How can I have a more effective prayer life ?
Priscilla Van Sutphin
10-31-01
Imperative 1) Pray for those around you wherever you are at.
a) Family - Job 1:5, Acts 10:2,30
Is anyone in your family sick, unsaved, emotionally unstable ? Then there are a multitude of scriptures and blessings that you can use to pray over them. As you read the bible daily note on index cards scriptures that can be used for their specific situations. While reading stop and pray that scripture over your own and your loved one's lives. There are 30 blessings mentioned in the bible that are good to pray over your family saved or not.
The following are from John Kirkpatrick's book "Feast of Fire".....
1) God bless you with ability
2) God bless you with abundance
3) God make His angels go with you
4) God give you assurance of His Love and His grace.
5) God bless you with clear direction
6) God bless you with a controlled and disciplined life
7) God bless you with courage
8) God bless you with creativity
9) God bless you with spiritual perception of God's truth
10) God bless you with FAITH
11) God bless you with God's favor and with man's favor
12) God bless you with good health
13) God bless you with a good wife or a good husband
14) God bless your hands to bless others
15) God bless you with happiness
16) God bless you with fulfillment
17) God bless you with contentment
18) God bless you with hope and a good outlook on life
19) God bless you with a listening ear
20) God bless you with a long life
21) God bless you with an obedient heart to the Spirit of God
22) God bless you with His peace
23) God bless you with pleasant speech
24) God bless you with a pleasant personality
25) God bless you with promotion
26) God bless you with protection
27) God bless you with provision, safety and strength
28 God bless you with success
29) God bless you with trust and wisdom
30) God bless you with goodness and mercy following you all the days of your life, that you might dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
Try blessing those you love daily has tremendous power to change lives. We can speak blessing or cursing - Life and death is in the power of our tongue the bible says.......
b) Neighborhood /Friends - There are people you see everyday going to and from work. Ask God for divine appointments for those you see who look like they need prayer, but you don't know. Keep a list of your friends, family, etc. in your bible, so that if you go somewhere where you are just sitting in line or to the beach, or park somewhere, you can pray for them.
c) The Marketplace - Ask for divine appointments each day as you go to work, to the store, to buy food, or gas or walking around the block, the workout center, that God would draw to you people who need to know Him, or be touched by Him if they are already Christian. As a new Christian I remember when I went to see a neighbor, one day after asking for such, she started talking about her husband wanting a divorce. He had just told her that day, so I offered to pray for her. She was Philipino and not saved but raised Catholic and she said yes and that he WAS a Christian, so we prayed and after we got through she was just chatting with me, when the phone rang...and it was her husband apologizing...telling her he " didn't know what he was thinking!" Praise God! This so built my faith as a new Christian that God just began to open up more and more doors to pray for people.
I remember being in a Toys R Us....buying something for my stepson's birthday and in the next aisle was a woman with a jaundiced baby and I sensed this baby did not have long to live unless it got a new liver ( I used to be a neonatal ICU nurse for years) so I felt God nudging me to pray for her, and in my mind I was arguing...like "right here Lord?" Can't I wait till I get outside? so she finished and started walking out as I was finishing up & I caught her just outside the doors and asked her if she believed in God to which she answered yes ( I was thinking "whew") and asked her if I could pray for her baby...and indeed he was on the transplant list so I prayed for a creative miracle of a new liver, or an operation, whichever the Lord wanted to use to save this baby's life and the compassion of the Lord came on me and I was crying, feeling the mother's pain. It was embarrassing in public, but God is good. As soon as I said amen practically she shot off and I didn't get her number. She seemed more embarrassed than I, but I knew by the LOVE I felt coming from HIM that He had done something...despite my fear and embarrassment.
d) Church - pray for your church leaders and people in your local assembly and all the churches in your town... You can take these assignments above and assign them a day also,
so that you have one day to pray for this or that.
e) Watching TV/Internet/Listening to Radio. World events and news are an opportunity to pray for people you see, that have been robbed, or family members murdered, or children abducted, that God would send His justice and comfort....retrieve the child...send His angels. When you watch movies, they are fun but sometimes it can be used as a reminder to say a quick prayer for those actors/producers/writers etc.as God lays it on your heart. For whoever made the movie and are in the movie...
Job 42:10 Amp says....And the Lord turned the captivity of Job and restored his fortunes, when he prayed for his friends; also the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before.
Luke 6:27-31 " But I say to you who hear: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you and pray for those who spitefully use you. To him who strikes you on the one cheek, offer the other also. And from him who takes away your cloak, do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who asks of you. And from him who takes away your goods, do not ask them back. And just as you want men to do to you, you also do to them likewise."
Imperative 2
PRAY THE SCRIPTURES
His word NEVER returns void, so write down scriptures on 4 X 6 cards for your prayers when you are struggling against certain things and watch how it brings freedom to you, your family and friends, your church...etc.
If you have the money to buy books, Prayers that Avail much has a 3 volume edition that is so helpful Wesley prayed from a prayer book. It is not a sin to do so. I find when I read the scriptures in prayer outloud that is is very powerful. Our words then become LIFE because they were breathed by the One who created LIFE.
Someone I heard once said to pray the Psalms completely through if you want to see a loved one saved. I dont' think it's a magic formula, but the psalms are full of praise and it gets your mind off your own problems and concerns and helps you to focus on the LORD of LIFE.
