A little over a month ago I had lunch with a very wise and experienced man. Near the end of our conversation I asked him what I could do to improve my prayer life. Me being me, I was hoping for a black and white answer like "pray for 20 before getting out of bed in the morning and again at night." Instead he retold a story of a man Asking D. Martyn Lloyd Jones when the Lord would bring revival to the Church. Dr. Jones replied, "not until the 'O' returns to mens prayers." Seeing the look on my face my friend must have seem that a further explanation was necessary. He went on to tell me that prayers should be said with great passion and feeling (i.e. O Lord how long until you return!).We continued our conversation and for weeks I thought about what he had said. It seemed to me to almost be a catch 22. I wanted to pray with passion, but what would it take to develop this passion? Then after noticing a pattern in my own prayer life I began to understand what this dear brother had been trying to convey.
I noticed that I was praying through my "checklist" in rapid fire succession. I don't pray nearly as often as I would like so when I do I try to cover everything and everyone, this causes me to rush. However, a couple of weeks ago at a church prayer meeting before our service when most of the prayer requests had been prayed for I still felt like praying but there was only one thing on my mind so I prayed for a few minutes on one topic and felt invigorated afterwards. I noticed that the longer I spent on a single subject before moving on the more my heart was revealed and I hope transformed to the will of God.
In John 17 Jesus briefly prays for himself before praying for His disciples from verse 6 through 19, where as I probably would have spent only two or three verses equivalent on them. I haven't taken the time to see how many other passages support my ideas but this is just my personal experience and I hope that you may benefit from it to the glory of God.
Thank you Pastor Rob.
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