 The first key to establishing a consistent and effective prayer life, number one, faith. So when we go to pray, we must have the faith to believe that God indeed does hear us. Because believing that it's a fight to get God's attention, that in itself is a barrier to prayer. Because then when we think about prayer, we're not thinking of all the splendor of His glory. All the wonder of communion with the Lord. Oh, I can't wait to fellowship with the Holy Spirit. No, we're thinking, okay, I'm going to have to work up my prayer life. I'm going to have to start singing this and that and maybe jump up and down and wave my hands. I have to work myself emotionally. I have to exhaust myself mentally. And then maybe God will respond to me. And if you view that prayer, if you view prayer that way, who's going to want to pray? If that's your view on prayer, who's going to want to pray? As if God doesn't actually want to hear you. As if God doesn't actually want to look at you. So some believers approach the Lord like that, whether consciously or subconsciously. So you may say, no, no, no, I know God hears me. But then we think thoughts that actually demonstrate that in the back of our minds somewhere, we actually do believe that God doesn't hear us. Things like, well, is God really forgiving me for my past? Or did I pray enough today? Or is God upset with me because I forgot to pray yesterday? And those are the barriers we create for ourselves. I haven't prayed in two days. Now I have to really work for my place back with God. Wait a minute. You never worked for your place in His throne room in the first place. You never worked. You never earned your way in. Why do you think you have to earn your way back? Jesus paid the price for that entry. You don't have to go back, oh, I missed two days of prayer. Oh my goodness, I missed a week of prayer. And then you think that you're going to go to the Lord. He's going to be standing over you, arms folded, looking down from His throne room, going, well, well, well, look who decided to pray today. No, that's not what God is doing. That's not how our Heavenly Father is. No, He's not even going to hold that over your head. He's not. And we hold it over our own heads because of some religious, superstitious, traditional thought that we somehow developed because of things that we've heard. But that's not what the Heavenly Father is like at all. So when you go to pray, recognize you have His ear. You have His attention. His eyes are on you. You have His focus. Luke chapter 10, powerful portion of Scripture here. Luke 10, I'm going to read 38 to 42. As Jesus and the disciples continued on their way to Jerusalem, they came to a certain village where a woman named Martha welcomed Him into her home. Her sister Mary sat at the Lord's feet, listening to what He taught. But Martha was distracted by the big dinner she was preparing. She came to Jesus and said, Lord, doesn't it seem unfair to you that my sister just sits here while I do all the work? Tell her to come and help me. But the Lord said to her, my dear Martha, you are worried and upset over all these details. There is only one thing worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it and it will not be taken away from her. So we see Mary and Martha both wanting the same thing. Both of them wanted to please the Lord. They just went about it in two very different ways. Mary knew that she was already connected. She pursued fellowship. She pursued communion. She pursued that friendship with God. Martha, on the other hand, tried to earn what was already hers. You know, if Martha just sat down with Jesus, Jesus would have sat down with her. But no, what did she do? I have to please the Lord. I have to work for Him. And some of us are so busy working for Him that we forget to fellowship with Him. Which is more important, by the way. And so Martha goes, I have to prepare this big dinner. I have to get all things ready. I have to make sure everything is in order. And she was trying to perfect her presentation before she came before the Lord when the key to that perfect presentation is fellowship with Him. And so both of them wanted the same thing. Both of them saw the same thing. He's the Lord. I must please Him. But they went about it in two very different ways. Martha chose work. Mary chose friendship. Please hear me now, people of God. You don't enter the glory through noisy desperation. You enter through faith filled confidence. Now, I am about to address a mindset. And my addressing of this mindset may offend some of you. But please hear me. I say this in all humility. My goal is not to offend you. It may offend you, but that's not my goal. I truly want to help you enter the depths of prayer. I truly want to help you get rid of all barriers to prayer so that you don't face another barrier again. But in order to do this, we must rethink the way we approach God. Because there's this culture of desperation that somehow has become accepted in the church. And you know you're in a culture of desperation if everything's really tense all the time. The preaching is tense. The application of the preaching is tense. The worship is tense. The prayer is tense. You're in this posture of anguish at all times. Now, I understand there's a time and a place for anguish. There's a time and a place for some conflict warring in the spirit against the enemy. But if you're always worked up, if you're always tense, if the things of God just come with this culture of exhaustion and overworking and tension, then you're not in a spiritual dynamic. You're in a religious one. Because what are the fruits of the spirit? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness. And sometimes we lose these things when we have a misunderstanding of who God is and what he's like. And so we've produced this culture of desperation, desperation. And we say things like, well, if you want God to touch you, you've got to get desperate for him. If you want to move with God, you've got to get desperate. Or people say, as if it's something to celebrate, I'm always desperate for God. I'm thinking, how can you be desperate for something that's already yours? Wow. Now, I will say this just to be clear because I do want to bring balance to this thought. I don't want you to hear, as I often say, I don't want you to hear what I'm not saying. But you know, desperation does have a place. Desperation is a wonderful initiator, a terrible sustainer. Please hear me, people of God. Desperation is a wonderful initiator, a terrible sustainer. Desperation will help to pull you out of spiritual ruts. But the question is, should you have been in that rut in the first place? Desperation will help get you going out of laziness. But the question is, should you have been in that posture of laziness to begin with? Here's what I'm saying. Desperation implies lack. So if I'm lacking, if I'm in a bad place, if I'm doing things I'm not supposed to, if my life is not up to God's standards, in that case, desperation is good. Kind of like when you got saved. We were all very desperate when the Lord saved us. All of us. And that desperation for I can't take this anymore. I'm tired of my life of sin. I'm tired of carrying this burden. I'm tired of the darkness. That desperation caused us to what? Turn to Him. God used the desperation. But desperation is a great initiator, but it's a very unhealthy lifestyle. Let me give you an example. If I have breakfast, lunch, and dinner, that's typically an accepted way to live. But if you have one meal a day, people tell you you need to eat more. Or if you have too many meals a day, people hopefully will tell you you shouldn't eat as much. But you see, in between each meal, breakfast, lunch, dinner, breakfast, lunch, dinner, from breakfast to lunch, I become hungry again. From lunch to dinner, I become hungry again. Hunger is good. Starvation, bad. Right. Desire is good. Desperation, not so much. I think we have this mindset that desperation somehow is this wonderful spiritual trait to have, when in fact desperation just shows that you are lacking to begin with. Desperation shows that you're not living as you're supposed to be living. Be hungry for the things of God. Absolutely. Be hungry for more from God. Absolutely. But be desperate. No, no, no. Never be desperate. Maybe you were in a desperate place to begin with. Or perhaps some tragedy in life brings you to this place where now you're desperate. And that happens to many of us. Many of us will experience tragedies that cause us to become desperate. But a tragedy means something bad happened. Right. And desperation pulls you out of that. So a lifestyle of tragedies, not necessarily the best thing. A lifestyle of poor decision making, not necessarily the best thing. A lifestyle of desperation means I'm living a lifestyle where I'm constantly living under God's standard. Why should I be desperate for His presence? I live in it. Hungry? Yes. Starving? No. Desire? Yes. Desperation? No. And so what happens is we out of desperation try to work, try to work for the things of God. You ever been in a worship service? Come on if you just shout a little louder. If you jump a little higher, if you spin your flags a little faster, get desperate in this house and watch God move. I don't see you guys jumping. I don't see you guys dancing. I don't see you shouting. Think about it. Sometimes people are being sincere when they ask you to do such things. And sometimes shouting is good, but it depends why you're shouting. If you're shouting a shout of victory, great. If you're shouting a shout of spiritual warfare, great. If you're shouting because you think you have to get louder in order for God to hear you, you're coming at it from the flesh and not from faith. You're coming at it from the posture of work and religion and burden rather than the posture of faith. When Jesus said, pray like this, he said, our Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name. He didn't say, Father in heaven, please hear me. No, Jesus began with knowing who his Father was and that he was heard. He didn't begin prayer by begging God. God, please, please, please, please hear me. God, please, please, please, I need you. Guys, please, I'm telling you right now, the way you identify a religious move, not a move of the spirit, anything religious is always going to create this tension in you, almost this anger, this frustration, that tension. You have to be careful of that. I'm not saying it'll lead you to hell. What I am saying is it'll weaken you spiritually. And we have to be careful that we're not relying on the flesh to produce what the spirit can produce. Come on. So be careful of this posture of desperation. It's really, if I can be real with you, it's moving from immaturity to maturity. And some might say, well, you don't want to lose that fire, that's not fire, that's flesh. Thinking I have to create some type of emotional, heightened response just to get God to respond to me is not fire, that's flesh. Tension, exhaustion, religion. It places burdens on you instead of lifting. The anointing breaks burdens. If you leave a meeting or you hear a sermon or you listen to a podcast or you're a part of a conference, if you're a part of something that leaves you feeling burdened and like you are fearful and you have all this list of things now, I've got to be careful of this, that and this, and you leave tense and fearful and desperate, did you really have an encounter with the Holy Spirit who doesn't leave us feeling fearful and desperate, he leaves us bold and fulfilled. Desire, yes, desperation, no. Hunger, yes, spiritual starvation, no. Hebrews 4.16 says, so let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive His mercy and we will find grace to help us when we need it most. Come boldly, the Scripture says. Not timidly, not full of doubt. Not saying, oh Lord, if it be your will, please hear me. No, here's you. Here's what happens when we ask anything in His name, He'll hear us. What a wonderful reality. And that right there is a key to consistent prayer. How? Because when I recognize that I already have His attention, prayer becomes exciting. It's not this going to my prayer room to discipline myself so that I can try to work for God's attention. How dull and lifeless and powerless that is. Religion, religion, religion. It's deadly. No, I'd rather go and approach the Father God knowing that He hears me and that produces an excitement for prayer that when I go on my knees, I don't have to worry about trying to get that connection. I have it. I don't pray to connect with God. I pray from connection with God. Every sincere disciple and follower of Jesus wants to pray. You're watching this and you want to pray. You want to be a person of prayer. You want to be a person of consistent prayer. You're tired of the hidden mess. You're tired of the back and forth. You're tired of the three days good, four days bad, trying to establish a prayer life of thoughts and distractions fly through your mind. You just want to have that consistent flow so that you can experience the benefits, the awareness of that connection in the heavenly realm that's always yours. This is one of the keys. Number two, faithfulness. Now, we know that there is a spiritual realm. We know that demons attack believers, of course. Now, we know demons, biblically speaking, of course we all know demons can't possess believers, oppress believers, curse believers, and so forth. They can affect believers through deception, but beyond that, the other enemy that we're fighting is the flesh. And in order to put the flesh into subjection, you're going to actually have to start making decisions. Now, this is where people have difficulty because they're waiting for someone to lay hands on them and impart discipline. They're waiting for the sky to split open and God to make their decisions for them. But you must learn to exercise your free will to participate with the Holy Spirit that you might implement spiritual disciplines in your life. If you want to pray more, you simply have to choose to pray more. If you want to pray faithfully, you have to choose to pray faithfully. It comes down to your decision. Now, we all fail. We all make mistakes and sometimes prolonged failure when it comes to discipline and prayer discourages us. So we think that because we missed six days of prayer or three days of prayer or even one day of prayer, that somehow that disqualifies us or somehow we've wiped off some record that we have to start all over again, that it takes all our points away. That's not the way this works. God is not tracking how many days you spend in prayer. What's more important is whether or not you have a connection with him and whether or not that relationship is strong and the way you keep that strong is through daily prayer. But we have to overcome the guilt and the shame of missed prayer if we're going to stay focused because we get caught in the cycle. Let's say you pray consistently four days. I did it four days. And on the fifth day, maybe your alarm sounded too late or you forgot to set your alarm. You slept in, you were late for work, you went to work, you came back home, you had dinner with the family, your kids needed you to play with them. And then you went to bed, you fell asleep because you were so exhausted and you realized, oh my goodness, yesterday I didn't get to pray. If that's you, I say to you, keep going. Or maybe you were lazy. Maybe you did neglect prayer just because you preferred to watch something on television. That's not good. But to live in the shame and condemnation of that is going to prevent you from actually pursuing your prayer life. So you wear that guilt. You wear those burdens. You wear that shame and you're hesitant to approach God like, oh goodness, I missed several days of prayer. Is he going to be okay with me coming back? Yes, absolutely. So we must recognize that guilt, shame, and self-criticism are counterproductive. They're unnecessary distractions. Guilt and shame make it so that you don't even want to approach God. The discouragement that comes from missing days of prayer weakens my desire to even try. Please hear me. That's so important that you get that. Please write this in the comments too, guys. The discouragement that comes from missing days of prayer weakens my desire to even try. So when I become discouraged because, oh, I missed that day of prayer or I only prayed 30 minutes when I wanted to pray an hour, that shame, that guilt from missed days of prayer or not praying enough, that weakens my desire to try again. You see, it's the forgiveness of God. It's the grace of God that empowers me to know that I can keep moving. But we must commit to prayer and we must forget those things that are behind us. Okay, maybe you missed a day or two. Maybe you didn't pray as long as you wanted to pray today, but put that behind you and tomorrow, keep going. Tomorrow, try again. Again, as I said earlier, God's not folding his arms, looking down at you angry and saying, well, well, well, look who decided to show up. No, no, he's ready to try with you again. He's faithful like that. And so when I go to commit to prayer, there will be times when I fail, but I must choose to implement that discipline. You have to make that choice. Here's a wild thought that doesn't get talked about a lot today. Did you know that you can choose every single one of your actions? I think sometimes we act as though someone else is making choices for us. It's not the case, not for the believer anyway. You can choose your own actions and your actions will have consequences and God will actually hold you accountable for those actions and consequences. Did you know that? So then prayer like anything else that's a spiritual discipline is going to require my participation. Everything spiritual is partially disciplined on my end and grace on God's end. It's mostly God's grace, but we must at least put in the action to cooperate with what the Holy Spirit wants to do. Matthew 2640-41 says, Then he returned to the disciples and found them asleep. He said to Peter, couldn't you watch with me even one hour? Keep watching pray so that you will not give in to temptation for the spirit is willing, but the body is weak. Make the decision to pray. Something that I wrote here. To become a man or woman of faithful daily prayer, you must make up your mind concerning prayer. People often ask me, how do I pray more? And honestly, the answer is simple. Choose to pray more. It's your choice. But you have to start by making up your mind. You have to stop by half heartedly saying, at some point I'd like to establish a prayer life. At some point I'd like to establish a devotion to the Word. You have to make up your mind, say within your mind, say within your heart, I am going to commit to daily prayer, period. Shoot for an hour, but if you only make it for 20 minutes, that's a good start. It's better than not praying at all. Again, the only way to pray faithfully is to choose to pray faithfully and the flesh will fight you. And then you walk in this 24 seven awareness. That's how you walk in a 24 seven awareness of the spirit is you just make up your mind to do so. Now I know this seems oversimplified to some, but it really is this simple. You want to walk in that 24 seven awareness to walk in that 24 seven awareness. You must choose to put your thoughts on God as often as you possibly can. It's a discipline. It is discipline. People of God, it is discipline. We must discipline the flesh, subject the flesh and say to the flesh, you're not sleeping in today. You're not watching Netflix today. You're not going to go to the park and play basketball today. You're not going fishing today. Whatever your hobbies are, you tell the flesh today, you're going to pray. And if there's time left over for those other things, wonderful. You can accomplish more in a prayer filled day than you ever could in a prayer less year. You can accomplish more in a prayer filled day than you can in a prayer less year. Now choose to pray. Come on. Commit in your mind. Say, I will commit to pray. Carve out sections of your day. Arrange your schedule. Cancel hobbies. Stop doing so many. The Bible says a man of many friends will come to ruin. Some people are so socially active that they have just a ton of shallow friendships, very few deep ones. Just invest in a few good friends and stop filling your schedule with baby showers and weddings and outings and picnics and everything else. And nothing's wrong with those things. But I think sometimes we just like to stay busy. We have all these shallow friendships. People you haven't talked to for years and you're going to their cousin's uncle's, you know, wedding. And we fill our schedule with all these social interactions when really what we need is a few solid friendships, a few solid, not saying you ignore everyone else, but as far as investing time, you can only give so much to so many people. Start saying no to certain things. Start changing the schedule of your hobbies. Change your jobs if you have to. If you're too busy to pray, you're too busy. Arrange your entire life around your prayer life. Arrange your entire schedule around your devotion to the Word and your time in prayer with God. Guard it, protect it, and let nothing and no one touched that secret place, stubbornly refuse to give up that time for anyone or anything else. And when prayer becomes the priority, only then can prayer become the foundation. I want to say that again. When prayer becomes the priority, only then can prayer become the foundation. How do you know if prayer is the foundation of your life? Well, is it a priority or is it an afterthought? Is it scheduled first or do you squeeze it in between where you have time to spare? No, prayer must become the priority if it's going to become the foundation. Pray, pray, pray, and then pray some more. Rearrange your whole life around prayer. That's what it's going to take. If that's what it takes, do it. And I promise you, you will not regret it. Also, help us spread the gospel of Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. Make a one-time donation or become a monthly supporter by clicking on the donate link now.