I'm convinced one of the reasons the Church has had such great difficulty in prayer is we've made it more complicated than it is. We have surrounded it with religious rules and regulations and regarded it as so spiritually lofty as to be almost unobtainable to the average Christian.
But actually, prayer is quite simple. It is nothing more nor less than communication with God. And if you're a born again believer, prayer is as natural to you spiritually as breathing is to you physically. Your spirit by its very nature cries out spontaneously to God, " Abba, Father" (See Romans 8:15).
In fact, prayer is who you are, not just something you do. Read Isaiah 56:7 and you can see what I mean. There the Lord said, "My house will be called a house of prayer." In Old Covenant times, God's house was a building, a temple built in His honor. But today, we're under the New Covenant and God no longer lives in a temple of stone. He inhabits the spirits of born again men and women. As 1 Corinthians 3:16 says, "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?"
The house of prayer isn't the church building down the block. It isn't some sanctuary somewhere. You are God's house of prayer!
Once you realize that, you can stop straining at it. You can quit trying to manufacture elegant, super-spiritual-sounding phrases and simply start expressing your heart to God. Instead of trying to construct the perfect prayer, you can just be honest and open with Him.
"But I don't know how to do that!" you may say. "Every time I try to pray, I freeze up. It's as if I hit a brick wall."
Then tell God about it! Say, "Father, I want to talk to you. But I seem to be hitting a brick wall and I'm not able to express myself. I don't know what to do about it, Lord. So I'm just asking you to help me."
It sounds almost childishly simple, doesn't it? Yet the truth is, a prayer like that spoken from the heart will produce far greater results than the grandest prayer designed by the mind of man. That's because it's the heartfelt prayer (James 5:16 AMP) not the headfelt prayer that makes tremendous power available.
Effective praying comes from your heart, not your head. Not one time does the Word of God tell us to pray from our minds. It says we're to pray from our hearts. Even when you "pray with your understanding" (1 Cor. 14:15), you should still be praying from your heart.
If you've spent more time and effort developing your mind or your intellect than your spirit, you may have difficulty locating your heart at first. But you can solve that problem by spending more time in the Word of God. For Hebrews 4:12 says, "...the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart."
As you read and meditate the Word, it will help you distinguish between your heart and your head. It will help you cultivate your sensitivity to the spirit. That sensitivity is very important in prayer because you are a spirit and God is a spirit; so the way you contact Him is from spirit to spirit, from heart to heart!
Getting Honest with God
In 1 Samuel, you can find an example of just how wonderfully effective prayer can be when it comes honestly and openly from the depths of your heart. Chapter one tells about Hannah, a woman who was deeply grieved by her inability to bear a child. Adding to her sorrow was the fact that her husband had another wife who could bear children and who provoked Hannah by mocking her barren condition. As a result, Hannah became so distressed that she wept and did not eat.
Although Hannah's barrenness was physical, I've seen spiritual barrenness have the same effect on people. I've seen people with a desperation to know God and be fruitful in prayer that surpasses even their hunger for physical food. I've seen them desire so intensely to have the will of God done in their lives it causes them to weep.
In Hannah's case, Elkanah her husband said to her, "Hannah, why weepest thou? and why eatest thou not? and why is thy heart grieved? am not I better to thee than ten sons?" (v. 8). He loved her greatly and tried to fill up this void in her life, but he couldn't.
That's the way it is in spiritual things, too. It doesn't matter how wonderful people are to you, they cannot satisfy the deep, inner desire you have to know God's plan for your life. They can't fill the longing you have for fellowship with your heavenly Father.
Eventually, Hannah's distress grew so great, she went to the temple of the Lord....
And she was in bitterness of soul, and prayed unto the Lord, and wept sore. And she vowed a vow, and said, O Lord of hosts, if thou wilt indeed look on the affliction of thine handmaid, and remember me, and not forget thine handmaid, but wilt give unto thine handmaid a man child, then I will give him unto the Lord all the days of his life, and there shall no razor come upon his head.
And it came to pass, as she continued praying before the Lord, that Eli (the priest) marked her mouth. Now Hannah, she spake in her heart; only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard: therefore Eli thought she had been drunken. And Eli said unto her, How long wilt thou be drunken? put away thy wine from thee. And Hannah answered and said, No, my lord, I am a woman of a sorrowful spirit: I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but have poured out my soul before the Lord....Then Eli answered and said, Go in peace: and the God of Isreal grant thee thy petition that thou hast asked of him. And she said, Let thine handmaid find grace in thy sight. So the woman went her way, and did eat, and her countenance was no more sad (1 Sam. 10-18).
If you'll read the rest of the story, you'll find God not only gave Hannah the son she requested, He gave her five other children as well. How did she get such a remarkable results? Did she obtain them by mechanically applying a formula for answered prayer? Did she get them by working up the best, most wonderful-sounding petition she possibly could?
No, she did it by pouring out her heart honestly and openly to God and by believing He heard and answered her prayer just as the priest said He would.
Clean Out the Clutter
If you're sensing a barrenness in your prayer life, you may need to do the same thing. You may need to do as Lamentations 2:19 says and "Arise [from your bed], cry out in the night, at the beginning of the watches; pour out your heart like water before the face of the Lord."
You see, your soul is like a container. It has many things inside it. Most people just try to relate to God from the surface of that container, so their relationship with Him remains very superficial.
Those people remind me of a teacher I had in seventh grade. She was an extremely unique person and one of the most memorable things about her was the closet in her classroom. She packed it so full she couldn't open the door all the way because if she did, a mountain of stuff would come tumbling down upon her. Whenever she brought a coat to school, she would open the closet just a crack, jam the coat inside and slam the door!
Some people's souls are like that. They're cluttered up with spiritual debris and emotional junk they've accumulated over the years. What they need to do is open the door to their hearts and let everything just fall out before the Lord.
In other words, they need to get very honest before God.
Actually, we all need to do that. We need to stop trying to present to God our spiritual side, the part of us that's all brushed up nice and neat. We need to be real and admit to God we have problems with our attitudes and motivations and ask Him to come in and change them.
Did you know you can keep God out of certain areas of your life by refusing to expose them to Him? You can close the door on Him by failing to communicate with Him honestly about them and trying to act like something you're not.
By the same token, you can throw open that door with simple honesty in prayer by saying, "God, did you know what I thought this morning? It was the most ghastly thing! I need you to forgive me and help me in that area."
Pouring out your soul is like cleaning out that cluttered closet. Some things just need to be confessed, put under the Blood of Jesus and thrown away forever. Other things - cares and worries - need to be given to God in faith. Still other issues may just need to be discussed with the Lord, then put back in your heart in a more orderly fashion.
You may even discover some things within you that are too big to articulate in words. You can sense them in there, but you don't know exactly what they are - much less how to communicate them. In those instances, you can pour them out to the Lord in other tongues. You may even find yourself weeping as you do that. If so, just yield to that weeping because it is the Holy Spirit moving upon you. Keep praying until you feel the peace of God and sense that you have finished pouring out your heart.
If your "closet" hasn't been cleaned out for a while, it may take you more than one prayer session to reach that sense of completion. If so, that's fine, set aside time each day and keep going back to the Lord until, with the help of the Holy Spirit, you get the job done.
From then on, keep your soul uncluttered by communicating to the Lord often - honestly, openly and always straight from the heart.
Excerpt permission granted by Mac Hammond Ministries
A teacher and an author, Lynne publishes a newsletter called Prayer Notes, has written numerous books, and currently serves as the national prayer director for Daughters for Zion. Her passion for inspiring and leading others into the life of Spirit-led prayer continues to take her around the world to minister to believers whose heart cry, like hers, is “Lord, teach me to pray!”
