How to Keep Your Prayer Life on Track

Every Monday night people gather at our church to pray over needs in our church, city, nation, and the nations of the world. These weekly meetings have been going on long before I got here and I honor our Pastors for keeping them going for many years.

Several months ago at one of these meetings God gave me a vision of a steaming locomotive; a massive, powerful train, barreling down tracks. It was a picture of the local church. The individual cars represented different ministries and the conductor was the Pastor at the helm. But then I began to envision this dark, smoke-filled room with a furnace. I imagined people covered in soot and ash, shoveling coal into the fiercely hot boiler. As they did, the train went faster, became louder, and grew more powerful. These were the intercessors.

This was an image of those who have said YES to the high calling of prayer. While everyone sits in the train, enjoying the ride as ministries take place and events happen, there is a group of people who daily make their way into their prayer closets, whose intercession is fueling the movement of the Church.

PRAYER is the FUEL of God’s people.

THE WORD

"And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people."

Ephesians 6:18

There are some things God will only do through the prayers of His people. Why? Because He’s given us dominion on the earth and even though He is sovereign, He created us to co-labor with Him.

Can I be honest with you? (Of course I can, it's my blog.) I'm exhausted with the over-thinking Church. I believe any theology that excuses personal responsibility and the call to uphold the scriptures that instruct us to "pray without ceasing, ask, seek, knock, and pray on all occasions" is just bad theology. I start here because so many people are convinced that "whatever God wants is what will eventually happen, so my prayers are more of just a formality." Here's the reality: God’s intervention often requires man’s cooperation. Not always, but often. God doesn't need our permission nor our invitation, He just wants it.

Do you realize Jesus' first public miracle was not out of His own desire but at the request of His mother? His mother encountered a problem and involved her son. It was out of her relationship with Him that she knew what He was capable of doing to change the situation.

Prayer is not about formality, it's about familiarity. It's the decision to INVOLVE God.

Now, on a practical level...

I grew up hearing sermons on prayer, encountering God in powerful services at camps and conferences, and leaving convinced I was going to start praying for at least 5 hours every day. (If you grew up pentecostal, you can probably relate.)

But then you sit down in a much different environment than the one you were convicted in. It's quiet, stale, somber... and as you start to pray you all of the sudden have NOTHING to pray about and your mind begins to wander. I'm sure we've all experienced our train going off the tracks in prayer.

Here's my bottom line: Trains NEED tracks.

I want to help you GET on track and STAY on track when it comes to your prayer life, because the POWER of the Church depends on the PRAYERS of the Church. I’ve found that half of the battle in staying consistent with prayer is knowing what to pray about and how to make that time fruitful. Praying through a track might be exactly what you need.

Thank

Recognize

Ask

Confess

Know

How to Keep Your Prayer Life On Track

1. THANK

"Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise; give thanks to Him and praise His name."

Psalm 100:4

It’s easy to go into prayer and never thank God for what He has done. Gratitude is the key to unlocking the door to His presence. In order to enter the temple you had to go through a gate and walk through a courtyard. The courtyard is where you would offer the "thank" offering. So in Psalm 100 David is essentially saying, if you are going to come into the presence of God, it is proper that you first come with an offering of thanks.

Now we know the offering of Jesus has been made on our behalf, so we are able to approach God empty-handed, but that doesn’t mean we should come empty-hearted. I thank God I don’t have to bring anything TO my salvation, but I had better bring thanks FROM it!

2. RECOGNIZE

"He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. He was amazed at their lack of faith."

- Mark 6:5-6

Faith is a key. Jesus taught that we must pray and not doubt. But listen, we don’t place faith in our prayers. We place faith in who it is we’re praying to. The way we do that is by recognizing who God is.

THANKS focuses on WHAT God has done.

RECOGNITION focuses on WHO God is.

This is why Jesus began His prayer with OUR FATHER, because knowing who God is informs our faith of what God can do.

A king has the ABILITY to do what you need.

A friend has the DESIRE to do what you need.

A father has the COMPULSION to do what you need.

Your perception of God affects what you ask from God in faith. Mark 6 tells us Jesus was hardly able to do any miracles in His hometown because of their lack of faith. Their lack of faith in Him was directly tied to their recognition of Him. Thanksgiving and recognition, I believe, require more discipline than any other aspect of prayer, but prioritizing them will enhance everything else.

3. ASK

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you."

- Matthew 7:7

There are some things you just don’t have because God doesn’t want you to have them. There are other things you don’t have because you haven’t asked. How can we know the difference? Through prayer. Prayer is not just a vehicle for requests, it’s also the vehicle for revelation. God reveals things to our hearts and minds through our prayers.

There’s an old story about lightning striking a night club in a tiny town after a local church had an all-night prayer meeting asking God to destroy it. When the owner of the night club found out about the prayer meeting, he sued the church and took them to court. The church denied responsibility and the judge threw the case out of court. “Apparently, the night club owner believes in prayer more than the church does,” said the Judge.

I'm just going to say it: IT'S OK TO ASK GOD FOR THINGS! It's ok to be specific about what you're asking for. If we serve a BIG God, we should ask Him for BIG things! The size of your prayers is directly tied to the size of your faith, which is directly tied to the size of your God.

4. CONFESS

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

- 1 John 1:9

The most important word in this verse are the two little letters at the beginning; IF.

"IF" means you have a choice. God will not confiscate what you do not confess. If you ever catch a student with a cellphone in class it's like torture getting them to admit they have it. Why? Because they know confession means confiscation. God should not have to beg for you to confess your sin, He DIED for you to.

The truth of the matter is we ALL have sin. Not sinning doesn’t make you holy, it makes you in denial. Confessing your sin and bringing it before the LORD is what makes you Holy.

5. KNOW

This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we KNOW that He hears us—whatever we ask—we KNOW that we have what we asked of Him.

1 John 5:14-15

A life bathed in prayer is a life lived with confidence. It's involving God and knowing He’s involved.

Prayer is GOD’S PEOPLE coming to know GOD’S HEART so they can ask for GOD’S WILL to be done in GOD’S CREATION as it’s done in GOD’S KINGDOM.

CONCLUSION

Prayer is not easy. I don't think we help people when we try to make it seem that way.

I know we like to tell people, "It's just like talking to your friend" but I have very few friends who I hit it off with immediately. Many of them I had to find common interests, had to have shorter conversations at first, and had to become acquainted with their sense of humor, mannerisms, and body language. Friendship doesn't happen over night and we all have friends who are more difficult to understand than others.

Prayer is friendship with God. In my mind, that doesn't make it more simple, that makes it more valuable, as well as more messy. Friendships must be forged, fought for, prioritized, and maintained. What you have with the LORD is your responsibility to develop and grow.

Hopefully this prayer track can be of some help to you. I recently preached an entire message on what I wrote here so if you would like a little more depth on this topic you can find that message here.