One of the simplest things you can do to strengthen your prayer life is simply to make a list of things you want to pray about. Many of us have experienced coming into a prayer time with great intentions, and then running out of things to say in about a minute and a half. A simple list, however short or long, can be extremely helpful in focussing your prayer time.
As with all of these tools, think of the prayer list as a launchpad, but it never needs to become a “law”! On some days, you may pray through your list quickly, and on others, the Holy Spirit may really catch your attention on one point in particular and you may just camp out there in a while. Some days you may have something else completely on your heart and never even get to the list. That’s okay! The goal is to connect with God.
As we talked about with scheduling time for prayer, even getting through your prayer list 70% or 80% of the time is way better than not even trying and doing 0%. I promise, if you make a list you WILL pray for those things more than if they weren’t written down anywhere at all.
What should be on your list? Broadly speaking, you might think about three categories:
Personal
spiritual growth
needs
future
ministry
People and places
family and friends
leaders in your life
people you lead
cities
churches/ministries
missions
Justice
government
abortion
racial issues
human trafficking
current events
What should you pray for these topics? The best advice is to pray biblically. Pray some of the key prayers of the Bible over these people, groups, and situations. A great resource is this list of apostolic prayers found in Scripture. I have a tattered copy of this sheet from 2012 always in my Bible. You can also check out this longer list of apostolic prayers.
Here’s a taste of the key themes and phrases of these prayers:
For wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of God (Eph. 1:17)
For strengthening with might in the inner being (Eph. 3:16, Col. 1:11)
For love to abound (Phil. 1:9, 1 Thes. 3:12)
For the knowledge of God’s will (Col. 1:9)
That the Word of the Lord would run swiftly [rapidly spread and powerfully take hold] (2 Thes. 3:1)
To glorify God in unity, with joy, peace, and hope (Rom. 15:5-6, 13)
To preach with boldness and power (Acts 4:29-30)
These prayers can easily be adapted to any context, but sometimes for justice issues, I like to dig into the Psalms and prophetic scriptures:
“The LORD is a stronghold for the oppressed…” (Ps. 9:9)
“O Lord, you hear the desire of the afflicted; you will… do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed…” (Ps. 10:17-18)
“The LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives…” (Is. 61:1)
You can use my lists as a starting point, but as praying Scripture becomes a habit you will quickly discover your own favorite verses! I promise, using the language of Scripture will make praying through your prayer list come so much more alive.
I need to say this one more time… DON’T LET THIS OVERWHELM YOU!
Again, your list is a launching pad, not law. You do not have to limit your prayers to the topics you write down, and more importantly, you do NOT have to pray for all of it every single day! It may help to break your list into mini daily lists, so that you’re praying for just a handful of things each day. Praying Bible verses is a great idea, but again, don’t become so tied to it that you’re crippled if you can’t think of just the right verse.
Finally, find a way to work your prayer list into your daily routine. Use it as a bookmark and pray through it for ten minutes before you read your Bible, or tape it to your steering wheel and pray on your way to work. The goal of this tool, and in fact of all of the tools in this series, is to find what works for YOU to help YOU pray more. Adapt these ideas as you see fit, and happy praying!
Do you use a prayer list? What’s on yours, or what would be if you started doing this? Tell me in the comments!
For all those who want to hear God speak to them, I have good news. It’s actually really simple. In my experience, there’s a major key that unlocks the door to hearing His voice.
Ask Him questions.
Asking Him specific questions helps narrow your focus and puts you in a posture of listening. Sit down, get quiet, close your eyes (or whatever your best listening posture is), and ask questions and follow-up questions— He is so eager and willing to speak when we take the time to let Him!
King David did this. Asking God questions was part of David’s all-consuming “one thing” desire:
“One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple.”
(Psalm 27:4)
God has a LOT of thoughts and emotions, and He longs to share them with us. We could ask Him questions for the rest of eternity, and He would never run out of things to say.
“How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!
If I would count them, they are more than the sand.”
(Psalm 139:17-18)
So as we venture into asking God specific questions, here are a few different ways to begin the conversation:
1. Ask God about yourself.
This is maybe the most fun kind of question to ask. You probably have heard so many things from other people about how God sees you, and even read lots of Bible verses (which is great!) but there’s something powerful about just letting the Holy Spirit speak directly to your heart in the silence. Doing this has reshaped my perspective, brought me to tears, and caused me to fall more in love countless times. (I especially recommend asking God for a Bible verse, because we KNOW that’s truth no matter what!)
How do You see me?
What are You doing in my life right now?
What do You say about the pain in my past?
What do You want me to know about my future?
What Bible verse do You have for me right now?
2. Ask God about other people.
If you can do it for yourself, you can do it for other people; there’s no difference! Sometimes this is even easier than hearing God for yourself. God loves to use His church to encourage each other! You can do this while you’re praying for or talking to someone, or you can do it ahead of time and write a note for the person. Ask all of the exact same questions as above for them, and watch what God does! Seeing someone else through God’s eyes will give you an increased love for them, and hearing God’s thoughts spoken through you will touch and encourage them powerfully.
(Note: Often the word He gives you will be meant to be shared to encourage them, but sometimes God will want you to keep it private and just let it inform your prayers. Be sure to ask Him what to do with it, especially if it sounds sensitive.)
3. Ask God about God.
I love to ask God questions as I read the Bible. He was there for all of it! He remembers what light looked like the first time dawn broke over the waters. He remembers the exact expression on His face when the disciples asked Him who was the greatest. He remembers what His first thought was when He woke up alive in the tomb. I also love to ask Him the tough questions… about the intersection of justice and mercy, about how the Father feels about the Son, or about His greatest desires. Often, He will give me a peek behind the curtain and let me catch a glimpse of the deep places in His heart. This is exactly what the Holy Spirit loves to do:
“These things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God… Now we have received… the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.”
(2 Corinthians 2:10-12)
One more thing…
You may be wondering if it’s a little sketchy to just close your eyes and take whatever comes into your mind as the word of God. That’s a healthy concern! Of course we recognise that all of this is very subjective. It does NOT merit the same weight as the authoritative, inspired word of God, but we still want to make room for subjective impressions like this, especially if they line up with Scripture.
“We know in part and we prophesy in part”
(2 Corinthians 13:9)
“Do not quench the Spirit.Do not despise prophecies,but test everything; hold fast what is good.”
(1 Thessalonians 5:19-21)
For me, the breakthrough in hearing God’s voice came when I learned to silence the voice of doubt and receive in faith. I had to trust that I really do have the mind of Christ (2 Corinthians 2:16) and that His sheep really do hear His voice (John 10:27). Plus, the Holy Spirit often works by reminding us of what we already know (John 14:26), so His voice will often sound like my own voice inside my head. In time, we will learn to recognise the internal “still, small voice” (1 Kings 19:12) of His whisper to our hearts.
Do you ask God questions? What’s your favourite question to ask Him? Tell me in the comments!
When we celebrate the Christmas story, there is a reality deeper than the quaint images of sheep in a stable and swaddling clothes in a manger. It’s the reality of the incarnation – that God, the Creator, the infinitely eternal Dreamer of Genesis 1, freely chose to become one of His creation. The Creator created Himself into a fragile body of flesh, and in doing so He proved Himself worthy of the highest exaltation.
To catch the wonder of this, we have to back up…. waaaay up.
HIGH
. “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?… . when the morning stars sang together . and all the sons of God shouted for joy? .Or who shut in the sea with doors
. when it burst out from the womb, .when I made clouds its garment . and thick darkness its swaddling band, .and prescribed limits for it . and set bars and doors, .and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther, . and here shall your proud waves be stayed’? .Have you commanded the morning since your days began,
. and caused the dawn to know its place…?
.Have you entered into the springs of the sea, . or walked in the recesses of the deep? .Have the gates of death been revealed to you, . or have you seen the gates of deep darkness?”
. (Job 38:4-17)
In Job 38, God puts Job’s life in perspective by giving him a glimpse of what it’s like to be GOD, the eternal, sovereign Creator. He remembers the day when He created the universe out of nothing. He controls all the forces of nature like a puppet master. He is sovereign over it all.
Low
Psalm 113 shows the first step in the humility of God:
. “The LORD is high above all nations;
. His glory is above the heavens.
. Who is like the LORD our God,
. Who is enthroned on high,
. Who humbles Himself to behold
. The things that are in heaven and in the earth?” . (Psalm 113:4-6 NASB)
God has to humble Himself to even LOOK at the things He has created! The universe itself is so far beneath Him that it’s as if He has to bend over and squint to even see it.
But He does.
He bends down to look
. at the universe…
. at the Milky Way…
. at our solar system…
. at Earth…
. at each nation…
. at each individual human heart.
The fact that He would even acknowledge your existence, the speck within a speck within a speck within a speck, is huge. It takes fathomless humility to even know your name.
Then came the incarnation. The Word made flesh. God not only looks at and interacts with Earth from His distant throne… He chose to step off His throne above the edge of the universe and become one of us.
Breakable, squishy, ugly-bags-of-mostly-water, time-locked, skin-locked, needy, temporary, finite little humanity.
In my opinion, no passage in Scripture captures this descent as well as Philippians 2:5-11.
“…Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”
(Philippians 2:5-8)
It begins with Jesus in the form of God. In Greek, this word for “form” doesn’t mean appearance or shape. It means His very essence, His very nature. At His core, to His DNA, Jesus WAS God. He had equality with God; not that He was equivalent to God, but He was equal to God. From the beginning, Jesus = God.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.”
(John 1:1-3)
Yet, He didn’t choose to grasp tightly onto His status as God. He willingly let go of His position and rights as God. In the NIV, “something to be grasped” is translated “something to be used to his own advantage”. He had every right to simply rest on His own divinity, but He chose to forsake His own rights and empty Himself.
So He was born in the likeness of men… in human form. He who was in the form of God took on human form. God-nature took on human nature. Deity became humanity. The infinite became finite.
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us…”
(John 1:14)
This is a staggering descent. It’s literally immeasurable. If you or I became an ant, it would be a huge downgrade, but it would be theoretically possible to measure the differences between a human and an ant. God is so completely Other that it is impossible to measure just how different He is. For God to become human is an infinite descent.
In being born, Jesus had to first be in the womb of Mary for 9 months. GOD was once the size of a grapefruit… and an apple… and a paperclip… and microscopic. When the Holy Spirit overshadowed Mary, the Son of God was conceived as a single cell.
God was once a single-celled organism. Fully God, fully human… microscopic in the womb of a young woman.
lower
Of course, the most powerful men on Earth started as only one cell. Jesus went lower even than that.
He took the form of a servant.
“…the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve…”
(Matthew 20:28)
ludoproject.com
He could have come as a great human king, and even that would have been infinitely beneath Him! Instead, He chose to be born in the most humble of ways– to a poor couple from a disreputable town, largely uncelebrated in a stable, then worked as an unassuming carpenter until He was released into ministry… when He set the example by washing His disciples’ feet.
. “For he grew up before him like a young plant,
. and like a root out of dry ground;
. he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
. and no beauty that we should desire him.” . (Isaiah 53:2)
But then…
lowest.
He came lower still.
He became obedient to the point of death.
“Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.”
(Luke 22:42)
The Author of life… died. More than that, He didn’t peacefully pass away quietly, but He was executed in the most gruesome form of torture ever devised.
The Author of life, clothed in light, who from the dawn of creation has had ceaseless adoration rising around His throne…
…died on a tree, naked, with blood and spit dripping down His body, with angry insults and blasphemies clamouring around Him.
. “He was despised and rejected by men,
. a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;
. and as one from whom men hide their faces
. he was despised, and we esteemed him not. . Surely he has borne our griefs . and carried our sorrows; . yet we esteemed him stricken, . smitten by God, and afflicted.” . (Isaiah 53:3-4)
Despised and rejected.
Despised by the ones He knew and loved so deeply.
Rejected by the very ones He came so infinitely low to rescue.
This is the crux of the incarnation. This is Jesus, the King of Glory, at His lowest.
The ultimate, deepest humility.
BUT.
H I G H E S T
Philippians 2 turns a sharp 180° on one word–
“THEREFORE.”
“Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
(Philippians 2:9-11)
As quickly as Jesus came so low, He shoots up again to be “highly exalted”. There’s something unique about this exaltation, though. It’s not just the glory He had with the Father before the incarnation; this is exaltation as a human. This is the promise of His future exaltation as the Son of David, the prophesied Davidic King of the earth. One Day (capitalisation intended) He will be publicly and fully recognised as the sovereign authority of the planet, when He returns and establishes His Kingdom from Jerusalem.
Don’t miss this– the Davidic King has to be actually human. Jesus didn’t just temporarily put on a human costume and shed it when He ascended. He became permanently, irrevocably human forever. In heaven now, He has a glorified human body, similar to the glorified human bodies believers will have one day. When He sits on the throne in Jerusalem forever, He will do so as a human King: a literal, physical descendant of David.
What stunning humility.
To me, the most fascinating part of this Philippians 2 passage is in the THEREFORE. He is exalted because He was obedient to the point of death. His extravagant humility which led Him all the way to the cross is directly why He is worthy to rule as King.
This THEREFORE is all over Scripture.
. “Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many, . and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, . because he poured out his soul to death . and was numbered with the transgressors…” . (Isaiah 53:12)
. “Worthy are you to take the scroll . and to open its seals, . for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God…” . (Revelation 5:9)
He is worthy to open the scroll, release the plans of God, and rule the earth because He was slain.
Because of His great humility, He has proven His worthiness.
This is a King we can fully trust– the one who came so low for us. He has proven His love.
This is how we can trust that He won’t be a cruel or selfish or distant dictator. He has withstood every test and temptation. He has proven His love, humility, and commitment to us by His birth, life, and death. And God has vindicated and affirmed Him by His resurrection.
When we look at the baby in a manger, we can see the God who came so, so low to demonstrate His love by taking on flesh and dying on a tree, and the coming King who proved His trustworthiness to rule.
To me, that is breathtakingly beautiful.
God, You became a man
You took on flesh
You’re so beautiful
I’m five years into this prayer room lifestyle now. And to be honest, every day is not sunshine and rainbows and oceans of glory. Motivation is sorely lacking sometimes. So when I’m not feeling it, here are the core truths that keep me coming back. (You’ll notice that none of them are really about me. That’s because the house of prayer is primarily something GOD established for GOD, and any blessing I get is just a bonus.)
1. Jesus is worthy.
No matter how I feel, Jesus is still the name above every other name and the angels are still singing “Holy, holy, holy… Worthy is the Lamb that was slain.” (Revelation 4:8, 5:12). I actually believe that the greatest injustice in the earth is that Jesus does not get the worship that He is due from every heart worldwide. I can’t change that singlehandedly overnight, but I can do my best to make sure He gets everything He deserves from my life.
2. Jesus wants to talk to me more than I want to talk to Him.
I am so dull of heart sometimes. Like, a lot of times. My flesh can so easily convince me on that I’m okay without having a real conversation with God that day. That’s probably the biggest lie my flesh tells me: “You’re fine. It’s okay. It doesn’t matter.” And so I zone out in the prayer room, or choose to endlessly scroll through Facebook at home. But the truth is that Jesus wants to talk to me way more than I want to talk to Him. Some days the only thing that can get me out of bed to go to the prayer room is the fact that Jesus says “Let Me see your face, let Me hear your voice.” (Song of Solomon 2:14) He really wants to talk with me, and He misses that connection time when I’m not there. I may feel like I’m fine if I miss out for a day, but how dare I deprive Jesus of something He so earnestly desires.
3. This is part of a big, big story.
The house of prayer — corporate, sustained gatherings specifically focussed on worship and intercession, especially 24/7 — has been on God’s heart for a long, long time, to the point that the first thing He did in establishing a nation for himself was to establish the house of prayer (the tabernacle of Moses). David took this idea even further in his tabernacle model, and God promised to re-establish David’s tabernacle in the final generation. (Amos 9:11) The Church will be a praying, singing, lovesick Bride that functions as a house of prayer and partners with God to push back the darkness, bring forth revival, and usher in the return of Jesus. My getting out of bed to go to the prayer room is literally part of God’s strategy to prepare the earth for the second coming. It doesn’t get much more epic than that.
One of the simplest things you can do to strengthen your prayer life is simply to make a list of things you want to pray about. Many of us have experienced coming into a prayer time with great intentions, and then running out of things to say in about a minute and a half. A simple list, however short or long, can be extremely helpful in focussing your prayer time.
I’m five years into this prayer room lifestyle now. And to be honest, every day is not sunshine and rainbows and oceans of glory. Motivation is sorely lacking sometimes. So when I’m not feeling it, here are the core truths that keep me coming back. (You’ll notice that none of them are really about me. That’s because the house of prayer is primarily something GOD established for GOD, and any blessing I get is just a bonus.)