So in this session we're going to be talking about making a prayer list,
which is one of the most practical, helpful ways to keep your prayer life going.
You've got this 15 minute time frame that you've blocked out,
that you're not missing as an appointment with God, this sacred appointment.
And now you're like, okay, I'm doing this biblical meditation thing,
and that lasted like three minutes, now what do I do for the next 12 minutes?
And that can be overwhelming, and sometimes our minds wander,
and then we feel like, man, this isn't really helping anyone,
this isn't really doing anything in my life.
So I'm going to give you some practical tips on how you can make a prayer list
that will help you to focus your time.
Now that you have this good foundation to grow in friendship with God through prayer,
let's talk about adding some petition and intercession to our prayer time.
Remember last time we talked about the three types of prayer,
and we're mostly focused on devotional prayer.
So now we're adding petition.
Well, what is petition? Petition is praying for yourself,
and we're adding intercession.
What is intercession? It's intervening on someone else's behalf
as an extension of Christ's ministry on the cross.
In fact, what's really cool for you to know is that Jesus himself is an intercessor.
He's called the great intercessor, and in Hebrews 7.25,
it says that he is able to save to the uttermost,
and that's so fun to say, he saves to the uttermost
those who come to God through him,
since he always lives to make intercession for him.
Do you hear that? Jesus lives to make intercession for you.
That's why he's able to save you to the uttermost.
So when you intercede, you're just partnering with what Jesus is already doing.
I'm just trying to get a glimpse of what he's already asking the Father for,
and I'm just echoing his prayers and asking the Father
and asking the Holy Spirit to help me in these areas.
When you intercede, I want to give you a few practical tips to get you started,
because when you're stepping in as a representative of Christ
and intervening between someone else and the kingdom of darkness,
that can feel really intimidating.
So here's some practical tips to help you as you're just starting out at intercession.
The main thing I want everyone to remember when they're doing intercession
is we should spend way more time praying for things
than we do praying against things, right?
Sometimes we can get wrapped up in what the enemy's doing,
and we're binding all of these things and all of these spirits,
but a more effective way to pray is actually asking God to release his kingdom
instead of praying for the eviction of the kingdom of darkness.
I'm just praying for God to move in,
and he's going to crowd out all of the enemy's workings
and the enemy's plans by doing that.
Let's say you're praying for someone who's experiencing a lot of fear in their life,
and it's debilitating.
Well, instead of coming against fear or the spirit of fear
or however you would pray against fear or the things they're afraid of,
instead, pray for God to give them courage, right?
Or you know that in 1 John, it says,
So maybe you pray that scripture over them.
God, would you release your perfect love over them?
Instead of fear, I'm coming against you in the name of Jesus.
There's nothing wrong with doing that,
but sometimes it can wear us out.
It can make us really heavy,
and then when we come out of our prayer time, we're not joyful.
Remember, prayer is supposed to be enjoyable.
Imagine getting up in the middle of the night,
and you are going to go to the bathroom,
and instead of turning on the light switch
so you can see where you're going,
you start rebuking the darkness out of your house.
It doesn't really make sense, does it?
If you just turn on the light switch,
there's no contention between the darkness and between the light.
The darkness just flees because the light is released into your room,
and now you can get up and go to the bathroom in peace, which is great.
See, God's given us authority over the darkness,
so there's nothing wrong with rebuking it when it gets in the way,
but I'm not going around searching for it
in the people that I'm praying for or even in my own life.
I'm searching for friendship with God,
and when the enemy tries to get in the way of that,
I just want to know enough to aim, point the trigger, and keep moving forward.
I just have way more faith in the power of God
than I do in the power of darkness,
so I'm going to release the power of God
and know that it's going to do the work for me.
Think about the fact even God tells us to bless our enemies
instead of trying to deliver them from demonic spirits that are influencing them.
Lord, deliver that person from the spirit of stupidity.
You know, they've been really getting on my nerves.
No, God, I bless them.
I ask you to minister to their hearts.
He asks us to pray that way because it actually changes their life effectively.
It's not just a principle for our own heart.
It actually does change our enemies by releasing God's kingdom to them.
Another quick point for you is pray scripture. Scripture is God-breathed.
That's what 2nd Timothy says. And I have way more confidence in God's language and thoughts and prayers than I do in my own.
Right? My language is... you're hearing it right now. It's not that eloquent.
Sometimes I don't really know what to say. Sometimes I fumble over my words, but the Lord's language is powerful.
He knows exactly what we should pray.
So I always try to pray His words more than I pray just the things that are on my heart.
So most of the time I just plagiarize the Holy Spirit and it works really well.
And I'm not ashamed of that and you shouldn't be ashamed of that either.
So in this series, I'm gonna give you some of my favorite scriptures to pray and you can try that for yourself on your own time.
Another quick tip for developing your prayer life in intercession is pray in tongues.
Praying in tongues is called in the Bible praying in the Spirit.
There's a lot of different verses talking about praying in the Spirit and it's talking about using the gift of tongues
because it's literally the Holy Spirit praying the perfect will of God through your mouth, right?
Look at Romans 8 26.
The Spirit also helps us in our weaknesses for we do not know what we should pray for as we ought,
but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.
Like He does it for us.
Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God.
So Jesus is an intercessor. So is the Holy Spirit.
So when I'm praying in my prayer language, when I'm praying in tongues,
the Holy Spirit is praying through me the perfect will of God, which is incredible.
So if that's something that's new for you, if you don't know what to pray,
you can't find a good scripture to pray, you can pray in tongues.
We're gonna spend some time talking about that in a later session.
So if that's new for you, just put it on the back burner for now and don't worry about it.
Just pray scripture. But if you do know how to pray in tongues, start doing it every day.
Like I want to challenge you to do it for five minutes a day and then in a couple weeks add five minutes to that
or add two minutes to that. Don't overwhelm yourself.
But praying in tongues will transform your life and we'll talk about more why later on.
So let's let's talk about making a prayer list. Now that we have these kind of basic tips of how we should pray,
let's talk about what we should pray, who we should pray for, and how do we come
come across doing these things in an organized fashion.
So this is a really practical way to optimize your prayer time and I keep my list on my notes app
or my reminders app on my phone depending on what kind of prayer request is it, but you can also do it in your journal.
That's a great way. What's important is that you bring this list with you to your prayer time.
So like if you're doing your prayer time outside somewhere, don't forget your prayer list because then you're gonna get there and you're gonna be like,
shoot, what do I pray now? So bring your prayer list with you. You can use your phone. There's nothing wrong with that.
You can use a tablet. There's nothing wrong with that. You could use your journal or even the back of your Bible.
There's some space. However, you want to do it.
Keep in mind that this list is not supposed to restrict you from praying the same things over and over and over again.
It's actually to help you when you're tired or distracted. Like I have the shortest,
I have the attention span of a goldfish, right?
So I really need help from the Holy Spirit and I need practical ways to help me stay focused in my prayer time so that it's actually
enjoyable and effective. So it's just here for you to look down at the list and you can just pick something on the list.
Oh, I'm gonna pray for that person or I'm gonna pray this scripture. I'm gonna pray these things.
There's gonna be three lists in your prayer list. The first list is gonna be petition prayers for yourself.
So I found that praying for myself is a great starting point before I pray for others.
Now some of you have maybe never prayed for yourself or intentionally prayed for yourself.
I want to encourage you to start doing that.
You've got this devotional prayer time down. Start adding prayers for yourself and you can even do that in your devotional time.
We talked a little bit about that. So I'm gonna commit to obey and I'm gonna choose to believe, right?
Those are the two ways that I'm gonna respond to prayer.
And I love to put on this list the scriptures that I did from the biblical meditation time.
So the read it, write it, say it, sing it, pray it, play it. Those things that I'm, those scriptures are gonna go into my
personal prayer list and I'm gonna begin routinely praying those scriptures over my own life and over my own heart.
And as I do that, that language is gonna get to know me, right?
You might know that scripture, but does that scripture know you? Like is it a part of your heart and the way that you pray?
That's a great starting place
where you can respond to scripture for your own personal life.
The next list that you're gonna make is intercession for others and this list is gonna be a little bit more practical.
I don't put as much detail as I do on the first list,
which I'm gonna like write out scriptures and even certain
rephrasings of the scriptures if I feel inspired to pray a certain way. But list two,
I'm gonna steal a lot of the same material from list one. I'm just
changing who I'm praying for.
Instead of praying for myself,
I'm gonna pray for my mom,
or I'm gonna pray for my pastor,
or I'm gonna pray for somebody that I'm discipling,
or I'm gonna pray for my neighbor
that I'm having a really hard time getting along with,
which is a really good idea to do
if that's what's happening to you.
So this list is just the names of people,
ministries, or cities and regions
that I've committed to pray for,
and then also their prayer needs.
So if there's a specific thing
they're asking me to pray for,
and I say, yes, I will pray for you every week,
or I'll pray for you every day,
I'm gonna write down what they want me to pray for,
which is logical.
I love how many times Paul actually said
that he was making mention of people.
He'd say, I make mention of you in my prayers.
It's all throughout his epistles.
So sometimes all I do is just mention someone to the Lord.
You know, I'll just go down my list,
and maybe I'll just say, God, would you bless my mom?
God, would you bless my sister?
God, would you bless this person?
And when one of them is highlighted to me,
or I feel a tug on my heart,
maybe I'll spend a little more time,
and I'll take a scripture from my first list
and begin to pray that over that person
in the same way that I prayed it for myself.
So those small prayers are really useful.
Don't neglect the power of 10-second, 15-second prayers.
Even outside of your prayer time
in your normal day-to-day life,
those prayers are incredibly powerful,
especially if they're rooted in scripture.
And then there's a third list that I put in
that's like intercession for justice issues.
Now, this is something that I wouldn't necessarily
encourage you to spend a lot of time doing,
because this can get weighty.
This can get heavy.
On this list, I'm putting down things that are wrong
in the world, or in my city, or in my family,
or my region that I know the Lord wants to make right.
These are things like the ending of abortion,
the ending of human trafficking,
hunger crisis, the border crisis,
the government, war and genocide, those types of things.
And you have to be careful praying for these things.
And I actually only pray for these things with other people.
I never pray this list in my own personal prayer time,
but I still keep it in my prayer list,
unless the Lord specifically tells me to.
Like sometimes He'll wake me up at a certain time
and say, hey, I want you to pray for this issue.
And out of obedience, I'm gonna do that
because I know He's gonna give me the grace to do that.
But sometimes people get wrapped up in these justice issues
and they just become really sad and burdened people.
And they get sick and it weighs them down.
And prayer is supposed to be enjoyable.
He's gonna give us joy in the house of prayer,
not heavy burdens.
So remember Matthew 11, 28, Jesus said,
come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden,
and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me
in the place of prayer,
for I am gentle and lowly in heart,
and you will find rest for your souls.
For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
So if we're not feeling rested, we're not feeling joy,
we're not feeling our burdens lifting
when we're going into the place of prayer,
we're probably spending too much time in intercession
and not enough time in devotion and petition.
So I wanna encourage you, start with those things,
but start making a list that can help you
because you're doing 15 minutes a day right now.
So you're gonna get through your first five minutes
and you're gonna struggle to know,
oh, what am I gonna pray?
You're gonna want this list to help you.
So again, I wanna encourage you,
have fun in this place of prayer
and I'll see you in the next session.