Day 10 – Pray while driving

If you are new to prayer this might seem a bit strange to you, but I get a lot of quality time of prayer in while driving. And no it is not because I am fearful for my life or those around me in rush hour traffic, it is because I am alone with God.

The Bible tells us many postures to assume while praying. We can pray with our head bowed, with our eyes lifted toward Heaven, with our eyes closed, and with our eyes wide open.

Now I am going to make a big suggestion to you here – do not close your eyes and pray while driving. You just might meet Jesus faster than you anticipated….

While I am driving I sometimes just turn the radio off and listen to what God says to me. I will bring up some situations that I am dealing with that day and see what He says about them. Do I need to pay more attention to something, do I need to dig into a situation, or do I just need to let something go? If I will just be still in my mind and listen to our Father, He will direct me.

Day 9 – Pray with your children

For those of us who have been blessed by being parents I think we have no greater responsibility than to point those gifts back to God.  Children are such a blessing from God and we are to do our best to give them back to Him.

The Lord has given me and my wife two children to raise.  They are a few years apart and their personalities are total opposite, but they both are our gifts from God that we love so very much.  It is our privilege to love them and raise them to love Jesus.

One of the best ways we can point them to Jesus is to share time with them in prayer.  I pray for them daily, but I am being most effective in my parenting when I pray with them.  It allows me to model what prayer should look like and forms a deeper bond with me, them and Jesus.  I shouldn’t rely on our church youth group to teach them how to pray – no, that is my job as a parent.  I am thankful for the church and how it supports me as a parent, but they are my children to raise up in the Lord.

The Bible clearly teaches the parent to raise our children to love God with all our heart, soul and strength.  Deuteronomy 6 instructs us to share the Bible and the goodness of God with our children.

We should not only pray over our meals with our children, but we should pray in church with our children.  We should pray with the sick, hurting and helpless with our children.  We should pray with our children before we leave on vacation and when we get bad news.  We should pray with our children at good news and when they are facing decisions.

Just today I had an opportunity to pray with my son.  He is going through a difficult situation right now.  So this morning I gave him some advice and walk out of his room.  The Lord spoke to me so clearly – “you spoke but didn’t let Me”.  So I turned around and went back upstairs, took him by the hands (he thought that to be really weird of his dad) and prayed a prayer asking Jesus for clarity of mind, strength and for guidance.

Do I do this often enough?  No

But I am learning to pray with him more to show our dependence not on any person, but what Jesus says and how He guides.

Day 8 – Pray with your spouse

There is one person who knows me better now than any other person on this earth, and it is my wife.  It was not always that way.  My mom and dad knew me so much more so when I was growing up.  But now she knows my good side, my bad side, the nice side and the ugly side of me.  The only other person that comes close to knowing me that well is my Lord Jesus, and He knows me even better than I know myself.

So when I pray to Jesus who knows me better than me, and with my wife who knows as much about me than any other person it creates a bond and intimacy that can not be described or fabricated.  I love praying with my wife, and am sometimes intimidated by praying with my wife because she knows who I really am.  She knows the stupid things I have done recently, but yet still joins me in speaking to God.

The other side of that coin is that praying with her gives me such freedom to say just what I have on my heart.  I don’t have to filter my words around her – or Jesus for that matter.  I can just honestly pray out loud.

And what a bond that has become for us.  We pray together in the morning while we are getting ready for work.  I feel it sets the rudder for my day, and I can tell she depends on it as well.

If you are reading this and you are not married but dating – then this would be the best place to learn who the person you are dating is.  Share your burdens and hopes with that special person, then you both turn and lift those thoughts to the Lord of Lords.  It will bond you or break your relationship with each other.  Either way your relationship with God will increase and that is the most important relationship to build.

Day 7 – Pray with someone grieving

This I know about living on this earth – we all will grieve the death of a loved one. Why, well until Jesus comes back we all will die. We all will either leave this body behind and move into a glorified body heaven, or spend eternity in hell. One way or the other, we will leave this flesh and blood behind.

So we know people who will lose loved ones. When a saved person’s family grieves it is a sorrow of not being able to talk and share experiences with the person here on earth. But someone who was lost without accepting the saving grace of Jesus dies their family will suffer even more because they have no hope of ever seeing their loved one again.

So how do you pray with these folks?

1. Pray with compassion. You know they are hurting, and sometimes they may only hear from God and can look up to God through your prayers.
2. Pray for comfort. In troublesome times only God can provide true comfort. It is not my words or actions, but by abiding in Him.
3. Pray for strength. I know that in hard times you have so many people offering with good intentions help, but all that attention, grief and pain just wears a body down.       Pray that God will sustain their strength and provide rest when appropriate.
4. Pray for guidance.  When death happens it is usually traumatic.  During a tragedy making decisions is usually pretty hard, so pray that God will give a clear mind or for the decision to be shared with someone else.

Day 5 – Pray Publicly in a Large Gathering

Do you know the #1 fear of Americans? According to the Washington Post the #1 fear of Americans is speaking in public. Public speaking is followed closely by heights, and then snakes, drowning, needles and claustrophobia.

How about you – what is your greatest fear? How do you feel about praying in public?

I don’t think I have the space or capability on this blog to calm your fears of public speaking. I do want to encourage you to pray out loud in a large public gathering for 3 reasons.

1. Jesus is pleased with us humbly talking to Him. Jesus taught that we are not to make a show of our praying to Him, but to pray with humbleness.
2. Others are encouraged and actually learn from the way we pray.       I follow traits of others when I listen to them pray, and the way you say something may just be the encouragement they need to pray out loud.
3. Others agree and pray with you. In a large crowd there will be those who just listen to your prayer, but others will agree and join you in the petitions and cries to the Lord.       Know you are not alone.

Some may ask how do I even begin to pray in public? I would suggest talking to your pastor or other church leader and express a desire to pray when they sense the right time from the Lord. You should express your apprehensions, and they should in turn encourage you by praying for you as you pray!

Day 4 – Pray Publicly in a Small Group

One important key to praying in a small group is first and foremost to be in a small group. This can be a mixed gender open group like a Sunday School class, a gender specific group like a women’s Bible study, or in a discipleship group. Get in a small group and grow!

So once you have been in a small group relationships will begin to form. Through these relationships – whether strong or weak – we all begin to trust those in that group more. With that trust comes a willingness to open up and share from the heart. Sharing from the heart should lead to prayer to our Father.

The quality or quantity of the prayer is not the important thing to consider, the most important thing to consider when praying in a small group is to be honest with our Father to whom we pray.

Praying in a small group encourages the leader, it encourages the other members, and it pleases God!

So why do we not just jump at the offer to pray out loud in a small group? I think we fear what we are saying and the words we use.

There are two things I think we should consider when praying out loud in a small group:

1. Jesus is pleased with us humbly talking to Him
2. Others are encouraged and actually learn from the way we pray

Day 3 – Pray in response to scripture

In day 2 we talked about praying the scripture, today it is a prayer in response to a scripture you have read.

You know the Bible is a living book.  Hebrews 4:12 says that the Word of God is living and effective.  2 Timothy 3:16-17 says that the scriptures are for teaching, rebuking, correcting and for training.  Think of that – a book written thousands of years ago can still do all of that for me today!

So to pray in response to a scripture just select a verse or passage that you are reading such as James 3:7-12 where James is talking about the tongue.  He says we praise and curse with the same mouth, but it should not be that way.

When we stop to think about what is constantly coming out of our mouth it is best to ask the one who really knows what we say daily.  Ask God to show you what is coming from your mouth.  It is pouring out sweet water or bitter water?  And if the Holy Spirit convicts you that it is bitter water then ask Jesus to help you stop the bitter and be a spring for cool sweet water that is pleasing to Him and those who hear you.

Day 2 – Pray the scripture

I think praying the scripture is pleasing to God, because it is saying what He thinks is important (the Bible) back to Him.  It is like someone quoting that thing you always say that makes you feel smart or wise.  Or bragging how you told somebody something.  It really makes you feel good to hear someone lift your words up.

Well the same goes with God.  He wants to hear us lift Him up and brag on His words.

So how do you do that?

Let’s take Psalm 86 for example.  Get your Bible out, don’t read this one online today.  When you read this chapter you will see it is a prayer to God.  Go ahead and read it, then read it out loud.

Next read the words as if you were saying them directly to God.  Let the Holy Spirit guide you as you speak the words and listen to the thoughts He puts in your mind.

This is praying the scripture!  Pick another scripture and follow the same format.  I think the key here is listening to what God wants to say to you through that prayer.

We as Christians talk about prayer in a lot of ways – we say we are praying for someone, praying for a certain situation and even just pray that something doesn’t happen to us. Be when it comes down to it, do we really pray? Do we pray like it matters? Do we pray with authority?

Over the next 40 days I am going to share 40 ways to pray. I hope that you will be able to find ways that will make your prayer life better. I have heard it said that the best way to pray better – is to pray more. I am a firm believer that the Holy Spirit can teach each of us how better to pray, but we just have to do it more.

Day 1 – Pray in your quiet place

So what is a quiet place and why should we pray there?

A quiet place is someplace you can get alone with no distractions to pray. Jesus taught us to go into our private room, shut the door, and pray to your Father (Matthew 6:6). No matter what that private room looks like to you (bedroom, closet, bathroom, den or even corner of a room), go there to get alone with God.

As we see in Mark 1:35 and Luke 5:16, Jesus got up early to get away from people to be alone. If Jesus found it necessary to get alone to pray, then I how much more so should we be following this example?

When you are alone in a quiet place you are able to focus on praying to God – talking to God and listening to God. It is the listening part that requires us to be quiet and not talk or be distracted.

For me I find getting up 30 minutes before my family every morning is my best chance at getting some quiet time with God.

Where is it for you? Where do you get alone with God? Where do you consistently make time to talk and listen to your Creator?