4 Ways to Enhance Your Prayer Life

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"To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing."-Martin Luther

Prayer is an essential element of our walk with God. At times, it can be a little hard to stay focused or keep our prayer life alive, especially when our schedules are crazy. However, there are 4 ways we can enhance our prayer life that may assist in our relationship with our Creator.

1)       DON’T MAKE IT WORK- Work is hard to do. Work can be boring at times, monotonous, and even something we hate getting up for. If we look at prayer as a friendly meeting over coffee as opposed to a task we have to check off to get through our day, then we might be a little more excited to do it!

2)       BE REAL- One of my favorite quotes from C.S. Lewis is “The prayer that precedes all other prayer, is may the real I meet the real thou.” He shared, in regards to prayer, “May it be the real I who speaks. May it be the real Thou that I speak to” (Letters to Malcolm). God wants us to be real with Him in our pain, our joy, our brokenness, our healing, and everything in between. He does not need the fluffy prayers, or as I like to call them “R&B Prayers”, that reminds you of a soft spoken song that is trying to make the person believe you’re in love with them, but you’re really just playing the best tune that works. You know what I’m talking about.

3)       PRACTICE- We will not be awesome at prayer right away. There will be fumbles and mixed up words, but as we work on it, we will get better. It isn’t about being awesome anyway! It’s about recognizing the awesomeness of our Creator. It is not a show, but a connection! This is why I encourage people to pray out loud with each other. When I hear someone say, “I’m not very good at prayer”, I want to ask “What does that mean?” I don’t think anyone has it completely accurate. All we can do is try and do it with sincerity.

Which leads me to the final point…

4)       BE SINCERE- Prayer is not meant to be flippant. It is a reverent connection/conversation with the One who made us. It is a discipline that opens up the door to understanding His will for us on earth and the deeper message in things we may not understand. When we truly want to learn something we jump to google or, in extreme cases, we might even read a book. We take it seriously and put everything we have into whatever it is we desire to obtain. This is how our prayer life should be. We should be so diligent to understand the purpose of God that we dive in with everything and all sincerity in order to grasp His knowledge and direction for our walk in this world.

Prayer can be enlightening and convicting. We quite possibly are missing out on so much more that God is trying to reveal due to our lack of prayer, but maybe these steps can lead you into a deeper prayer life and link up with the thoughts of the Lord.