Where Is Your Prayer Life Today?

 Where is your prayer life today? I read that question in a handwritten note in a prayer notebook I received at a prayer conference while serving this very Spring Creek congregation as a youth minister. I wrote that note on February 8, 1993. I also made a note that I was to answer that question with one word. What word did I write 30 years ago? "LAZY."

When I look back on those days I recall the weakness of my prayer life. I did not know how to really pray because I did not really pray much. The only real way to learn how to pray is to actually pray. Sure you can learn some things by reading. Just reading about how to hit a baseball will not really teach me to hit the ball when I come to the plate with bat in my hand. It takes batting practice. In the same way, it takes practice in prayer to grow in it. 

When I think back over the past three decades, and the countless hours I spent shut up in the prayer closet, I can honestly say that I have grown in prayer. I have infinitely more growth to learn and experience, but I am not where I was back in 1993. 

If I were to answer that same question of where my prayer life is today, I would answer differently. I would say it is GROWING. I am still learning as I wade my way through reading E.M. Bounds. He mastered prayer. He could write about prayer in a way that is foreign to me because I have not progressed as much as he did. That does not mean that I cannot learn. With pen in hand I read the pages. With prayer journal in my lap I try to pray what I am learning. 

The focus of my prayers this morning was much different than three decades ago. I prayed, "Lord, what do you want me to believe you for today?" One of the key difference in my prayers these days is the greater emphasis on what God wills to do and wishes me to believe Him for instead of my petitioning my endless wants. What God wants and wills to do is much more important than anything I want. 

Two things are critical in learning to pray effectively. One, is to pray with genuine faith. Not wishful thinking but fervent faith. To truly believe. To be assured and persuaded that not only God can but also that God will do the very thing we ask Him to do. Faith gives fuel to our prayers. 

The other critical factor in praying is praying according to the will of God. To put that another way, it means to ask God for things He desires and delights to do. That is the assurance that we will get what we ask for. I am learning to put aside my wants in favor of what He wants. Why waste my time asking God for things He does not will to give me or do for me. Why not maximize my praying by asking God for He already wants to do. 

By the grace of God I am growing in prayer. I am not as lazy in prayer as I was three decades ago. I still have a tendency to drift back into laziness when prayers are not answered like I would like them to be or as quickly as I would like them to be. Not lazy on a continuous basis. I AM NOT WHERE I WANT TO BE AND MOST CERTAINLY NOT WHERE GOD WANTS ME TO BE. With that in mind I must keep growing. 

If I were asked the same question where is your prayer life three decades from now, how would I answer? I would be 97 at that point. I hope I would be able to answer, "PROGRESSING." What about you? How do you answer today? May God teach all of us and we willingly and exuberantly learn those lessons of prayer.