4. Get Passionate in Prayer (Seven Steps for Better Prayer)
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 Africa, and you don’t know any missionaries in Africa, you’re not going to last very long.
That’s why we need to get passionate in prayer. Get excited! Get some adrenaline going when you pray! You can see Paul doing exactly that when he says in verse 10, “We pray most earnestly night and day.” Most earnestly! In other words, “There’s not any more earnest we can get than the earnestness we’ve got. We cranked the earnest knob up to 11. It doesn’t just go to 10. We are passionate in our praying!”
Many of us have been told that we need to be silent and still before God. What do we call our prayer times? Quiet time, right? We’re told if we want to pray, we need to find a quiet place, and just sit in silence.
But what happens when you do that? You start thinking about all the things you need do today. Or you start thinking about the show you watched on Netflix last night. John Calvin said that the only people who can pray sweetly and quietly are “those whose affairs are flowing to their liking.” For the rest of us, he said “the occasion that best stimulates us to call upon God is when, distressed by our own need, we are troubled by the greatest unrest, and are almost driven out of our senses, until faith opportunely comes to our relief.”
There’s a lot that’s wrong with this world. There’s a lot that’s wrong with us. So we need to get a little upset about it. Get worked up about it. And take it to God. On the other hand, there’s a lot that God is doing in this world. There’s a truckload of grace that he’s poured out on us. We won the lottery when we received the riches of his grace. So we need to get excited about it and praise God for it.
For me, the only place I can do this is in my car. At home, if I get too passionate in prayer, my kids think I’m a crazy man. In the church office? Well, it’s still an office. You can’t do that kinda stuff there. But in my car? God and I get some business done. And the people in the other cars on the H1 just think I’m yelling into my bluetooth.
Getting passionate in prayer is what will take you into prayer and keep you going in prayer.
Posts In This Series
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...
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...
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...