It should never escape the minds and hearts of any believer that prayer to God is meant to be an expression of our total lives. The habit pattern for many of us, though, is to portion off our lives into categories. We label most of it as stuff we can handle, and other parts we label as areas we will leave to God. The piece of information that very few are willing to learn is that limiting God in this way will impact the effectiveness of our prayers. When it comes to offering ourselves to the Father, a lil’ dab will not do. That’s not how we want to receive, so it should not be the way that we give. Heavenly Father tells us in Romans 12:1(MSG), “So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering.” He wants us to present all our lives before His throne! Every ounce of our being is due Him, because it is in this total and all-encompassing measure that God desires to reward us.
Some people use prayer as a first-aid kit that they pull out only when there’s an emergency. God is forever willing and able to help us. He is in truth a very present help in times of trouble, but we do Him a disservice when we employ such a powerful treasure as prayer and try using it only as a band-aid for our conditions. 1Corinthians 6:19-20(NLT) tells us, “Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.” Our bodies are God’s temple. The body is the place where His Spirit dwells, and the body is also the place where we commune with God through Christ in a very intimate way.
In times of crisis, many of us panic. We begin to search externally for resources to remedy our dilemmas. Very seldom do we think to quiet ourselves and go within, where He waits in the temple He has made within every born-again believer. We are His creation, and He is so intimately intertwined with us that we can have constant and precious communion. We can and should desire to create such a life in Christ that all our thoughts and actions are prayers before Him. This is truly what it means to be a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to our God.
Prayer should be as easy and natural to us as the air we breathe, but it takes commitment on our parts to get to this place. It is not difficult; it merely takes the persistence and discipline of continual practice. We should desire our whole lives to be one singular unit of praise and worship, and we will find that this desire to be a living and holy sacrifice before God will usher us into His presence in a glorious way.
We wrestle with the disparity between our prayers and our conduct. We pray for the new job, but do not pray for a greater understanding of service. We pray for increased prosperity, but do not pray to give in greater measure and charity. We pray for the husband to cross our paths, but do not pray to rid ourselves of the negativity that blocks him. This is in effect double-mindedness. It is praying with doubt in our hearts. How so, you might ask. Consider that God’s greatest priority is our spiritual growth in Christ. This is number one with Him. Although He is perfectly able to give us both, He would rather we grow like Christ in an attitude of service than have a new job. Knowing this uproots doubt and puts wisdom in its place.
Doubt is a feeling of uncertainty. We often feel this uncertainty in our prayer lives because deep down we know it isn’t spiritually prudent to pray for stuff, and not pray to be closer to the Divine through Christ. And if we are praying to be closer to God through the Lord Jesus Christ, we must also know beyond any uncertainty that we are able to meet God’s standard for Godly living. We are able to do all that He requires of us.
It is not about this doctrine of ‘you gotta be perfect for God to bless you.’ It is about understanding the brilliance and magnificence of our Savior. He is Lord! He has saved us from the bondage of sin, and there can be no doubt of this. It’s in him, that we walk by faith and not by sight. Outside of him, we have no strength or strategy to win, but Romans 13:14 (NIV) instructs us to “clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.” Wrapped and sealed up in the Lord through the Holy Spirit, we can most definitely walk the walk and talk the talk. When we walk in the Spirit, we will not fulfill the lust of the flesh, because the Spirit is at work within. This is why we can say as Romans 6:11(NKJV) informs, that we are “dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
There is a such a thing as a worldly Christian. We’ve all been there at one time or another, and many of us are still there. If our desire is to increase and expand according to the destiny God has ordained for our lives, understand that the Lord will interrupt the worldly programming. He will not leave us in a state of having one foot in the door and the other out. Many of us are very comfortable with straddling because we’ve done it so long; but going higher will not permit this posture. We must seek the Will of God and place it before all other things. When this is our greatest heart’s desire, a beautifully rewarding dimension in our prayer lives will open for us.■
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
“A New Dimension in Prayer”, written by Reverend Fran Mack, edited by Kim Times for Sundie Morning Sistas. Copyright ©2020. All rights reserved. All done to the glory of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord! SMS is dedicated to inspiring and encouraging Christian Women through the Word of God.