If this is you or anyone close to you, don't jump ship before finishing this article. Prayer is an exercise in power. Early followers saw this power as a result of Jesus' prayers. Remember, they flocked around with, "Lord, teach us to pray!" They experienced the power. They saw the results. They were incredibly impressed and inspired to do the same. Fast-forward two thousand years! Much of what passes as prayer are memorized words, faith-less repetition and a lot of whining, No inspiration here. Do not feel bad if you have gnashed your teeth when exposed to such prayer. Deep inside you know there is a better way. Take a look at one of those ways. Pray Scripture One rapid way to build a powerful prayer life is to pray Scripture. If this is totally new to you, no worry. A number of good sites on-line can instruct you. But for starters, try this. Take one verse of Scripture that has meaning for you and that you have need of. Try Psalm 91:11. He sets His angels to guard you in all your ways. Slowly repeat that verse several times. Let it roll around on the inside. Consider the meaning of it. Now reconstruct the verse to be personal and present tense. Lord, thank you. You have set your angels to guard me in all my ways. Can you feel the verse begin to root in you? Strengthen you? Fill you with some confidence? Give this activity some attention in moments of quiet. You will probably have to make the quiet. Well worth the effort! Find another verse in Psalm 91 and repeat the process. Can you feel the difference between this type of prayer and those prayers you have found so frustrating? To speed up your new prayer training and to ramp up the power of it, pray with two or three others. Each of you take time to pray aloud while the other two enter in silently. When a small groups prays Scripture in this way, you can feel the power being released and the faith levels arise. Understanding the Power. First: Words carry power. Solomon was clear on this issue. He told us that life and death are in the power of the tongue. That was thousands of years ago. Now you read of experiments of the effects of words on water. What a stir that has caused! Yes, life and death are in the power of the tongue...your tongue. If words, your words, coming out of your heart carry that kind of power, then what kind of power do you find in the Word of Psalm 91 that has come from God's heart? Jesus says those Words are spirit and life (John 6:63). Paul says they are living and powerful (Hebrews 4:12). The Strong's Concordance lists the word powerful as energes in the Greek #1756. Energes means active, operative, powerful. Implication here is that the Word of God is energy, powerful energy at that! Pray the Word (Scripture) and you are releasing some of the energy. To repeat, just in case you find this almost unbelievable - pray Scripture, Psalm 91 for instance, and you release energy from Heaven. Second: Scripture builds faith. Paul tell you that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God (Romans 10:17). That makes no sense until you try it, experience it, are impacted by it. Pray Scripture on a regular basis and see how your faith expands. As you pray in this fashion, you are exercising faith in what God has said. Faith is a force, You just released that force in prayer. Experience the difference! Most prayers you hear are prayers of hope rather than prayers of faith. Hope is a good thing, but faith is better. Do you remember how Jesus marveled over instances of faith when He found them? He loved it! He still does. Third: Scripture renews your mind. Praying Scripture is a sure-fire way to overwrite your negative thinking. And, negative thinking can severely hamper your ability to pray in faith. As negative thinking loses its grip, you are replacing those thoughts with life-giving thoughts from Scripture. You are beginning to think like God thinks!
When Joshua assumed leadership for leading the Israelites into the Promised Land, the Lord told him to not let the Book of the Law (Scripture) depart from his eyes. Joshua was told to meditate on it day and night in order to have success (Joshua 1:7-9). Joshua was learning to think like God and so will you. You have your Promised Land to conquer and you know it's a bigger job than you are capable of - unless you think like God. Praying Scripture is a great boost to get you on track for this. Fourth: Agreement is a power of its own. In Matthew 18:19 Jesus said that if any two of us on earth agree concerning an issue, anything we ask will be done by our Father in Heaven. That's how powerful agreement is. Pray a Scripture and you come into agreement with God Himself as well as agreement with other believers who are also praying and proclaiming the Scripture. What does the power of agreement look like in action? Jesus demonstrated it. To explain His three years of stunning miracles, He told us that He spoke what the Father was saying and did what He saw the Father doing. That is was agreement with Heaven can look like! This is Kingdom life and you are invited into it. So are you ready to leave those frustrating, whining prayers behind? The steps are simple. By praying Scripture you expand your faith, begin thinking like God thinks, agree with Him and speak what He has spoken through Scripture. Your prayer life will never be the same again: dynamic with power and laced with countless testimonies of answered prayer.
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