“When You Pray” pt.2
Matthew 6:5-8 (NIV)
Prayer is to the spirit what oxygen is to the body. A person without a prayer life is a person on life support. Prayer is essential to your life.
*You must have the right motivation behind your prayer. When you go to the throne to pray, you cover up what you need. You tell people who cannot answer prayers everything but keep secrets from God. You think you have secrets that you hide from God, but he will in strategic and intentional ways reveal what you thought you were hiding from him. Don’t keep secrets from God. What if God kept some things from you? He doesn’t keep secrets, but he doesn’t reveal all things to you, because you can’t handle if God gave you everything. He gives it to you in pieces. If he fully gave you everything about the next season of your life, how would you start moving? You can’t out-slick or outsmart God. Stop trying to play mind games with the one who really should be dictating and controlling your mind.
*When you pray it doesn’t matter your posture or the direction that you face, as long as you call on the name of the Lord. God will respond when he wants to, he doesn’t answer your prayers sooner. Get into a posture where you pray to God more often, so you don’t have to run to others asking them to lay hands on you. You don’t need oil, incense, or to be in church to pray to God. When you pray your audience is not people, your audience is God.
*Be careful what you ask God in prayer because he will do it, and some of the ways that he does it may not be comfortable. When you ask God to remove something or take something away, make sure you’re at a place you really want God to do it.
*When you pray to be seen by others you get exactly what you want, to be seen by others. Why should you expect God to reward you with what he has when what you were really praying for was the audience to celebrate you and see you? If your mindset is always to be seen, then you may struggle with being alone. Sometimes God can only speak to you when you are alone. You’re afraid of being alone because you’re not trying to hear what God has to say. You avoid God and don’t tap into the worship because you’re afraid of what might happen.
*Sometimes you must spend time with God by yourself. You must seek God in a secret place. Maybe the problem is you keep letting people into your secret places. Learn how to be particular about who you let into your secret place because once you expose the secret to people who don’t deserve it or can’t handle it you give them access to a place that’s hard for you to cut them off from. You’re not friends or dating anymore, and you’re worried about being around them because you’re not sure how they’re going to use what they know about you. Sometimes you’re afraid for people to see you because they know certain things about you, but regardless of what they know about you, God has already redeemed you. Don’t worry about the secrets that got out, God already dealt with those, and everyone has secrets. You just must learn how to redirect where you share your secrets, share it with the father in the secret place. In the secret place, there is confidentiality. Thank God when people show you what they can’t handle, so when you go to the next place and get the next blessing you know who not to share it with. Everything you don’t always have to make a public declaration about. Everybody does not want to see you win and is praying for your demise.
*You must have a secret place, and the secret place doesn’t have to be a room, it is not defined by proximity. It could be your car. Thank God for the times you’ve had to circle the block for parking, God was giving you more time to get your spirit right because you didn’t know what you might encounter. Sometimes you must check yourself because you’re still dealing with what you left at home. There are people who don’t know God that pray to God. You have a habit of erecting idol gods in your life. When you know God, you don’t have to pray desperately. You don’t have to be thirsty and desperate when you pray to God because it’s your regular form of communication.
*Pray with confidence because the father knows all things. You have access to certain things because you’re a child of the father, and when you go to him in prayer everything you need you can have access to. When you are in a relationship with God there are certain things, he won’t deny you because you are his child, and he takes care of his children without question or hesitation. He will move on your behalf because of your relationship with him. Don’t confuse God’s no for him not having God lacks nothing he just says no. When you pray, don't make assumptions that God can’t, he doesn’t have, or he’s run out of something, sometimes God just says no. You work in addition, but God works in multiplication. You spend too much time worrying, enjoy it.