Date: November 8, 2018 ()

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Prayer is your greatest weapon. Effective prayer brings results. Have you ever felt that your prayers did not get much done or like you do not know what I am doing in prayer? Even though we should keep our prayers simple, there is so much in the Word of God about different ways to pray. I will cover 15 ways to pray that God says get results.

What makes an ordinary Christian a very effective Christian? (Look at these pictures. Here is a man praying, here is a woman praying, and here is a man interceding at a church. You can tell his prayers are earnest. He is putting passion into it. He is serious in what he is doing.) Sometimes people say, “Well, did you pray about it.” We answer, “Oh yeah, I did.” Did you really pray about it? “Not really, I just said some words and went on my way.”

When we think about people who had a great prayer life in the Bible, the first one we think of is Jesus. It says in the New Testament that Jesus prayed for you and me, for those that would come. That is us. Jesus prayed for us. He prayed all kinds of ways, at all times, early in the morning and late at night. He was probably our best picture of prayer. However, there were other people who had a great prayer life. Elijah was one. In James, it says Elijah was a man just like us. Yet when he prayed, big things happened. He was the right man for the right thing in the right place. When he prayed, things happened. That is what you want to do. You want to be sure you are the right person, in the right place, doing the right thing. Then, when you pray, God is listening and you are working together. Elijah prayed “Lord, don’t let it rain.” Look at this first scripture. This is a scripture you need to know, if you do not know it. James 5:16 says, “The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results.” Look at another scripture in James, talking about Elijah, who was as human as we are. Yet, when he prayed earnestly that no rain would fall, none fell for three and a half years. When he prayed again, the sky sent down rain and the earth began to yield its crops. In I Kings 18:1-2, “The Word of the Lord came to Elijah. He said I am going to send rain.” Elijah and God were cooperating in this great work that the Lord was doing.

What makes you and me, ordinary Christians, very effective Christians? It is our prayer life. Nothing can be accomplished without first praying. Prayer is like tilling up hard ground. That is why, if you have some kind of a ministry or big undertaking that you are doing, I would encourage you to get people who would be willing to pray for you as you go to do the things. It does not mean you are not to be praying yourself. Of course you are, but get other people who will earnestly pray for what is going to happen. God listens and He responds to those prayers. Doing something is important, we know that. Praying earnestly before doing is most important. Otherwise, God cannot be in on it. You want Him in on it, because He is the One that told you what He needed you to do.

What are some conditions for effective prayer? One is really thinking about what needs to be prayed. Not just flipping some prayers around, but thinking about what needs to be prayed. “Lord, what is going on, give me insight to what is going on.” Another is humility. “Lord, if You don’t do it, it is not going to happen. We are asking You to make it happen.” Another is not being legalistic, formal or a rote prayer. The Bible talks about those and says they do not have much effect. You do not want to pray those kind of prayers. You want to pray from your heart. You want to pray in a way that is normal, personal, intimate but bold.

What will God not consider an effective prayer? One thing He will not consider effective is when you ask Him to bless something that is a sin. He is against sin. An example would be, what if you started a gambling casino and you invested a lot of money in it, and then you said “Lord, would You bless this casino and let it make a lot of money.” No, God does not want to do that. He does not bless sin. Can you ask God to bless something that He considers an idol in your life? An idol can be anything. It does not have to be wooden or stone. What is an idol in an average person’s life? It is something that you think about more than God. It is something that means more to you than God. It can be something that you go to that gives you comfort and support. That could be anything. It could be your business, golf or sewing. God told me once, “Sewing is your idol. It is what you go to all of the time.” It could be the computer or it could be a relationship. God is not going to bless something that He considers an idol and it takes you away from Him. He is not going to bless it.

Another thing that will be an ineffective prayer is asking God to change a situation, but you are not willing to change in that situation. In every situation that you are concerned about, there is usually some way that you need to change. He might say, “I want you to be bolder. I want you to be braver,” while you are praying, “Lord, I don’t want to have to do anything. Don’t make me talk. Don’t make me say anything. Don’t make me take a stand. But, would You just do something, Lord.” “No, I want you to change and then I will do something.

There are many different types of effective prayer. Some of these you already know about. You have done them and have seen the results of them. The first one is praying in agreement with someone else. That is based on Matthew 18:19, where Jesus says, “Again, I tell you, if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in Heaven.” When two of you get together, you are going to really discern the will of the Lord and what God would want in this. Examples of two or more would be prayer teams. You can call into the Gods Learning Channel prayer team. They will pray for you. I have a prayer support team of about 50 people that pray for my ministry constantly. There are ministries in the United States and around the world that have prayer phone lines. When there is something really serious in my life, I call those places and ask them to pray with me. When something is important; call your church, personal friends or anyone you know and ask them to pray with you.

In Scripture, it says to pray without ceasing. What does that mean? You have to live your life. You have to have conversations. You have to get your work done. People have to go to work for 8 or 10 hours a day. I Thessalonians 5:6-18 says, “Pray continually” or pray without ceasing. That means that you need to keep it on your mind, keep it in your heart and carry it in your spirit. When it occurs to you to pray throughout the day, lift it up again. God does not ever think that you are praying too much about something. The only time it is recorded in the Bible that He has done this was with Moses. Moses was praying one more time and God said, “Quit praying and get the people moving.” That was because Moses had not moved yet. He did not want to move and God said, “Quit praying and get the people moving.” You can pray off and on all day long about a need.

Cast all your care on Him and leave it there. Sometimes you are anxious. We all get there. You feel overwhelmed. It can happen anytime: in the middle of the night, when you are watching a show, when you are in a hospital room, hospital bed or just somewhere in your house. You do not know what in the world you are going to do and it is paralyzing you. In I Peter it says, “Cast all your care over on Him and leave it there.” Peter was a fisherman and he knew what it meant to cast for fish. He knew to throw his net out there and leave it there. When I fish with my husband, I get bored. I think I have to bring it in and see if anything has bitten it. You have to leave it out there. That is what Peter is talking about. Cast it on the Lord and leave it there.

The fourth one is to ask in Jesus’ name. In John 14:12, Jesus said “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in Me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these because I am going to the Father. I will do whatever you ask in My name so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask Me for anything in My name and I will do it.” What does asking for something in the name of Jesus mean? Does that mean you have to end a prayer with “In Jesus’ name, Amen.” Not necessarily. That came become a rote ending to a prayer. Remember that Jesus said, “Until now you have not asked for anything in My name. Ask and you shall receive and your joy will be complete.” In that prayer, when you are talking to the Lord, you can say, “Lord, I come to you in the name of Jesus and this is what I am asking for.” It would be the same way as if you needed to borrow a lot of money at the bank. Someone very wealthy wanted to help you and they said, “You go to that bank and you tell them I am coming in the name of Mr. So-and-so, and I am asking for this money.” They would think we know who Mr. So-and-so is. If he is going to back it, we will do it. It is that same kind of thing.

Another effective prayer is praying in private and being rewarded in open. It is praying secretly where nobody even knows you have prayed. Sometimes that is the most fun kind of prayer. I have done that about people in the news, and told no one. The next thing you know, something has changed in the news. You think, “I prayed for that. That is exciting. God heard me.” I might not have been the only one praying. As far as I am concerned, I was, because God heard me. Matthew 6:5-8 says, “When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full.” It was a long time ago when they were doing that, but it happens today. “When you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep babbling on like the pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him.” I am one of those people whose prayers are real simple. I do not go on and on. I am glad to read that I do not have to. I am just grateful God listens to me with my simple words. I do not have to pray for hours and hours and hours. I do not think I could do it. Some people can and they are good at it. They have the gift of the intercessor. It is a wonderful gift. In fact, they probably pray a lot in private. I am sure there is no telling what has been done in the earth today because of intercessors all over the world, interceding for the work of God to go on. You can hear about something going on in another country and you can pray for it. Those people will never know until they get to Heaven and you walk up to them and say, “I prayed for you. I read about you in the paper, I heard about you on the internet, I heard about you on TV and I prayed for you.” They will be amazed.

The sixth one is binding and loosing. What does that mean? Think about Elijah saying, “As the Lord God of Israel lives whom I serve, there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years except at my word.” He was binding rain from the earth. In Matthew 16:19, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Elijah knew God. He had walked with God. He knew how God worked. He knew the ways of God; so he knew he could pray and close the heavens and he did. You can bind and loose. You may know someone who is going through a terrible time; drugs, alcohol or bad companions. You can bind those bad companions away from your child or those people. You would say something like, “Lord in the name of Jesus Christ and by His blood I bind anything from my child that will keep him from serving You.”

Fasting and prayer is another area of effective in prayer. Do you fast? Have you ever fasted? What does it mean to fast? How long do you fast? How effective is it? It is very, very effective when it is combined with prayer. It does not just say fast, it says fast and pray. Going without food could be going without dessert or going without any food at all with just having water. It could be a Daniel fast, which is no meat and no desserts. It can be going without newspapers. It can be anything. Once the Lord told me to fast and not have chocolate. It was over something really important and I said, “Lord that does not sound very spiritual. If I told people I fasted chocolate.” He spoke to my heart and said, “If I told you to fast chocolate, I am the only one that counts. You do what I say.” I said, “Okay, Lord, I will do it.” I had a great result from it, tremendous result. In Mark 9:29, when the men said, “Why couldn’t we cast that demon out?” Jesus said “This kind can only come out by prayer and fasting.” That is left out of some translations of the Bible. I know for sure that there have been times I did prayer and fasting and something became of it. Something serious changed. In Daniel 10, Daniel fasted for three weeks, 21 days of fasting. “I ate no choice food. No meat or wine touched my lips.” There are all kinds of fasting. There is even one for couples in I Corinthians 7:5 that Paul commanded.

Another way that you can pray and know it is very effective is by determining what God’s Word actually says about a situation. Then pray that word over the situation. Do you know the passage in Malachi 3:10 that says, “Bring all the tithes into the storehouse and I will give you blessings that you cannot contain and I will rebuke the devourer.” Your life may be falling apart, but you are a tither. You say, “Lord, Your Word says that if I will tithe, You will rebuke the devourer in this situation. Lord, I am standing on that. I am standing on Your Word.” This is all prayer. You can talk out loud. You can quote Scripture to the Lord. You can pray in your head, you can pray out loud. It just depends on what seems to be the right thing to do.

Another type of prayer is to find God’s will in a situation and pray that. A lot of people pray, “If it be Thy will.” They think that this is a good way to pray. However, in the Bible, God has already told what His will is in some situations. It is His will for a person be healed. It is His will that a marriage not split up. It is His will that children should be born to the godly and those children raised as godly children. If you have grandchildren that are in a situation where their parents are not godly, you can know that God wants godly children. According to Malachi, what does God want from a marriage? He wants godly children. That is God’s will. You can say, “Lord, Your word says You want godly children. I stand on that and I say, Lord, godly children come forth out of that family. Come forth, because it is what You want Lord.” I do not have to pray, if it be Thy will. It is. When is it effective to pray, if it be Thy will? You pray that when it is not spelled out in the Bible. It could go one of several ways, and you are not sure which one is the one the Lord wants. Then you can pray, “Lord this is what I think needs to happen but I pray if it be Thy will, if it is Your will, Lord, let it happen. If it is not, let it happen the way You want it to happen God, because I want what You want.”

Did you know you can ask the Lord questions in your prayer life and it is very effective? If you read something in the Bible that does not make sense to you or you do not understand, you can ask, “What in the world are you talking about Lord? I don’t understand that.” This is a prayer, and it is a very effective prayer. God will answer you. Sometimes He takes a long time. There is a verse in Matthew 20 about people starting work early in the morning and some coming at 5:00 in the afternoon and they all get paid the same. I would see that for probably three or four years and I would say, “Lord I know you are talking to me. I do not know what it means. What are you saying to me, Lord?” I would read it and I could not get the answer. I could tell every time I read it by the way it hit my heart that God was talking to m. I would just say, “Lord, what does it mean? What does it mean?” Finally, one day after three or four years, it hit me. The reason it hit me when it did was that it was time to know what that meant. What it means is God is calling people late in life to do great works for Him. They are like 5:00 o’clock people. They get paid the same as these people who have done a great work for God from the very beginning. God says in Psalms 91:15, “He will call upon Me and I will answer him. I will be with him in trouble. I will deliver him and honor him.”

Boldness in prayer is one that many Christians do not do. It says in Hebrews 4:16, “Let us therefore come boldly into the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” That is a very, very, serious bold prayer. What would an example of that kind of prayer in the Bible? Genesis 18 tells about Abraham, Sodom and Gomorrah. God said, “Should I hide my plan from Abraham? Abraham is going to become a great and mighty nation and all the nations of the earth will be blessed from him. Should I hide it from him?” The Lord told Abraham, “I have heard a loud, great outcry from Sodom and Gomorrah because their sin is so flagrant. I am going to go down to see if their actions are as wicked as I have heard. If not, I want to know.” Do not forget, God called it wicked, He did not call it okay. Abraham said, “Lord, what if there are 50 righteous people?” See how bold he got. God was angry, God was very upset. Abraham said, “Lord what if there are 50 that are righteous, would You kill everyone including these righteous?” The Lord said,” No, if there are 50 I will not.” Abraham then asked, what about 45? The Lord said okay to 45. Then Abraham said how about 40, and he went on and on. The Lord said, “I will not destroy it if I find 30.” Abraham said “Excuse me for being bold, but how about 20.” The Lord said, “Okay, 20.” Finally, Abraham said, “Lord please do not be angry with me if I speak one more time. Suppose there are only 10.” God said, “Okay if there are only 10.” There were not and it was destroyed. Abraham was so bold in talking to God. He had such a relationship with God that was so close, he could talk like that and God did not think anything about it. It was two people seriously talking over a very serious situation.

Intercessory prayer is another type of prayer that is very important. This is people praying and interceding for someone else or something else. Jesus is our example of this. He said, “I prayed for you Peter that your faith would not fail.”

Travailing prayer can also be effective. This is very serious with a lot of tears and anguish. Hannah did that praying for a child. In Jeremiah, the Scripture says “The Lord of Hosts says call for the mourning women that they cry and do skillful wailing.” These are big time intercessors.

Worship and praise in prayer. Do we do that or do we just ask, ask, ask? We are to offer praise and sometimes it is so hard to do it. It is hard because your prayer is so serious and you are so worried, but it counts.

The last one is prayers of thanksgiving and gratefulness. There are not enough of these. Do you go back and say “Lord, thank You?” Do you say it with the same earnestness that you were pleading with and crying out to him? We need to thank God for what he has done and for who He is.

Pray all of these effective prayers. They count a lot.

QUIET TIME QUESTIONS

1. When is the best time to pray in all situations?
2. Review James 5:13-16. Summarize the main points given about prayer.
3. What prayers from the Bible are special to you?

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