{"id":554,"date":"2021-03-30T10:03:46","date_gmt":"2021-03-30T10:03:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sandbox.designswebs.com\/rocksal\/?p=554"},"modified":"2021-03-30T10:03:46","modified_gmt":"2021-03-30T10:03:46","slug":"techniques-for-effective-prayer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sandbox.designswebs.com\/rocksal\/techniques-for-effective-prayer\/","title":{"rendered":"Techniques for Effective Prayer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Applying Faith To Your Prayers<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>1. Come To God Believing:<\/strong><br>The scriptures declare: &#8220;He who comes to God must believe that He Is, and that He is a&nbsp;Rewarding of those who diligently seek Him.&#8221; (Heb 11:6) The first portion of this&nbsp;scripture: &#8220;He who comes to God must believe that He Is&#8221; gives us a good starting point&nbsp;in learning the application of faith. We begin by coming to God as in prayers: We come&nbsp;singing, praising and giving thanks to Him so that we can enter into His presence (Psalms&nbsp;100). Upon entering His presence, we begin to worship Him, and believe in Him: that He&nbsp;exists, and is real, and that He is the all powerful, all knowing, and all mighty God who is&nbsp;the source of all existence. As such, He is the only One who has power to grant our&nbsp;prayer requests. As we continue to worship Him, we deepen our believe to enable us&nbsp;become fully persuaded that He will reward us according to His promise in the second&nbsp;part of this scripture: &#8220;He is a Rewarding of those who diligently seek Him.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><br><strong>2. Confess And Release Your Faith While Praying:<\/strong><br>At this level of full persuasion, we notice that the presence of God that we feel remains&nbsp;constant, we feel strengthened, peaceful and bold. At this time, we release our faith into&nbsp;God by confessing our requests to Him. This confession is simply our prayer request to&nbsp;God, expressed in a way that reflects our persuasion that God is able and willing to grant&nbsp;our request. We do not prepare what to say. Rather, our mouth simply speaks as it is&nbsp;being driven by the persuasive force of the faith that has filled our heart; just as the&nbsp;scriptures declare that &#8220;out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks&#8221; (Matt&nbsp;12:34).Indeed, the more persuaded our heart is, the more convincing and powerful our&nbsp;confession is.<br>As an example, a Roman centurion heard about Jesus and became 100% persuaded that&nbsp;He has the power and the authority to heal his dying servant who was at home (Matt 8:5-11). So He came to Jesus and asked Him to heal the servant. When Jesus agreed to go&nbsp;with him, He made a powerful confession that acknowledged that Jesus has full power&nbsp;and authority over diseases and, therefore can heal a sick person at will. This how He said&nbsp;it.&#8221;Lord, I am not worthy that You should come under my roof. But only speak a word,&nbsp;and my servant will be healed&#8221; (read more in your bible). Jesus marveled at such a great&nbsp;confession of faith coming from an unsaved person, and spoke the word that healed the&nbsp;servant.<br>Another example is a non-Jewish woman who came to Jesus with a belief that obviously&nbsp;was not fully persuasive. Without spending time to worship Him so her faith can rise&nbsp;further, she immediately asked Jesus to heal her daughter; making a confession that did&nbsp;not reflect the great faith in her. Following Jewish traditions, Jesus ignored her, for He&nbsp;came to minister to only Jews, not Gentiles. But this woman was diligent in seeking the&nbsp;Lord, so she came and worshiped Him, which of course had the potential to deepen her&nbsp;believe in Jesus. However, she made a weak confession again(&#8220;Lord help me&#8221;), by asking&nbsp;Jesus for healing again before her believe was fully persuasive. As a result, Jesus rejected&nbsp;her request again; responding with words that most of us would regard as offensive. But&nbsp;instead of feeling offended, she turned around and did something marvelously faithful:&nbsp;She drew nearer and worshiped Him again, and finally, she made a confession reflecting&nbsp;the great depth of faith and persuasion that had built up in her heart. This time, Jesus&nbsp;marveled at such a great confession of faith, and spoke the word that healed her daughter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><br><strong>3. Believe That You Are Receiving What You\u2019re Asking For:<\/strong><br>When Jesus thought His disciple how to apply their faith, He said to them: &#8220;whatever&nbsp;things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have&nbsp;them.&#8221; (Mark 11:23-24). What this means is that whatever you asked for while&nbsp;confessing your faith, you must believe that you&#8217;re receiving them or have received them&nbsp;while you are still praying. The truth is that God has granted your prayers in the spirit&nbsp;realm, and it shall surely manifest for you in the natural realm at the right time if you&nbsp;believe it (see &#8220;Waiting For God To Answer&#8221;). I pray that these three tips shall help you&nbsp;harness your faith and extract more power for your daily power-living. Remain blessed.<br><br><strong>4. Keep Believing After Prayers<\/strong><br>In this issue, we consider what to do after the prayer: How to align our thinking, talking&nbsp;and actions to insure that His answers will manifest to us.<br>When God fulfills His answers to our prayers right away just like in the vast majority of&nbsp;the miracles that Jesus performed, then we don&#8217;t have to worry about what to do after the&nbsp;prayer: We simply receive the miracle with joy and thanksgiving.<br>But when He does not do so, then there is a waiting period during which we must conduct&nbsp;ourselves in certain ways to ensure that God&#8217;s answers will manifest sooner rather than&nbsp;later. These ways of conduct are:<br><strong>I. Remain Fully Persuaded That God Has Answered Our Prayers<\/strong><br>That is, we must not allow the great faith and the resulting persuasion that we reached in&nbsp;prayers to wane. Doing so invites premature disappointment leading to doubts and fear,&nbsp;which eventually kill our faith and thereby delay the fulfillment of God&#8217;s answers to our&nbsp;prayers. God will never withdraw His yes answer, but faithlessness on our part can delay&nbsp;the fulfillment of that answer.<br><strong>2. Align Yourself With God<\/strong><br>That is, during the waiting period you must:<br><br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Think like God<\/li><li>Talk like God and<\/li><li>Act like God.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Think, Talk And Act Like God:<\/strong><br>Let me use the story of Abraham to help us grasp how God does His things. God called&nbsp;Abraham and promised that through a descendant of his, He will redeem all the nations of&nbsp;the world. For this reason, God one day said to Abraham: &#8220;I have made you a father of&nbsp;many nations.&#8221; (This being spoken) in the presence of Him whom he believed, even God,&nbsp;who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they&nbsp;did (Rom. 4:17-24).<br>But Abraham and his wife (Sarah), being more than 75 and 65 years old, respectively,&nbsp;were advanced in age; way past child-bearing age. In human frame of thinking, how were&nbsp;they going to fulfill such a promise; being too old to start a lineage that would lead to a&nbsp;descendant who would fulfill God&#8217;s promise? But because God promised it, it had to be&nbsp;true, and they will surely have a child. But the child, Issac, did not come right away: it&nbsp;took 25 years; a very long time for a couple that was already too old to have a child&nbsp;naturally.<br>So what was Abraham to do during these long years? He had to align Himself with the&nbsp;frame of God&#8217;s mind; thinking, talking and walking the way God does. In the Romans&nbsp;4:17-24 scripture above, a universal statement about an attribute of God is made; God&nbsp;naturally&#8221;calls those things which do not exist as though they did.&#8221; In other words, God&#8217;s&nbsp;frame of mind is such that He calls things that do not exist in our world, as though they&nbsp;do. He said to Abraham &#8220;I have made you a father of many nations&#8221; even though it would&nbsp;take about 2000 years for the promise to be fulfilled.<br>In God&#8217;s world, Abraham was already a father of many nations in about 2000 BC, even&nbsp;though that did not start to happen in our world till about 33 AD. For when the scripture&nbsp;say; &#8220;&#8230;things that do not exist,&#8221; it means things that have not yet happened or manifested&nbsp;in our physical world. Nevertheless, these things exist in God&#8217;s world as soon as God&nbsp;speaks the answer to our prayers.<br>God is Spirit and lives in the realm of the Spirit. When He declares a thing or person to&nbsp;exist, that thing or person comes into being in His world; the Spirit realm. But in our&nbsp;physical world, the thing or person does not yet exist. Even so, we must by faith chose to&nbsp;disregard what our physical senses tell us; that it does not exist, and rather, believe and&nbsp;agree with God that it exists.<br><strong>For we who are the new creation, redeemed and called children of God, and having&nbsp;the image and nature of God, have been endued with power to think, talk and act like&nbsp;God; thinking about, talking about and acting on those things that we pray for, as&nbsp;though they exist. For by this, we speak in total agreement with God, who has the&nbsp;power to fulfill our request in the physical world.<\/strong><br>When we agree with God, He applies His power to fulfill His answers to our prayers, but&nbsp;when we disagree with God through unbelief, fear and doubt, we delay God from doing&nbsp;fulfilling His answers to our prayers.<br>Abraham Thought, Talked And Acted Like God.<br>By stitching together excerpts from verses 18-21 of Romans 4, we can say the following&nbsp;about Abraham&#8217;s thinking, talking and actions: He, &#8220;Contrary to hope, in hope (he)&nbsp;believed &#8230; what was spoken &#8230;&#8230; With great faith, he did not consider his own body,&nbsp;already dead (at 100 years old), and the Sarah&#8217;s died womb (at 90 years old). He&nbsp;did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith&#8221; so&nbsp;that he became fully persuaded that what God had promised He was also able to&nbsp;perform&#8221; (Rom. 4:18-24).<br>In other words, Abraham refused to believe the indication that he and Sarah were too old&nbsp;to have children for the upward fulfillment of God&#8217;s promise. Rather, he exercised great&nbsp;faith to believe God&#8217;s words; thinking, talking and acting like God until Sarah conceived&nbsp;and bore a son through whose descendant, Jesus Christ, that God later fulfilled his&nbsp;promise of making Abraham the Father of many nations. If we always emulate Abraham,&nbsp;none of our prayers will go unanswered.<br><strong>3. Always Expect God&#8217;s Answer To Manifest<\/strong><br>The third way that we should conduct ourselves is that we always should be expecting&nbsp;God to manifest His answers to our prayers. The expectation is the outward expression of&nbsp;our faith that God will surely manifest what He promised. Psalm 5:3 declares: &#8220;My voice&nbsp;You shall hear in the morning, O Lord; In the morning I will direct it to You, And I will&nbsp;look up. Here the psalmist is saying to God that he will pray to Him every morning, and&nbsp;afterwards shall expect His answers.<br>Remain blessed!<br><br><br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Applying Faith To Your Prayers 1. Come To God Believing:The scriptures declare: &#8220;He who comes to God must believe that He Is, and that He is a&nbsp;Rewarding of those who diligently seek Him.&#8221; (Heb 11:6) The first portion of this&nbsp;scripture: &#8220;He who comes to God must believe that He Is&#8221; gives us a good starting [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.designswebs.com\/rocksal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.designswebs.com\/rocksal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.designswebs.com\/rocksal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.designswebs.com\/rocksal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.designswebs.com\/rocksal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=554"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.designswebs.com\/rocksal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":555,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.designswebs.com\/rocksal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554\/revisions\/555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.designswebs.com\/rocksal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.designswebs.com\/rocksal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.designswebs.com\/rocksal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}