Lesson 28: Talking with God in Prayer (part 7)

Read: Matthew 7:7-11 - www.bible.com/bible/59/mat.7.esv

Persistence in prayer, or perseverance, is also a necessary element. Someone might ask, does God forget what I'm praying for? Is this why He needs me to repeat it? No, God does not forget, but we do. Persistence in prayer is intended to capture our total attention. As we give our attention to God completely, He can begin to shape our spirit so we begin to pray according to God's will (Matthew 7:7-8; Luke 11:5-10; 18:1-8).

When we are praying God's will we will also find ourselves praying with confidence in Him (Ephesians 3:12; Hebrews 10:19).

Other conditions of prayer include:
- absence of wrath and dissension (1 Timothy 2:8)
- piety (Hebrews 5:7)
- a righteous life (Psalms 34:15; Proverbs 15:8, 29; James 5:16)
- delight in the Lord (Psalms 37:4)
- sincerity (Psalms 145:18)
- recognition of God as merciful (Luke 18:13)
- praying in Christ's name (John 14:13-14; 16:24)

What does it mean to pray in Christ's name? Almost all of us close our prayers with "in Jesus’ name I pray, amen" in every single prayer we pray. But is this really what it means? No, praying in Christ's name means we pray according to His will.

Let's take a closer look at our prayer life for a moment. How many of us pray, "Be with Mary in..." or "Be with them as they...?" Have you ever thought about this statement? Has God not promised to be with us always? Why are we praying for something He has promised? Now don't misunderstand me: David, when he had heard God's promise to make an eternal Royal line of his descendants, immediately prayed God would do what He had promised. But I don't believe we are thinking about this when we pray God would “be with” someone. It's a habit because we don't know what else to pray for.


We need to take our prayers into the conscious arena in our lives (Isaiah 1:18). We need to pray what we mean and mean what we pray. Some years ago I heard a challenge from a teacher who said we should take one statement we always use out of our prayers and change it. We must change it consciously so we will always pray consciously. In my case, I took out the phrases "in Jesus’ name I pray" and "be with." In exchange for the "be with" phrase I substituted what I really mean, such as "protect," "help me bring glory to You," "help them be aware of Your presence" and so on. I exchanged the ending phrase of my prayer for a Thanksgiving time, telling God I'm thankful for what He will do with a prayer I've just prayed. Even after nearly 10 years, the habit of wanting to close my prayer as I hear everyone else doing is almost irresistible. It would be so much simpler to just say "in Jesus’ name I pray" than to think of something else. This is why I continue to pray as I do. People often come to me, after I have prayed aloud in a group setting, and ask me why I don't say those "formula" words. I explain to them I am teaching myself to pray consciously and to pray what I really mean, and these are words which make me do so.

*Choose some point of your prayer life, take some repetitious or automatic element of your prayer, and change it into something which makes you think about it every time you pray. One way of doing this is to change the format of your prayer; for example, write out your prayer rather than saying it aloud, or read a Psalm as your prayer and change the pronouns so it comes from you to God.