Organization of effective prayer life

Grace and peace to you from our Lord Jesus Christ! Welcome to the pages of „Daily Word for Spiritual Edification”!Life goes by very fast. And God gives us opportunity to lead our lives wisely. Every one of us must be a wise steward of the resources that God has entrusted us. Time is one of God’s resources that are given to us. And this is the most important resource out of all that we have. Everything else passes away with time. We work according to time. We serve God in time. We eat in time. We move according to time. Life itself is time. That is why time is the main thing God has given us. When we talk about prayer, we must understand that prayer requires time as well. If we do not know how to manage time, we won’t have time for prayer, because our time will be clogged up with other things and cares. If that is the case, then prayer can be moved to the last place in our list of priorities.Today I want to tell you that it must not be so. So I would like to start talking about a very important topic – „Organization of effective prayer life”. I wrote a book on prayer that is called „Laws of Effective Prayer”.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! Without effective praying, our ministry to God and people will be ineffective. So when you read your Bible, you will see that all the heroes of faith were also people of prayer; all of them knew how to pray and they prayed.Jesus is the best example of a praying man that we can find in the Bible. Jesus spent a loto f time in prayer. It was one of the main reasons behind the effectiveness of His ministry. His disciples saw it; so they asked Jesus to teach them to pray. They witnessed the results of His ministry, and they knew that this effectiveness was linked to the secret of the effective prayer life. God desires to tell us today to follow Jesus’ example.We can look at Apostle Paul and see how much he accomplished in his life. We also want to accomplish many things for God. We want to finish our race, to do great deeds for God. We want to build something for God that will last through eternity. When we read Paul’s writings, we can see that he prayed quite often. Paul was the one who called believer to “pray without ceasing”, also to pray everywhere lifting up holy hands and to pray for all people. Paul was the one who said:

 «..praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints» (Ephesians, 6:18).

Paul was the one who wrote in Philippians (4: 6):

 «Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God».

What am I talking about? When we read our Bible, we see that prayer was one of the most important activities for anyone who has ever been effective in his ministry to God. So, ask yourself a question: «Am I serving God? Do I want my ministry to be effective?» If your answer is yes, then you have to arrange your life for it to become effective prayer life. You must organize your everyday lifting so that you find time for prayer, – and not just prayer, but effective prayer.We will continue tomorrow!Peace be with you!Pastor Rufus Ajiboye