Organization of effective prayer life IV
I am glad to welcome you to „Daily Word for Spiritual Edification”! I am grateful to God for this opportunity to share with you the revelations that God has given me. God’s life is revealed through His Word and through the fellowship with Him.
We are still talking about what effective prayer is. We have established that prayer is spiritual work. Besides, if we want to pray effectively we must intentionally set apart some time to draw near to God and to fellowship with Him in prayer. We must learn to put aside all the other things and cares when we go to commune with God. Without it the life of a believer will be weak and full of confusion. God has many important and interesting things that He wants to reveal to us during the prayerful fellowship with Him. Let’s discuss the question of what effective prayer includes.
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.
I honestly believe that everything we do without prayer is seen by God as routine works of flesh. Let’s assume that I have gone to preach and witness to people; it is an activity and it is good. But if I have not immersed it in prayer, if I have not prayed before going out and do not pray afterwards, then it is just a work of flesh. Only God can save people. God alone is able to do it! God alone can change a human heart! It happens not because I speak some touching words or say emotional things trying to manipulate with people, – all these things do not work, nor say save or change people. Saving and changing of human lives is something only God can do. If God is the only one that can do it, I must work with Him. I must do it with prayer. That is why prayer is so important.
What does it mean ‘to have meaningful time with God’? Prayer cannot be effective if you are in a hurry. Hasty prayers are not prayers at all. Prayer and haste do not go together. Of course, there are exceptions, but as a rule praying cannot be done in a hurry. There are situation when we really do not have time for lengthy prayers. Every once in a while we have crisis, when we are not able to say anything else besides “Jesus, help me!”, “Jesus, bless me!” and you go ahead because you really do not have any time or opportunity for long praying. And God hears these short prayers, – He hears the cry of our souls. But effective prayer life cannot be built on these short prayers. It is not enough to say to God in the morning: “Thank you, Jesus, that I have woken up this morning. Bless this day!” and say to Him in the evening: «Praise God for this day! Goodnight, Jesus!” and that’s it.
Is this a picture of your prayer life? „Bless my husband. Bless my wife. Bless my children. Bless… bless… thank you!”, and that’s it??? Do you have 5-minute prayers or even less? That is not praying. Prayer means spending some meaningful time with God. It is not so much what you tell God; it is what God wants to tell you and what He wants to do in your life.
May God help you to grasp this truth. Allow God to enrich your life through His wisdom, His power, His guidance. For it to happen, you need to spend time with Him and allow Him to speak to your heart and into your situations.
God bless you!
Pastor Rufus Ajiboye
