How to Pray an Effective Prayer

Learn How to Pray Effective Prayers

Having learnt how to pray it’s time now to learn how to pray an effective prayer. An effective prayer achieve your prayer objective, it gets the job done. The foundation for an effective prayer is to follow the same format Jesus taught his disciples. Employ the same principles in your prayer. However, I want to add three new components to make our prayers very effective: one, expectations, two, earnestness and three praying from our heart.

Step # 1: Learn How to Pray and Utilize Jesus’ Format

Whatever type of prayer we are praying our foundation should be how Jesus taught us to pray. If we don’t start right, we cannot end up with effective prayer. However, this is basic and we need to move to more advanced praying to see results.

Step # 2: While You Pray Watch for Result

Recall we receive the object of our prayer while we pray not after,Matthew 21:22;Mark 11:24. While you are speaking the Word of God, in prayer, you receive it, if you believe. Having received the Word of God that you will later receive that which you prayed for, start looking around for it. Expect it!

Believers don’t know the time and we don’t know how the Lord answers our prayers. However, we are certain He does for He is a faithful God. If you asked, the Lord for something expect to receive it. If you are not expecting to receive anything, why ask.

Peter and John told the lame man at Gate Beautiful, “Look on us.” He obeyed, “expecting to receive something of them”, Acts 3:5. What he was expecting was not what he got. However, if he was not expecting anything he may have missed his blessing. Instead, he got more than he ever imagined.

The woman with the “issue of blood” for twelve years had realistic expectations of her prayer. She said, “If I may but touch his garment, I shall be whole,” Matthew 9:21 & Mark 5:28. If she had no expectations of seeing what she prayed for she would not have touched Jesus.

Step # 3: Learning How to Pray Effective – Pray Earnestly

It is not a requirement of the Lord that effective prayers are long. By long I don’t mean the duration of your prayer but the duration between the initial prayer and seeing the result of your prayer. Scriptures reveal that individual circumstances is one factor, which affects the length of your wait.

For example, Abraham sent his servant, the Match Maker, to find a wife for Isaac among his family in Mesopotamia. On arrival in Mesopotamia, the Match Maker prayed to the Lord about his mission. As soon as the Match Maker finished praying, his prayer came true, Genesis 24:15.

Zacharias prayed very long for a son, Luke 1:13. He prayed and prayed and watched and watched until he and his wife were very old but he was still praying and watching for God to grant his prayer, Luke 1:7,18. Eventual, after a long period of prayers and expectations the Lord gave him John the Baptist.

Cornelius prayed a long time for salvation. He was among the first Gentiles to receive salvation, Acts 10:4 – 6.

Being earnest in prayer is to make praying a priority and do so consistently until your prayer is effective. Jesus said it best: “men ought always to pray, and not to faint”, Luke 18:1.

Jesus expects his Church to pray earnestly until it sees the object of its prayer. Keep on praying.

Step # 4: Learning How to Pray Effective Prayer – Pray From Your Heart

“Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much, “ James 5:16.

The two major factors that make a prayer effective are righteousness and “fervent prayer.” Righteousness because as a Believer in Jesus Christ the grace of God is on you therefore, He accepts your prayers. “Fervent” because you are praying from your heart. Fervent is of Latin origins deriving from “fervere” meaning, “To boil, glow”. It’s the fervency of your prayer that, contributes to the expectations and the earnestness of your prayer.

Prayers, which don’t emanate from the heart are cold, life less and go no farther than your ears. For this reason, repetitions and predetermined written prayers are never effective. Don’t use “vain repetitions”, Matthew 6:7. Prayers that are not from the heart don’t possess the fervency that, keeps them boiling. They don’t generate the godly expectations that motivate. Consequently, they are cold, they are dead, and they are never made in earnest and are ineffective. Hannah’s prayer was effective because she prayed a fervent prayer from her heart, 1 Samuel 1.

In closing, for our prayers to be effective we need motivation. Our expectations of what God promises concerning that which we received in prayer is fuel for our motivation. By our expectations, we persist and continue to pray, to watch and to wait for the object of our prayers.

Our expectations that God always honors his Word fuel our earnestness. At times, we may feel like giving up but we know all our praying would be for nothing. The Believer that pushes pass this transient emotion benefits from being earnest in prayer. Cornelius, Zacharias and the woman with the issue of blood all benefited from being earnest in prayer.

Our heart is the Control Tower of our lives. If we are not speaking from our heart, our words are cold, have no fervency and God will not hear them. God deals with our heart first. The heart is where we keep His Words. Therefore, if we are not praying from our heart we are not praying His Word. Is your heart empty of His Words? Whose words are you praying? By praying from the good treasures of your heart you will speak the feverishly hot Word of God which will give life to your prayer. If your heart if filled with the Word of God , they “abide” there, then you may ask what you want and He “will give it you” John 15:16. “For by the abundance of the heart your, mouth” speaks, Luke 6:45.

Tagged as: How to Pray Effective Prayers, Pray Earnestly, Pray Effectively, Pray From Your Heart, Pray With Expectations, Prayers of the Righteous