Get Specific in Prayer (Seven Steps for Better Prayer)
If the content of your prayers are vague, general requests, you won't be praying for very long. Or very often. If you want to pray seriously and strategically, you need to pray specifically. Look at what Paul asks for in verse 10: "We pray most earnestly night and day...
2. Plan Your Prayer (Seven Steps for Better Prayer)
If you don’t have a plan for your prayer, you just won’t pray. So if you want to get better at prayer, you need to plan out when you’ll pray. There’s evidence in Paul's prayer in 1 Thessalonians 3 that this is exactly what Paul’s doing. He says in verse 10 that he’s...
1. Pray Like a Child (Seven Steps for Better Prayer)
Paul is one of the best models of prayer you can find in the Bible. Almost every one of his letters has some kind of prayer in it, and you can see a lot about how Paul prayed and what he prayed about. In 1 Thessalonians Paul is praying for people he really loves — a...