The Power of Simple Prayer: How to Talk With God About Everything Page 3
Because John’s job is to wait on us, I would not hesitate to ask him for extra lemon or salad dressing on the side. But because we are not friends, I would never dream of asking him to give me a ride to work next Thursday while my car is being serviced. On the other hand, I would ask a true friend to take me to work. Even if I had to be there at five o’clock in the morning, I know I have certain friends who would be glad to take me simply because they are my friends—and I would be bold enough to ask them because of our relationship.
Similarly, friendship with God brings boldness in prayer. Writing about this matter, Charles Spurgeon notes that “love knocks at [God’s] door until He opens.”3 We will press on and be persistent when we know that God has what we need and wants to share with us because we are His friends. On the other hand, if we are not secure in our relationship with Him, we may be hesitant or tentative when we approach Him.
I believe God is looking for men and women who will pray bold prayers. One of the prayers I hear people pray often, and have prayed many times myself, is what I call a “just” prayer. We do it so many times and are usually unaware of it. A “just” prayer sounds something like this: “Now, Lord, we just thank You for this food”; “God, we just ask You to protect us”; “Father, we just come to You tonight. . .#8221;; “Oh, God, if You would just help us in this situation, we would be so thankful.. . .#8221; Do you see what I mean? We sound as if we are afraid to ask God for very much. That’s not the way we talk to good friends!
The word “just” can mean righteous or fair, but it can also mean barely enough to get by or by a narrow margin. God wants to give us exceedingly, abundantly, above and beyond all that we can dare to hope, ask, or think (see Ephesians 3:20). Why should we approach Him asking for barely enough to get by on? Why should we approach God, our friend, as if we are afraid to ask for too much? When we approach Him that way, it seems as if we do not believe He is generous and good. We must realize that He is not a God who gives “just” enough to barely get by, but He desires to bless us abundantly, to open the windows of heaven and pour out blessings so great that we cannot contain them (see Malachi 3:10).
He wants to hear bold,
confident, faith-filled prayers
prayed by truly just and
righteous people who are secure in their friendship
with Him.
Sometimes punctuating our prayers with “justs” is simply a habit, and if so, we need to break it. God does not want to hear sheepish, insecure “just” prayers. He wants to hear bold, confident, faith-filled prayers prayed by truly just and righteous people who are secure in their friendship with Him. Always be respectful toward God as you approach Him, but do not be afraid! The Bible instructs us to have reverential fear and awe, but it never tells us to draw back in fear. As a matter of fact, Hebrews 10:38 tells us that if we draw back in fear, God’s soul has no delight or pleasure in us.
Friendship Benefits Others
When we are friends with God, that friendship not only benefits us, it also benefits those around us. When people come to us with needs or concerns, we may be able to offer some help, but we may not be able to meet their needs at all. Even if we do not have what people really need, God does. When we are friends with God, we can say to people, “I don’t have what you need, but I know Someone who does. I’ll ask my friend! I will intercede before God for you.” When we are friends of God, we know that He has the power to intervene in people’s circumstances, to help their children stop using drugs, to bring financial breakthroughs, to work medical miracles, or to reconcile marriages. The more intimately we know God, the more confident we are in His willingness and ability to help people. When they come to us, we can go to Him and know He will come through for them. We can actually ask God to do us a favor and help someone we love even when we know that they don’t deserve it. We can pray with compassion out of a heart of love—and God hears and answers.
I can remember being very sad about my father’s spiritual condition. He abused me when I was a child and for many years I truly hated and resented him for it. Praying for him was the last thing I would have done or wanted to do. However, as I grew closer to God and learned His ways, I realized I not only needed to completely forgive my father, but that I also needed to pray for his salvation. God gave me the grace to forgive my dad and a heart of compassion toward him.
For many years, I prayed at various times for my father to come to know Jesus, but I never saw even the slightest change in him. He had always been a very hard-hearted man and I saw no signs that his heart was softening at all. I was discouraged and thought it was useless to keep praying.
Then God asked me to do one of the most difficult things He has ever asked of me. He asked me to move my parents close to where we lived, buy them a house, and take care of them until they died. At the time, they were in their early seventies. Since we have longevity in our family bloodline, I knew that moving them nearby might well mean years and years of taking care of someone who had never done anything but hurt me. I was less than enthusiastic about the situation and God dealt with me for quite a while until I finally knew I had to obey.
Three more years went by and I still did not see much change in my dad. Sometimes I did not pray for him for several months, and then God would put him on my heart again. I distinctly remember driving to work one morning and saying something like this to God, “Father, I think it would be a shame if You used me to lead people all over the world into a personal relationship with You through faith in Jesus and for my own father to die and go to hell. I have done what you have asked me to do and now I am asking You as a personal favor to me: save my father. Forgive his sins and draw him into a relationship with You.” I prayed similar prayers in the past, but not with the intensity I felt that day.
A few weeks later, my mother called and said that my dad had been crying for three days and wanted to see me. Dave and I went to their house, and my dad apologized for abusing me when I was a child. He kept crying and saying how sorry he was. I asked him if he was ready to make Jesus the Lord of his life and he said yes. We led him in prayer that day and baptized him two weeks later. My dad recently passed away, and we rejoice in knowing that he will live for eternity with Jesus. Don’t ever doubt that prayer is powerful. Your friendship with God can make an eternal difference in the life of someone you love.
We cannot control other people with our prayers, but I do believe that approaching God boldly on behalf of others opens the door for God to work in their lives in strong and powerful ways. My father still had to make a choice, but I know that God dealt with him aggressively because I prayed boldly and persevered in prayer.
Through Jesus Christ, we have a right to be comfortable with God and to go boldly to the throne of grace.
Truly, our friendships with God benefit other people. Of course, they benefit us greatly as well. I cannot think of anything more awesome than being a friend of God. There is nothing I would rather hear God say than, “That Joyce Meyer, she’s My friend.” I do not want Him to say, “You know, Joyce Meyer—she knows all the prayer principles, she uses perfect prayer posture, she has the right tone of voice; she sounds very eloquent when she prays and she even has all her thee’s, thy’s, and thou’s all straightened out!” No! I want to know that God thinks of me as His friend, and I believe you long for Him to think of you that way, too. Through Jesus Christ, we have a right to be comfortable with God and to go boldly to the throne of grace to get the help we need in plenty of time to meet our needs and the needs of others (see Hebrews 4:16).
One of the best things you can ever do is develop your friendship with God. Jesus has made you righteous through the blood He shed on the cross, so there is no reason you cannot approach God as boldly and as naturally as you would your best friend on earth. Remember, friendship with God takes an investment of time and energy to develop. But also remember that as your friendship deepens, your prayer life progresses. A growing, vibrant, increasingly intimate friendship with God will n
aturally lead to a growing, vibrant, increasingly effective prayer life.
SUMMARY
When our hearts cry out, “Lord, teach me to pray,” God answers. We do not learn how to pray simply by becoming a Christian or by going to church—even if we have been attending for years and years. We learn to pray more and more effectively over time as we develop a personal relationship with God. He has made each of us uniquely and He teaches us to pray in ways that celebrate and express who He has created us to be. He wants us as individuals to relate to Him through prayer in uniquely personal ways.
Our personal faith in God and our personal relationship with Him directly affect the quality and the effectiveness of our prayers. In fact, being God’s friend is the most important key to a vibrant, dynamic prayer life. He wants us to draw near to Him, to trust Him, to love Him, to share our hearts with Him, and to listen as He shares His heart with us. In the context of friendship with God, we will continue to learn how to pray.
Prayer Points
• If you are frustrated in your prayer life and wondering whether your prayers are really effective, then cry out from your heart, “Lord, teach me to pray!”
• The depth and strength of our prayer lives relate directly to the depth and strength of our personal relationship with God.
• Prayer is simple. It is nothing more than talking and listening to God.
• In teaching us to pray, God deals with us as individuals with unique personalities, diverse temperaments, and different ways of communicating. We need to be careful not to compare ourselves with others and to just be ourselves and let Him teach us to pray.
• Being a friend of God—and all that entails—is the key to effective prayer.
• Developing a great friendship with God takes time and energy, but it is the best investment of time and energy we can possibly make.
• Approaching God on the basis of friendship enables us to pray bold prayers. As the friendship becomes more intimate, our boldness increases.
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The Simple Privilege
I believe prayer is the greatest privilege of our lives. It’s not something we have to do; it’s something we get to do. Andrew Murray observed that “. . .prayer is so simple that even the feeblest child can pray, yet it is at the same time the highest and holiest work to which man can rise. It is fellowship with the Unseen and Most Holy One. The powers of the eternal world have been placed at its disposal.” 1
Prayer is the way we partner with God to see His plans and purposes come to pass in our lives and in the lives of those we love. It is the means by which we human beings on earth can actually enter into the awesome presence of God. It allows us to share our hearts with Him, to listen for His voice, and to know how to discover and enjoy all the great things He has for us. Communicating with God is indeed the greatest privilege I can imagine, but this high and holy work is also the simplest privilege I know.
I do not think prayer was ever meant to be complicated and that, from the very beginning, God intended it to be an easy, natural way of life by which we stay connected with Him all day, every day. Madame Jeanne Guyon, who was imprisoned for her Christian faith in France during the 1700s, wrote in Experiencing the Depths of Jesus Christ that “. . .God demands nothing extraordinary. On the contrary, He is very pleased by a simple, childlike conduct. I would even put it this way: The highest spiritual attainments are really the ones that are the most easily reached. The things that are most important are the things that are the least difficult!” 2
God really wants prayer to be simple, but the devil has twisted our thinking about prayer because he not only knows how powerful it is, he also knows how easy it should be for us. Just ask yourself, Why would God create us for communication and fellowship with Him and then complicate it? God has not complicated anything, He has made a simple and enjoyable way for us to pray and enjoy spending time with Him. Satan tells us that prayer always has to take a long time and that we must assume a certain posture or pray a certain way. He surrounds prayer with rules and regulations and steals the creativity and freedom that God desires us to enjoy as we pray. He tries to keep us from having faith and to convince us that we really are not worthy enough to be talking to God anyway. He tries to make prayer legalistic and obligatory and to condemn us by telling us that we do not pray enough or that we are not praying effectively. He tries to distract us, steal our time, tell us that our prayers do not make a difference, and cause us to doubt that God hears short, simple prayers. For these reasons, as I noted in chapter 1, I have observed people often pray and then feel they did not do it right, did not accomplish anything, did not pray long enough, or did not really get through to God.
When I say that prayer can be short and still be effective, I do not mean to imply that extended seasons of prayer are not also necessary and valuable.
In general, many people seem to be dissatisfied with their prayer lives; they try to pray and then feel guilty and condemned—which is exactly what the enemy wants. Believing prayer is the type of prayer that God answers. Therefore, we can easily understand why Satan tries to fill us with doubt and unbelief concerning the power, effectiveness, and value of our prayers.
When I say that prayer can be short and still be effective, I do not mean to imply that extended seasons of prayer are not also necessary and valuable. They certainly are. In fact, in addition to daily prayer, I recommend setting aside entire days or even several days in succession a few times a year dedicated specifically to seeking God in prayer, fasting, and studying His Word. Even though prayer is simple and should never be viewed as complicated, there are also times when prayer is work. Sometimes we must labor in prayer until a specific matter that God has placed on our hearts is lifted. But, at the same time, we should not allow Satan to make us believe that prayer must be hard and complicated.
Satan is working overtime trying to rob us of the honor of communicating with God. In this chapter, I want to dispel some of the enemy’s most often used lies about prayer and to help you rediscover the simple privilege of a rich, fulfilling, rewarding prayer life.
IT’S EASY!
Prayer is so much easier than many people think. In fact, Charles Spurgeon, who had a very sophisticated theological mind, said succinctly: “When we pray, the simpler our prayers are, the better.” 3 God hears the simplest, faintest cry and receives the most childlike requests. I have raised four children and, as of this writing, I have eight grandchildren—and I can tell you that one thing children are not is complicated. Children have no trouble letting you know what they want, running into your arms when they are afraid, or giving you a big generous kiss, sometimes for no apparent reason. They need to be encouraged to do things that are hard, but they will gladly do almost anything that is easy. They are not sophisticated enough to hide their hearts or feelings very well, and as a result, communicating with them can be easy and refreshing.
That’s the way God wants us to be when we talk to Him. We need to approach God with childlike simplicity and faith. Just as children are naturally inclined to trust their parents completely, we also need to be guileless, pure, and free from doubt as we trust God. When we pray with simple, childlike faith, we can experience God’s miracle-working power and see things change.
We do not want to be childish in our faith or in our praying; we want to be childlike. The Lord is not looking for complicated relationships. He is looking for sincere hearts, because He is a God of hearts. He is also looking for faith, which is not an emotion, but a spiritual force that impacts the unseen realm. Furthermore, God is a God of order, but not a God of rules and regulations and laws; and He does not want us to wear ourselves out trying to pray long, drawn-out prayers that are not Spirit-led or that follow a formula and require a certain posture. That would be legalistic, and the Spirit makes alive, but the law kills (see 2 Corinthians 3:6).
When we follow the leading of the Holy Spirit, our prayers will be filled with life. We will have no need to watch the clock, determined to fulfil
l the specified amount of time we have committed to prayer. When we approach prayer as an obligation and a work of our own flesh, five minutes can seem like an hour, but when our prayer is energized by the Holy Spirit, an hour can seem like five minutes.
I recall one time during my journey with God when He challenged me to make an effort to ask Him for what I wanted and needed in as few words as possible. I had a bad habit of talking too much in prayer. I would go on and on because I had the mistaken idea that short prayers were not good prayers.
We must learn to begin with the Holy Spirit’s help and to finish when He finishes, not to continue praying in the energy of our flesh long after the Holy Spirit finishes, because that makes the prayer time seem laborious rather than enjoyable. Approach God in simple childlike faith and pray as long as you feel led by God’s Spirit to pray. It is not the length of our prayers that makes them effective, but the sincerity and faith behind them.
It Doesn’t Have to Be Long
Perhaps the biggest lie Satan tells people about prayer is that it needs to take a long time. He will make you think you have to pray for hours before you have really prayed, but I am telling you that prayer does not have to be long in order to be powerful. They don’t have to be short to be powerful, either. The length of our prayers really makes no difference to God. All that matters is that we pray the way He is teaching us to pray and that our prayers are Spirit-led, heartfelt, and accompanied by true faith. I have learned to pray until I feel full and satisfied in my spirit—and that takes longer on some days than it does on others.