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Worship
Arguably, the most important aspect of our prayer life should be our worship; our adoration of the Lord.
Worship is about far more than singing songs and dancing, although those are wonderful and beautiful expressions of worship.
Worship is about bringing Jesus the praise that He is worthy of and loving Him for Who He is.
There is no description of God that could ever fully encompass His beauty, His goodness, His justice, His faithfulness, His kindness, His glory.
He is so holy – so set apart from everything and everyone that no amount of praise and devotion we can give Him could ever be enough. Yet, He is so deserving of all that we have to offer.
In worshipping Him, in recognizing and declaring His holiness, we lay ourselves down to Him as living sacrifices in response to the Love He has shed abroad in our hearts.
We can only love and worship Him because He first loved us. He has given Himself fully as the ultimate sacrifice – the precious blood of Jesus is the sole reason we may enter into His presence and behold Him.
That love He gave deserves response. He deserves honor and praise.
He is so worthy of our worship, we cannot even begin to declare His worthiness enough.
So we bring our whole self and lay it at the altar.
David said “I will not offer burnt offerings to the LORD my God that cost me nothing.”
Is our worship costly in our hearts? Is every second we can praise Him precious to us, or is it cheap and convenient? Are we willing to give Him our time, our attention, our heart, soul, mind, and strength?
We must devote ourselves fully to worshipping the Lamb Who is worthy.
“Exalt the Lord our God; bow in worship at His holy mountain, for the Lord our God is holy.”
Psalms 99:9 CSB
Fellowship
It’s important that we remember to fellowship with God.
Far too often, when we remember to pray, it’s just asking Him to grant our petitions.
Don’t get me wrong — God loves giving His children good gifts, but if that’s where we stay in prayer, we’re missing out on so much that there is to experience in friendship with Him.
It can be easy to make a list of desires and then say “in Jesus’ Name, amen.” But how often are we listening to what He has to say to us?
We need the voice of God.
What He has to say to us is always more important than what we have to say to Him.
I felt the Lord speak something to me a little while back:
When He invites us into a time of prayer, we need to listen. And guess what: even when we initiate the prayer, we still need to listen.
He has some pretty wonderful things to say, and when we listen, perspectives start to change, understanding and wisdom is given, knowledge of God’s character and plan are imparted, and we get to talk to our Friend.
I’ll never forget the first time I decided to just talk to God as I would to a friend. It ended up being, to date, the clearest I have ever heard His voice. (Yet)
I asked Him how His day was and I felt as though He replied immediately that it was good and that there was a worship team in Malaysia preparing for a worship night and that it would be very fruitful.
I was slightly skeptical of my ability to hear God in that moment, but I still decided to pray over that worship team.
Then I heard the name, “Tommy”. At that point I thought “there’s no way I’m hearing God right.” I didn’t know anything about Malaysia but it seemed impossible that there was someone there named Tommy. But I prayed over him anyway.
Soon after, however, I started searching and found out that an international ministry based all over Asia was planning a night of worship the following weekend in Malaysia! Not only that, but out of all their international ministers, one of their Malaysian pastors was named Tommy!
I was so amazed, but also encouraged! Hearing God’s voice tends to bring a supernatural excitement and encouragement.
There have been quite a few times that I’ve become very giddy like a child after conversations with Him, which brings me to another point:
We need to leave prayer differently than we entered into it.
Bill Johnson says it this way:
“If I come into God’s Presence and pray but then leave the same, I probably wasn’t praying, I was just complaining.”
One of the reasons that hearing God’s voice is so vital is that the Holy Spirit helps us to exchange our ways of thinking and being for His ways, His thoughts, and His heart.
I want His heart. I want my heart to beat in unison with His and nothing less than that will suffice.
Let us enjoy our friendship with the Lord; hearing from Him, learning from Him, communing with Him, leaning into Him in ever increasing and deepening intimacy.
“For He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture, the sheep under His care. Today, if you hear His voice:”
Psalms 95:7 CSB
Dedication/Devotion
While devotion is interwoven with sacrificial worship, I wanted to emphasize it here to show the distinction between the prayer of Jesus in the garden and a petition of faith.
Following Christ’s example, a very common prayer is this:
“Thy will be done; not mine.”
The problem is that this prayer is very often misapplied. It isn’t over-prayed, but rather misused in prayer.
This is a prayer of dedication to the Lord’s will; a surrender to His desire, a prayer that says, like Job, “though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.”
It is not a prayer of petition in faith.
Let me give you an example.
The three Hebrew boys in the book of Daniel are faced with the threat of the fiery furnace. What do they do? They do two things. They make a declaration in faith, and they also make a declaration of devotion.
First, they state that the Lord is able to rescue them and that He will deliver them from the king’s hand.
Second, they proclaim that even if He didn’t, they would not worship the idol.
While this may appear contradictory, the two declarations are serving different purposes. The first is a step of faith and an awareness of God’s nature and sovereignty. The second is a surrender of heart and soul to God.
It’s a beautiful prayer. But an often misused prayer.
Maybe sometimes it’s easy to use this prayer if we’re scared that we’re asking for the “wrong thing”? As if we need to tip toe cautiously around the Lord in prayer. That’s what His correction and conviction is for.
So, instead of using this prayer of dedication as a vague and cautious petition, let’s use it as it should be used: as a surrender of whole self to the Lord entirely.
This is a prayer of pouring yourself out to the Lord and longing for Him as the deer longs for streams of water. It is the prayer of Mary pouring out her expensive oil on the feet of Jesus.
“God, You are my God; I eagerly seek You. I thirst for You; my body faints for You in a land that is dry, desolate, and without water.”
Psalms 63:1 CSB
Petition
Working for Andrew Wommack Ministries as a Prayer Minister has been extremely impactful on my prayer life.
One of the first things I learned there was the ministry’s views on root needs and fruit needs in prayer.
More on this teaching can be found in Andrew’s book: Effortless Change.
I’ll just sum up here how it has affected me and my prayer life.
Everything we could possibly need from the Lord can be considered a “fruit need”, and there are certain “root needs” that bring about beautiful fruit in our lives, such as remembering God’s steadfast love towards us, our identity in Christ, Christian authority in Jesus, and remembering the nature and character of God.
So how do we plant these root needs and bring about fruit in our lives? We must plant them using the “incorruptible seed”. Peter writes in his first epistle that the living and enduring Word of God is the incorruptible or imperishable seed.
If we are diligent to plant the Word of the Lord in our hearts, we can surely expect roots to sprout and fruit to flower.
While, absolutely, this applies to our life in the study of Scripture, especially with the illumination of the Spirit to teach us from His Word, another way to apply this directly can be by standing on the promises and principles of the Word in prayer.
George Müller practiced this regularly. In his prayer journals, he recorded over 50,000 answers to prayer, 30,000 of which were answered in the same day he prayed them.
To us that seems pretty incredible, though Müller wasn’t surprised one bit. He was certainly in awe of the Lord, yet not surprised that the Lord would honor His Word.
See, before George Müller prayed over a certain petition, He would spend His time meditating upon Scripture. The Word of God was vital to his life, calling it food for his soul.
His approach was Word first.
Biographer R. A. Torrey records that Müller would pray “with an open Bible before him.” When he found a promise in Scripture to stand on, he would place his finger on that promise and bring it to the Lord Who is faithful to keep His promises.
It makes sense that Müller wasn’t shocked when his prayers were answered. He had a deep understanding of the character of God. He knew that God would come through. That’s incredible faith. That’s trust.
How do we build our faith like that? In the exact same way that Müller spent his time before prayer.
The Bible says in Romans that “faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.”
If we know God is faithful, when we search the Scriptures, inviting the Holy Spirit to breathe on them and bring these promises alive in our hearts, we’ll see more than just cool concepts. We’ll see everlasting faithfulness, kindness, beauty, and steadfast love.
When we stand on the Word, we can pray bold prayers and truly expect fruit that glorifies Jesus.
Faith is essential to our prayer lives. Jesus told His disciples that everything they prayed and asked for, they were to believe they had received it, and that it would be theirs.
(A quick side note, in this same passage, Jesus tells us that when we pray we are to let go of all bitterness and rather choose to forgive anyone we have anything against. I’ve heard it argued that, from this context, unforgiveness can actually be a hindrance to prayer.)
It’s necessary that we take God at His Word, and apply its wisdom and principles to our lives and to our prayer.
God is a covenant keeping God. He will not forsake His children. He will keep His promises. When we have an understanding of this and plant this truth deep in our hearts, we can expect roots to grow and fruit to flower.
Another quick note, not only are there many promises in Scripture to stand on, but there are also many Bible passages that can be prayed. The Psalms especially have many beautiful prayers of praise, worship, devotion, supplication, petition, and faith.
The Word of God, the sharp double edged Sword of the Spirit, is a powerful weapon. If we want bolder prayers filled with ever increasing faith, the Bible is going to be a sure and strong foundation.
Another very special truth to remember is that the Lord is our perfect Father Who delights in blessing His children. He loves demonstrating His faithfulness.
The Psalms tell us that if we delight ourselves in the Lord, He will give us the desires of our hearts.
Jesus says in the Gospel of Matthew that we are to ask, seek, and knock. He says our Father in Heaven will much more so give good things to those who ask Him.
In the book of James it’s pointed out that believers won’t receive if they aren’t asking God, or asking but with selfish and sinful motives.
We must let our desires be sanctified by the blood of Christ through His Spirit at work within us, and present those desires to the Lord in prayer. He loves His children. And He loves blessing His children.
“For the Word of the Lord is right, and all His work is trustworthy. He loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of the Lord’s unfailing love.”
Psalms 33:4-5 CSB
Conclusion
This was more of an overview than a deep dive into prayer, but I hope that it’s helpful to anyone desiring to go further in their prayer lives.
Application
Prayer:
Wonderful Father, You are most worthy of our prayer. You are most deserving of our trust and of our faith; of our time, of our attention, and of our devotion.
Help us to lean into You. Speak to our hearts as we come close to You. We want more of You, so Lord take all of us. Our hearts are Yours.
Have Your way in our lives, and right now we specifically ask that You would come have Your way in our prayer lives.
We want to honor You with every word that escapes our lips and every thought that fills our mind. We desire that our hearts would beat in unison with Yours; that the very breath in our lungs would be devoted to the praise of Your Name.
Lord, let Your presence be more precious to us than rubies; than diamonds and precious stones. Let the time spent in the secret place of the Most High be priceless to our hearts but not rare.
Give us an awareness of Your faithfulness, increasing our faith by every word spoken in Your Scriptures and by the sound of Your still small voice.
Give us boldness in our spirits to hold fast to what is true and stand on Your promises in unwavering hope, faith, and trust.
Let us be in awe of You, yet unsurprised at the answers we will see to our petitions. We know that You will keep Your Word, for You are a God of covenant. Your voice will never return void.
We thank You in advance for the beautiful fruit that we will see in our lives. We thank You for all that You have done and all that You will do. We thank You for the testimonies You are preparing.
Let the words of our mouths, and the meditations of our hearts, be acceptable in Your sight, oh Lord, our Strength, and our Redeemer.
In the mighty and precious Name of Jesus, our Lord; for Your glory alone,
Amen.
In Christ
Mount Beriyth 
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