Hi, welcome to Developing Your Prayer Life.
My name is Josh Floyd.
I'm a prayer pastor, and I've been in prayer ministry
for about 12 years now.
This is more of a practical session.
Today, we're just getting over the principles
of a prayer time, just the basic principles.
So I wanna encourage you, first of all,
to do prayer daily.
Set time aside every day for prayer.
We're actually created to need to hear God's voice
on a daily basis.
In scripture, you might recall that the word of the Lord
is often compared to bread, and in the Old Testaments,
the Israelites were given manna on a daily basis
that they had to gather, bread from heaven.
They gathered the bread every day,
and were not supposed to save any for the next day,
and if they did, the manna from the day before
would actually go bad and spoil.
So Jesus later said in Matthew,
man shall not live by bread alone,
but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God,
and in the Lord's prayer, he instructed us to ask the Father
to give us this day our daily bread,
and sometimes I jokingly say,
give us this week our weekly bread,
but that's really not gonna work for us.
We need it daily, and that's what our prayer time
with the Lord is like.
We actually receive life from prayer
in the same way that we receive life from food, from bread,
and trying to go without food for a while
is kind of sketchy sometimes.
You go ahead and try it, let me know how you feel.
So if we're expecting to pray once a week
and receive the same spiritual growth as praying every day,
we're gonna be really disappointed, just like we would
if we were trying to eat once a week
and expect to feel good throughout the week.
So if you've never prayed daily,
that's why we're here today.
My advice is just start with a 15-minute appointment
and put it in your calendar, and don't miss it.
Treat it like an appointment, like if you were in sports,
you had to show up to football practice every day,
and if you missed practice,
there was pretty severe consequences.
Think of this appointment with the Lord
as a sacred time that you're meeting with him,
but again, just start with 15 minutes.
A lot of people do their prayer time in the morning,
but I've met a lot of people that never wake up in time
to do their prayer time,
so then they never have a prayer time.
So really what's important is that you're awake.
It doesn't matter what time of day it is.
For younger people, usually a nighttime prayer time
works the best.
For older people, it's usually the opposite.
But if you're still struggling, like you're finding a time,
but you're like, man, I just cannot commit to this,
and I can't get myself to follow through on a daily basis,
a great place to start is just showing up to a prayer meeting.
If you know a prayer meeting at your church,
or you know a couple other people
that are trying to grow in prayer,
just get together once a week with other believers
and pray together, and they're gonna inspire you
and give you a hunger for prayer
that will eventually lead you into a daily prayer time.
So as we're embarking on this journey
to develop your prayer life,
this is one thing I really want you to remember,
and I'm probably gonna say it more than once,
but prayer should be enjoyable, right?
In Isaiah 56, God said that I'm gonna bring people
to my holy mountain and make them joyful
in my house of prayer.
So God has knitted prayer with joy.
So if you're going into your prayer time
and you're not energized and excited
coming out of your prayer time,
there's something wrong going on.
And you might not be super excited
every single day at first,
but the more diligent we are in keeping our daily prayer time
the more joy we're gonna receive from prayer in our lives.
So I love to say this sentence
to people that are learning how to pray,
diligence in prayer transforms it from duty into delight.
I'll say that again,
diligence in prayer transforms it from duty to delight.
So I wanna talk about three main types of prayer.
The one that we probably all are the most familiar with,
but maybe not the most comfortable with is petition.
Petition just means to pray for yourself
or to ask God for something for you.
Lord, help me, give me wisdom, give me strength,
help this headache go away.
Those are all petition prayers.
And much like petition is intercession.
Intercession is praying for somebody else.
So it's to intervene on someone else's behalf.
And this is an extension
of Christ's intercession on the cross.
That made him the great intercessor
that he died on the cross in the place of us.
So when we intercede for others,
we're actually an extension of Christ's work
in his crucifixion.
And then the last type of prayer,
which I wanna spend the rest of this session on
is devotional prayer.
And all that that is is prayerfully seeking
the experiential knowledge of God.
We wanna know God, but we also want to experience him.
My dad always says, it's great to know a lot about God,
but it's even better to know God.
even better to know God a lot.
And devotional prayer is how we grow in knowing God
as a person, as a friend, as a leader, as a pastor.
So I think this is the most important type of prayer
we can engage in, which is why we're gonna start here.
If you're not regularly seeking
the experiential knowledge of God,
don't worry about intercession or petition just yet.
We'll cover that later.
But start with diligently seeking the Lord.
If we continue diligently,
our prayer times are gonna naturally develop
from devotion into petition and intercession.
For example, if we receive revelation from God
about his heart for the lost,
we're gonna find ourselves praying for the lost
without even intending to.
When we receive a revelation of his heart for us,
his affections toward us,
we're gonna naturally begin to ask him
to help us love him in the same way.
Just start with being diligent in devotional prayer.
And you're gonna find
that your most powerful intercessory prayers
are gonna be birthed from that intimate friendship
with Christ and partnering with his heart.
So that's where our primary goal
in developing a prayer life
is really not so much about getting answers to our prayers,
although that is really important,
it's more about growing in friendship with God.
That's what makes prayer so important.
And really, friendship with God
is just growing in loving intimacy with him
and becoming close with him.
We wanna be seeking him
more than we're seeking what he can do for us.
And the more we seek him,
the more he's going to reward us
as we're diligent in our seeking.
Hebrews 11, six.
Without faith, it is impossible to please him.
For he who comes to God must believe that he is
and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him.
So you can really take that to the bank.
If you're diligent in seeking God in prayer,
he's going to reward you.
And the greatest reward we can receive
is actually knowing him.
There's many rewards he gives us,
but that's the best reward.
I love what God said to Abraham in Genesis 15.
It says that the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision
saying, do not be afraid, Abram.
I am your shield.
I am your exceedingly great reward.
So actually God himself is the reward that we gain
from our diligence in devotional prayer.
So again, prayer has got to be enjoyable.
And that's because prayer, which is simply talking to God,
is the primary way that we grow in friendship with God.
And friendship with God is the primary way
that we receive joy in our lives.
That's why prayer is so enjoyable.
Because we actually grow in friendship with the Lord.
John 3, 29, one of my life verses.
John the Baptist is saying,
he who has the bride is the bridegroom.
He's talking about Jesus.
But the friend of the bridegroom, that's you and I,
who stands and hears him rejoices greatly
because of the bridegroom's voice.
Therefore, my joy is fulfilled.
So John the Baptist is saying,
my joy is fulfilled by hearing Jesus.
And as we grow in friendship with God,
that's gonna be true for us as well.
We're gonna receive joy from hearing
and knowing the voice of the Lord.
And I love what Jesus said in John 15.
He said, no longer do I call you servants,
for a servant doesn't know what his master's doing,
but I have called you friends.
Do you know that you're a friend of Jesus?
And he says, for all things that I have heard
from my father, I have made known to you.
So as you grow in prayer,
Jesus is gonna grow in giving you secrets.
He's gonna share things and reveal things about himself
that you didn't know about before.
So I love this sentence, success.
Like what measures our success in prayer?
Well, success in the place of prayer
is not really measured by how many answers
we get to our prayers, or how loud our prayers are,
or how eloquent our prayers are.
Success in the place of prayer is measured
by the growth of our friendship,
which is loving intimacy with God.
That's how we succeed as people that pray.
So my favorite way to get started,
I'm gonna teach you a biblical meditation model.
And this is really easy.
Anybody can do it with your Bible and your journal.
And the reason that we're gonna use the Bible to help us
is because in John 5, 39,
Jesus said to the Pharisees, who were biblical experts,
he said, you search the scriptures,
for in them you think you have eternal life,
but these are they which testify of me.
So Jesus is saying the scriptures actually testify of him.
So if we wanna know him, we should know the scriptures.
If you love Jesus, show me that you love Jesus
by how you engage with the scriptures.
Because that's really the primary way
that he testifies of himself.
And then he says in verse 40,
but you are not willing to come to me
that you may have life.
So really, we see that it's not just reading the Bible,
it's coming to you.
coming to Jesus by having conversations with him
about the Bible.
So when you're reading a scripture,
don't read it like you read a normal book.
Don't read it like it's a textbook
or don't read it like it's some fantasy novel,
but read it to fuel your conversation with God.
And I'm gonna show you my favorite way to do this.
So if you, you can do this at home
when you have your 15 minute prayer time,
you can take your journal out,
and there's six steps.
And they're kind of easy to remember
because they're alliterative.
So the first two steps are read it, write it.
Read it, write it.
You're just gonna pick one verse,
or maybe two, but no more than that.
John 3 16 is a great one to start with.
And you're gonna write that verse word for word
at the top of the page as you read it.
Read it, write it, super simple.
And from this point on, take the rest of the page,
and you're gonna write all of the thoughts
that the Lord gives you.
Like everything that pops into your head
while you're doing this process,
that's what you're gonna write down
on the rest of the page.
The next two steps are say it, sing it.
So we had read it, write it.
Now we have say it, sing it.
So you're literally just going to say the verse out loud.
I love that the scriptures say that faith comes by hearing,
and hearing by the word of God.
So if you wanna grow your faith,
and you wanna grow your belief,
and you wanna grow your knowledge of God,
say the scripture out loud to yourself in the secret place,
in this personal prayer time, and sing it.
Now some of you are like, oh, I'm not a very good singer.
God doesn't care if you're not a good singer.
That's why he told us to go into our prayer closet
and close the door,
because he knew there was gonna be a lot of people
that weren't very good singers,
but he wanted us to sing the scriptures.
And singing the scripture, it's just,
I don't know what it is specifically about it,
but it's so powerful in sowing the seeds
of his word into our heart.
Every time I do this,
I experience such a rich presence of God
when I'm singing his word.
I love what St. Augustine said.
He said, he who sings, prays twice.
So it's like getting a 30-minute prayer time
in 15 minutes.
And continue, you're just gonna keep writing down
the things that come to mind,
the pictures that pop into your head,
the other thoughts that the Holy Spirit will speak to you
as you begin to say and sing his word out loud.
And then the last two steps are pray it, play it.
And these ones are kind of fun.
The way you're gonna close this biblical meditation process
is by expressing this verse as a prayer.
So there's two ways that I really love to do this.
If this is a scripture that is a truth
that we're called to believe,
I'll pray something like,
thank you, Lord, that your word says
that you love the world and gave your only son.
Holy Spirit, show me more.
That prayer will change your life.
Holy Spirit, show me more.
Reveal this truth to my heart.
And let's say maybe this isn't a truth
that you're being called to believe in this scripture,
but it's something that you're being led to obey,
like love the Lord your God with all of your heart.
Then you can pray something like,
Lord, I commit to obeying you in this area.
I commit to loving you with all of my heart.
Holy Spirit, release grace in my heart to obey your voice.
That prayer will change your life too.
Asking the Holy Spirit to help you obey,
he loves to do that.
That's literally why Jesus went to the Father
so that he could give us the Holy Spirit
and the Holy Spirit would lead us into all truth
and he would empower us to live a godly life
and to love Jesus well.
So those are two ways that you can pray scripture,
but really just turn it into a prayer however you want.
And then play it is kind of an optional step,
but this is one of my favorite steps.
If you're a musician, just take that scripture
and sit down at your instrument and play,
like play your instrument in a way
that you think would narrate the truth in that scripture.
What does it sound like?
Or maybe you're an artist.
What does God's heart look like?
What does this scripture look like?
How could I express this?
Or maybe you're a poet and you want to create
some type of poem or a songwriter.
That's what play it is all about.
So those six steps, read it, write it,
say it, sing it, pray it, play it.
So I really hope that you have fun praying with God
this week as you set up your 15 minute time
and I'll see you in the next session.