How Long Should You Pray?
Prayer is a mystery. On a lot of God stuff, I can eventually get to a place where I kind-of ‘get it’. Prayer keeps hanging out there as an unanswered question. How does it work? Does it ‘work’? Does God ever change His mind? I know He hears me, but can I hear Him? for sure?
Before you hit ‘delete’ and move on, know I’m not tackling that theological monster…not with my little business-guy brain.
In my file under ‘Prayer’, there’s all kinds of stuff about how to pray. There’s the “John Maxwell-ian” alliteration approach where everything starts with “P”…
P lace – pick a place where you can be alone with God
P erson- address Him directly as God, your personal God, your Heavenly Father
P raise- start with pouring out praise for Him because He alone is worthy
P rovision – thank Him for giving you what you need to stay alive….and more
P ardon – ask Him to forgive your sins as you forgive other people’s sins against you
P rotection – ask Him to protect you, your family and others from evil
P etition – ask Him for what you want.
(Usually I can’t wait for the ‘petition’ part…it’s usually why I drop to my knees in the first place…just being honest…)
Then there’s the tried and true A-C-T-S deal…
A – Acknowledge God as Omnipotent, Creator, Holy God
C – Confess my sins and ask forgiveness
T – Thank God for all He’s done for me
S – Supplication – Ask for what I want – (see “petition” above)
All good stuff.
But how long do I pray? Am I hurting God’s feelings if I only pray for 5 minutes? Am I more ‘Christian’ if I pray all night like the song says?
On my prayer board, I have Isaiah 62:6-7 scrawled out in magic marker…
“I have posted watchmen on your walls, Jerusalem; they will never be silent day or
night. You who call on the Lord, give yourselves no rest, and give him no rest till
he establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the earth”. (NIV)
Talking about guilt.
Confession: There’ve been few things I’ve ‘given God no rest’ about.
But then to make it worse, there’s Jesus’ teaching about prayer in Luke 11. The late-night visitor seeking bread knocks to no avail. Then look at verse 8…
“I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity he will surely get up and give you as much as you need”. (NIV)
“because of your shameless audacity”… Wow
Now let me give you the other side.
Another translation of the same verse says He got up and gave him bread “yet to preserve His good name”.
So which is it?
Because of the shameless audacity of the ‘asker’? Or ‘to preserve the good name of the Master’? Like I said,
I haven’t figured prayer out. It’s like the definitive opinion of economists… “I feel strongly both ways”. And you’ve never met a one-armed economist. It’s always “But on the other hand….”
From what I’ve learned, a big part of prayer is about conforming my will to God’s will. Since God already knows what we need before we ask, prayer is the process God uses to infuse peace and faith into our souls. As we praise and petition, acknowledge His power and our lack of it, God is slipping little doses of faith, trust, and hope into our lifeblood. Sometimes that takes awhile, especially when we want a certain outcome really bad.
But when we’ve emptied our ambition onto the altar in front of Him, and we’re ready to trust Him with the outcome, we can be done praying. In Matthew 6:7, Jesus Himself cautioned about babbling on and on. He said “And when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words.” Jesus always got right to the point.
You see, I think prayer is God’s idea. It’s Him who gives us the urge to pray. It’s not a natural human behavior.
And just like He ‘pings’ us to pray, I think He lets us know when it’s o.k. to get up off our knees and go do something.
Don’t get me wrong. For those people praying for Jerusalem’s restoration, there wasn’t anything else they could do. When our son was clinging to life after his wreck, prayer was it. It was all we could do. All consuming. We wore God out for 24 hours straight.
But most days, praying until I’ve handed off my burdens to my omnipotent “Dad” is long enough.
Question: How about you? How do you know you’ve prayed long enough? To carry on the conversation, please comment here.
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Responses (5)
Great post Regi! I see prayer as the vehicle that helps me align my life with God’s power. A friend of mine who is an entrepreneur told me once that money is moving all of the time and his job is to get into the path of that flow. If you take that principle and apply it to our relationship with Jesus, you get: God is moving all of the time and prayer is the tool we use to get into the middle of His flow. Prayer may not always change our circumstances, but it always changes us.
Thanks for sharing!
Absolutely. An attitude of gratitude is the best approach to prayer and to all of life. Constantly thanking Him keeps Him ‘top of mind’ for me and keeps us in relationship. It’s great when I remember!
Thank you for the post Regi. Prayer’s been on my mind a lot lately and the “getting into His flow” analogy from Dwayne was a beautiful follow-up. Daily In His Presence by Andrew Murray has been discussing intercessory prayer for the last couple weeks so it’s been top of mind for me lately. The verse I think of frequently about prayer is 1 Thessalonians 5 where Paul explains Gods will for us in Christ, “Rejoice always; pray without ceasing; in everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” That doesn’t leave much room for the doubt and little faith I demonstrate when I’m not doing these things. Once again, His word lays it out so simply. In His grace,
Prayer involves faith. Faith comes in two categories, inactive and active.
Inactive faith is knowing that the chair will hold you, unless someone has played a joke on you, or that everyone will follow the traffic rules and stay on their side of the road.
Active faith is your prayer time whether it is in a quite room or in the middle of a crowded restaurant, thanking and petitioning our Lord should be a continuous part of our lives and is part of our faith in action.
On the other side of this material world there is a fierce battle waging. Our Lord leads the way and guides us through the many minefields of evil traps. He is our strong advocate and is making our path safe. Prayer helps us to better understand His will and direction for us.
The daily devotional “God Calling” said it best.
“Remember no prayer goes unanswered. Remember that the moment a things seems wrong to you, or a person’s actions to be not what you think they should be, at that moment begins your obligation and responsibility to pray for those wrongs to be righted, or that person to be different.
Face your responsibilities. What is wrong in your country, its statesmen, its laws, its people? Think out quietly, and make these matters your prayer matters. You will see lives you never touch altered, laws made at your request, evils banished.
Yes! Live in a large sense. Live to serve and to save. You may never go beyond one room, and yet you may become one of the most powerful forces for good in your country, in the world.
You may never see the mighty work you do, but I see it, evil sees it. Oh! It is a glorious life, the life of one who saves. Fellow-workers together with me. See this more and more.
Love with me, sharers of My Life.”
Prayer is a mighty sword we swing against evil.
C.S. Lewis said “We pray, not because it changes God but because it changes us.