Prayer is a kind of communication that defiles natural laws and helps to align situations to your favour. And how to pray effectively is to help position you on how best to communicate in prayer with God.
The essence of prayer is not so that God would answer, even though God wants to answer your prayers. Although, God has finished His works from the foundation of the world. But our prayers help to stir situations to our advantage.
A dear man of God once said, it seems like God would do nothing excerpt we pray. That’s the reason you ought to pray, not just to communicate but also to receive the answers of what God has already made available for you.
How To Pray Effectively
Praying effectively is not really what you are praying about but the intensity of the prayer. What you are praying for doesn’t make God answer. It’s how intense you pray that causes an answer in response.
That’s why crying during prayer doesn’t make God answer your prayer. And intensity is not about crying. Their’s a call of faith that’s deeper than emotion. And God sees the heart and responds to faith alone.
However, praying in intensity can be practiced. If you do not endure in prayer you cannot develop deep hunger for God. It’s this deep hunger that drives your intensity of prayer. You are praying to a God who’s a spirit. Your prayers should be deep in spirit.
So, when you pray, let it be continuos and heartfelt. In other words, maintain a commitment to your prayer. Spend sometimes in prayer. Don’t just mumble words and quickly rush off to live as though it was just a routine expression. Give God attention. Stay in the place of prayer for a timeframe, while you talk to God.
If you pray in tongues, spend enough time to speak in other tongues. The Bible admonished that praying in other tongues edifies you. It emboldens, builds you up like an edifice. So, the more you stay in the place of prayer, the more you are built up in God.
How To Pray To God
When we pray to God, it’s important we also know how to better pray to God. If God would answer your prayers, you ought to know how to pray in a way that God wants to answer. So that when you pray, you are so sure that God would answer. Assuming there are prayers that God doesn’t answer.
And if God won’t answer prayer, you ought to know those prayers that God doesn’t answer. Or if God didn’t answer your prayer, you should know why God didn’t answer a prayer from you, even when He asked you to pray.
That brings us to the question, who should pray to God? What qualifies anyone to pray to God? Is there a way to pray God for Him to answer? Or are there people whom God doesn’t answer there prayers?
Who’s Qualified To Pray
Let’s start with who is qualified to pray. Having asked if there are those God doesn’t answer their prayers, it’s necessary to answer the question of qualification. That would help you see how you qualified or not.
So, who’s actually qualified to pray to God? The right way to answer this question is to first identify who God is for. Are there people in this world that God did not create? The answer is no. If everyone in this world is created by God, then that qualifies everyone in this world to pray to God. That means you are qualified to pray to God.
But there are two types of people in the world today that God created. You may like to know which type you belong to. And each of the two types is required to pray a certain kind of prayer.
The two types of people are:
- The Natural man
- The New Creation
These two type of people can only pray a certain prayer for God to answer. The natural man is the direct descendants of Adam, whose the first creation of God. Everyone who came into this world, first came as a natural man. If you are born into this world, you are a natural man.
However, the second creation is the new creation. This new creation are descendants of the natural man that have accepted Jesus Christ into their lives as their Lord and savior. These creation of God is regarded as the new creation in Christ.
Another way to describe these two creations of God is by their perceived nature. While the natural man is regarded as a sinner, the new creation is seen as righteous. These two natures separates the two, and would be used in this post to represent the two creations of God.
Who’s A Sinner?
A sinner is a natural man who’s not yet born again. The fall of Adam in the garden of Eden bequeathed to him the nature of a fallen man, which is ridden with sin. The natural man became a sinner as a result of the nature of sin.
He’s not a sinner because he did anything wrong. Everyone born into this world as a natural man is born with the sin nature. He or she is a sinner by nature and not by act or deed.
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The Prayer of A Sinner
By reason of the sin nature, the natural man, even though he can still pray to God, he’s only permitted by God to get only one answer to prayer. God can only answer one prayer of a natural man. And that prayer is the prayer of salvation.
There’s nothing else a natural man would want that God is willing to grant, excerpt that prayer for the salvation of his soul. He may live in the illusion that God answers all prayers. But that’s a fallacy.
The Bible in the book of Proverbs 15:8 KJV declared that: The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord : but the prayer of the upright is his delight.
And if his prayers are not answered, what should a sinner do? God gives every sinner the right to pray one prayer that must be answered and that’s the prayer for salvation. The Apostle Paul gave us this prayer guide in the book of Romans chapter ten, from verse nine to twelve.
Paul even went ahead to tell us that God promised to answer the sinner immediately. And when you pray this way, God answers. So, if you call upon the name of the Lord today, you shall be saved. And that automatically makes you a Christian.
Who’s A Christian?
A Christian is a natural man who’s born again (the new creation). A Christian is one who has prayed the sinners prayer, according to the book of Romans chapter ten. Until you have prayed this prayer you are not a Christian.
That your mother and father claim Christianity as their religion doesn’t make you, including them to be Christians. Yes, their religion can be Christianity. But their nature is not Christ-like.
A Christian is a natural man who has the life and nature of God. Not someone who’s made in the image and likeness of God. They are two different things. It’s also this nature of a new creation that gives you access before God in prayer. This access is what the Bible described as righteousness – a right standing with God.
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Who’s A Righteous Person?
Righteousness is a right, a qualification given to a new creation by God. That’s the primary reason a new creation prays and God answers. Righteousness gives you privileges that are not available to the ordinary natural man.
God listens to a righteous man when he prays. And Bible told us in James chapter five and verse sixteen that the prayers of a righteous man makes tremendous power available, and it’s dynamic in its working.
And you are righteous because God says so. It’s not because of what you did right. Righteousness is not a function of right living, even though you live right because you are righteous. Your righteousness is a nature you received from God that makes you right without condemnation, when you got born again.
The Prayer Of The Righteous
So, how does a righteous man pray? What does he pray about? The prayers of a righteous man is important to God. His prayers are needed by God to perform His purpose in the earth.
The righteous man has privileges, and one of them is getting answers to prayers. If God would answer the prayer of anyone in this world, it’s the prayer of a righteous man.
But a righteous man prays in a certain way. Prayer is not just about request to God. Even though God answers the prayer of a righteous man, the prayer should be heartfelt. God answers to a passionate desire of a righteous man. You may need to get this book: “The Art of Prayer” on Amazon.
So, what does a righteous man pray about? Anything that’s important to God and important to him. As a righteous man, you can pray any time and about anything. You are not restricted to just one prayer like the natural man who’s not born again.
How Does God Answer Prayers?
The idea that God answers prayer is not like in a direct response. God has already answered the prayers of the righteous in Christ Jesus. There’s nothing anyone can pray for or about that the provision hasn’t been made available in Christ.
So, God is not actually answering your prayers, but has answered your prayers. Imagine if you come to this consciousness that even before you pray, God has made provisions for answers to your prayers. That would change your mindset when you pray. And that’s the reality of the gospel.
Remember that the Bible already told us that God has finished His works from the foundation of the world. And He’s rested from all His works. That means your prayer now has answer provided even before you chose to pray today.
That’s why prayer is not so much as what God can do for you, but what prayer does to you that nothing else can do for you any other way.
What Does Prayer Do For You?
Prayer is more than just a request to God. It affirms your faith in God that you cannot see. Through prayers you talk to God and make decrees on behalf of God about the things you want changed in the world. And God also talk back to you.
But the real impact of prayer is that prayer changes you. If you pray always you will notice changes in your life. That’s the primary reason God wants you to pray. However, the reason prayer changes you is because when you pray you are communicating with God.
This communication with God is what changes your life. Remember, when Moses went to collect the ten commandment. The Bible records that when he returned from the mountain, where he talked with God, his face shone brightly. The glory of God rubbed off on him.
This same glory rubs off on you when you pray. But the difference is that while it was on Moses’ face, this glory increases in your spirit.
Conclusion
How to pray effectively should be the desire of every Christian. There are no excuse good enough for a Christian who does not pray. And if you don’t pray as much, make conscious effort to develop the habit of praying deeper with intensity.
If you are not yet born again, don’t take it for granted. That God doesn’t hear the prayer (sacrifice) of the wicked should get your attention. And since you cannot bribe God, doing the needful by getting yourself born again should be your utmost desire now. I recommend this book on Amazon: HOW TO FIND GOD.
Finally, God wants to hear your prayers. Praying o God gladdens His heart. It’s God’s greatest desire that you pray to Him. And it’s not so that He can answer, because He has already answered. It’s because God loves you and want you to become more like Him.
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