How to pray effectively
We all pray, but do we pray well?
People often say to me “I pray but nothing happens, why is that? Is God ignoring me?”
No.
The book of James says, “You ask but do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.” (Jas 4:3) But what does this mean and how do I fix it? Well, recently, I ran into someone who needed prayer and the result was (what I call) a textbook perfect example of how to interact with God in prayer.
Allow me to explain.
When I pray, I’m usually praying for someone else’s needs (this is called supplicating prayer). Supplicating prayer is powerful because it is unselfish since the focus is on someone else. Praying for ourselves is fine, but when combined with other factors, such as fasting, a pure intent and whether other people are praying for you, it is even better. I often say that healing prayer is 95% dependent on God and 5% on me (but I have to leverage that 5% as much as I can!).
For example, remember when Abraham haggled with God over Sodom and Gomorrah in Gen 18:16-33 (i.e. will you destroy the city if there are fifty good people? How about forty? How about thirty?) Well, I find that if prayer is unanswered, it can sometimes be that I am missing something that God wants to tell or teach us about and it is worthwhile to “haggle” with God because “no”, is not always His final answer.
Here’s an example.
I asked if anyone in the room needed prayer. Jamie (not her real name) told me that when she held her chin up, her right arm went numb. She said I’d prayed for her the week before, but she had not been healed. She also said that I mentioned that if healing did not occur, we should not ask God “why did you allow this to happen to me” but rather we should take it to prayer and ask Him “what lesson am I to learn from this, Lord”. I asked if she did this and she said yes and that she felt God was saying “you know Jamie…since your head is already bowed, it would be a great opportunity to pray to me more often”. I said, “Wow…that’s a great answer! Let’s see if it is what He wanted”.
So I prayed a very simple prayer: “Lord, Jamie believes she knows why she has this affliction and has learned a valuable lesson. If this is the outcome you wanted Lord, then I ask that you now heal her arm”. She tried it again and it was partially healed from her fingertips to her elbow, but not from her elbow to her shoulder.
I thought that it was odd, so I asked her how the injury happened. She paused a bit then said somewhat sheepishly, “My son got drunk and pushed me down the stairs”. “Ah” I said. “that’s a spiritual wound and it needs healing too. Can you forgive him?” She replied, “That would be hard”. So, I explained what forgiveness involved (see here) and what it did not involve. She understood and forgave him, saying, “In the name of Jesus Christ, I forgive my son for getting drunk and pushing me down the stairs”. I then prayed again “Ok Lord, in addition to the lesson learned about praying more, we now have forgiveness on the table with the intent to heal the rift between mother and son, so if this is what you needed us to acknowledge and accept then we ask for complete healing of her arm”. She tried it again and she was completely healed.
So many times, people think that God will only answer our prayer one time and one time only when the opposite is true. Jesus encouraged us to knock and keep on knocking (Mt 7:7-8) and told us that God admires our ingenuity and creativity when asking (Lk 16:1-8). If God had simply healed her, it would have been wonderful, but by doing it this way, she learned a couple of valuable lessons.
Far from a “one-and-done” event, God loves it when we haggle so if you don’t get the answer you want, don’t give up on Him, because He won’t give up on you!