Author: Pastor Rufus Ajiboye

When I pray I pour out my soul before God. I will not dwell on it for long, because we mostly know how to do it. We know how to open our hearts. As soon as we find a listening ear and as soon as we find a person we can trust, we open our hearts. We know that God is always ready to hear us out. Besides, God is totally trustworthy. It means that you can boldly come before God with everything that concerns us. That is what we call prayer. And that is why Paul says that we shouldn’t think and worry too much, but always reveal our desires before God in prayer and then His peace will fill our hearts.

Like I said, it is not what I tell God that it is the most important thing in prayer; it is what God wants to tell me. I will explain why it is so. Is there anything you can tell Him that He does not know! Is there anything at all? He knows everything. You may think that nobody knows what you are going through and that nobody knows the problems you have and how hard your life is. That may apply to people, but not to God. God knows everything! Even before you start praying, God knows everything you may want to tell Him. God also knows why these things are happening to you.

Today I would like to talk more about the third point. I finished saying that prayer is more about what God wants to tell you and what He wants to do in your life and not what you want to tell Him. So you do not need to tell God what is on your heart; allow God to work through His Word giving Him opportunity to work in your heart and reveal to you His plans. If you want to hear God, you cannot be in a hurry. Effective prayer has nothing to do with haste.

Prayer is meaningful time with God.

I will explain what I mean by that. Quite often I use the word ‘time’. Prayer is one of the means of organizing and managing the time we have been given. What is the topic of our prayers is a very interesting question. We all talk about it. There are so many books written on prayer. But who is the person who prays truly effectively? This is a very serious question. God desires us to arrange our lives for effective prayer; it will take our ministry and our whole life to a much higher level.

Prayer is getting close to God.

Let’s look at James (4:8): «Draw near to God and He will draw near to you…».

Prayer means to consciously draw near to God. Prayer means to approach God on purpose.

Who of you wants to draw near to God? Who of you desires for God to draw near to you? God cannot be closer to you than He is. But you can draw near to Him. God is so close to us; He says: „I am here!” You are asking: «God, where are You?” Remember when Elijah ran away and cried: «God, where are You?” But God was with him. God is everywhere! And we can draw near to Him through prayer.

Prayer is spiritual effort.

Prayer has nothing to do with our intellectual abilities. It has everything to do with our spirit, so it is spiritual labour. Prayer is the spirit of man appealing to God Who also is Spirit. God is Spirit and a man is spirit, so effective prayer is communication and fellowship of human spirit with the Spirit of God. Prayer is spiritual aspiration for God. Of course, our mind has its part in prayer, but if prayer only stays in the realm of mind, but the spirit does not connect with God, then it is not prayer at all. Every time I have touched God in prayer, my spirit knows it has connected with God and I know I have communicated with God.

Prayer is a very important and necessary part of our spiritual life and can be compared to breathing, which is vital for our physical life. In other words, prayer is our spiritual breathing. The one who is not breathing is not alive. In the very same way, prayer is what makes us alive in spiritual sense. Thus, without prayer we are spiritually dead. This year we have talked a lot about serving God, and it is very important as well. We need to serve God! We need to serve people! But we will never be effective in our ministry to God and people without effective prayer.Remember it!

We have been talking about prayer as the source of revelation and guidance in our lives. Yesterday, we saw that through prayer and fellowship with God, Jesus knew what and how He must do or speak. Jesus said,

“Jesus gave them this answer: “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by Himself; He can do only what He sees His Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.” (John 5:19)

After Jesus had taught in the temple, He spent nights on the Mount of Olives. There is no doubt, that He met the Father there and they had fellowship, but the next morning He brought a fresh Word for the people who came thirsty to hear this Word.

Jesus said that He received the Word and message from the Father. How did He manage this? Thanks to His prayers! Jesus drew near to God in prayer and God approached Him. The result of fellowship between Jesus and the Father, was the fact that God gave Jesus the Word and message. God revealed to Jesus what needed to be done, as well as when and with what to do it. As a result, Jesus always did miracles.

Here´s where the secret of success of Jesus was hidden! Here´s where Moses´ success lay! Here´s where God is hiding the key to success for all the men and women during all the history of the Church.

Moses received messages from God because he spent time with Him.

If you want to be effective servant of God, whatever the quality of your ministry would be, you must learn to receive the messages from God.

God knows the needs of people whom you serve. He will always give you fresh manna that the people whom you serve would be fed and encouraged every day. If you want to be a successful Christian, allow God to give you a fresh word from heaven every day. Then you will always be fresh and fruitful.