Helpful Pointers for Prayer
Helpful Prayer Pointers
1. Get yourself right with God. Pray a prayer of repentance; it will help you hear God better and will help you to pray with boldness!
2. Put on the full armour of God by praying through Ephesians 6:10 to end. Visualising yourself putting on each piece of armour may help!
3. Ask God to guide your prayers and that you won’t be distracted.
4. You may find it helpful to start with praise and worship, either by prayer or song. It helps “clear the air” in the spiritual realms (or play some worship music).
5. Remember God has given you authority, so as well as asking God for things in prayer, if there is a problem you are praying about, speak to it by name and tell it what to do. “Whatever you bind in heaven will be bound on earth and whatever you loose in heaven will be loosed on earth” (Matthew 16:19)
6. Pray in the name of Jesus, not just in His name but according to God’s; this will bring us into agreement with Him
7. Keep going back in to worship between prayers. It keeps you strong spiritually. Praying in tongues also helps.
8. If you are praying with someone else, pray in agreement. That is, as one speaks the other prays “yes Lord” or “Amen” etc. during the prayer . This makes your prayers even stronger! (One can put a thousand to flight but two can put ten thousand to flight!)
9. Remember to thank the Lord for answering your prayers, even before you see the physical results.
10. Pray with fasting: (giving something up whilst praying; usually food but it can be anything, e.g. a favourite TV programme). This increases the effectiveness of prayer as you are “sacrificing” something for God.
11. Remember….. Where possible, pray out loud; it acts as a reminder that you are in a real conversation with our loving Father God who loves to hear from us, and it's Biblical too (Psalm 142:1–2)!
12. Remember that prayer is a dialogue, not monologue, so learn to listen to the Holy Spirit and enjoy fellowship and intimacy with God!
What kinds of prayer are there?
There are many different kinds of prayer and the only “right” way to pray is the way God leads you at any given time. However, as a guide to some of the kinds of prayer, here are just a few:
1. Prayer with understanding: That is praying in your native tongue as opposed to praying in tongues which, unless you get interpretation, is direct between your spirit and God.
2. The prayer of faith: This is praying with confidence that our prayers will be answered and praying with boldness.
3. Prayer of dedication: Basically, praying to God about our willingness to submit to His will for our lives.
4. Casting our cares on the Lord: We have to give our worries over to God as fear binds up our faith making us ineffective.
5. Prayer of praise and worship: We often think of praise and worship as being all about music. But prayers of worship can often be a more intimate and effective way of coming in to God’s presence as they are about our own relationship with Him.
6. Prayer of agreement: I have covered this in “Helpful Prayer Pointers” (number 8)
7. Prayer of repentance: See “Helpful Prayer Pointers” (number 1)
8. Praying in tongues: Praying in the language that the Holy Spirit gives you when you receive Baptism in the Spirit.
9. Travail: Basically is when we keep in prayer until we get an answer, often because God gives us real empathy for what we are praying about, which may even cause us to weep.
10. Intercession: Generally is praying for others but it is also our praying about things in the spiritual realm such as coming against spiritual strongholds in an area or nation.
11. Prayer of reflection: This is often a time of quiet prayer and waiting on God to speak into a situation, either through the Bible or directly to our own spirit.