“Pastor, I’ve heard several men of God emphasize the importance of prayer for a Christian, does this mean I have to keep disturbing God everyday for my needs? What if I don’t have a need?”

I was also a victim of that until I began to understand the scriptures. Truly, prayer is communication between God and man for the purpose of having our needs met, but a citizen of the kingdom of heaven isn’t expected to have personal needs. According to Matthew 6:33, the need for kingdom advancement and manifestation must take priority in our heart.

That scripture says “But seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you”. In other words, as you dedicate your life and focus to the advancement of God’s kingdom, you’d continue to attract an addition of the things you need to yourself. Believers should not struggle for things, we should enjoy addition of things.

If you understand this, then you’d never have a personal prayer point when you pray. Your prayer points will always be centered around revival and spiritual awakening. Even if you’d pray for yourself, it would be that God should empower you to fulfill your assignment in His agenda. When I pray, I don’t pray for house or car, I pray for empowerment to continue bringing relevance to God’s kingdom, I pray for souls to be saved and established, I pray for God’s glory to be seen in the lives of men.

That is how those powerful preachers pray. It is this kind of prayer that brings them into a place of authority and power. It is also that power and authority that attracts the things they need. Now you’d understand what the bible meant when it said “your people shall be willing in the days of your power”. Perhaps you’re about to tell me that you’ve also been praying like that but nothing to show, my dear, you’ve not prayed into a place of power yet. And if we check, it’s very likely that you’ve not been praying with this exact understanding. Perhaps you still have your fears and doubts here and there.

It’s really important that believers are taught how to pray. The disciples of Jesus had this problem. In fact, they were very direct when they approached Jesus to teach them how to pray. Clearly, they must have observed Jesus’s prayer life and concluded that there was something missing about their own personal prayer life.

Sometimes they saw him agonizing in prayer with sweat pouring down, and some other time he’d just seperate himself from them to pray. Believe me, there’s nothing more frustrating than watching someone do something that shatters your ideologies about that thing. To them maybe they spent few minutes reciting a few things and called it prayer, so what Jesus was doing was not anything near what they knew to be prayer. And so they concluded that what they knew couldn’t have been called prayer, they had to ask Jesus to teach them how to pray.

And while you’d think that Jesus would give a humorous response – that we can pray anyhow, he actually taught them how to pray. And this tells me that believers can be taught how to pray.

So, Jesus began the teaching…

Matthew 6:
9 After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.
10 Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.
11 Give us this day our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

For a child who doesn’t respect or have any regard for his biological or earthly parents, praying may be a difficult task, because according to Jesus’s lesson, prayer is a communication between a heavenly father and his earthly children. Just as you can sit with your earthly father and make requests, you can engage your faith in making requests to your heavenly father. The difference is just the location and visibility. While your earthly father can be met physically, your heavenly father can only be met through faith.

So we begin a regular prayer by hallowing the name of your heavenly Father. Which literally means you should shout His various names with joy in your heart. Think of all the names of God you can remember and hallow those names as you commence your prayer.

“My heavenly father, I come to you this morning in the name of Jesus. You are the Ageless God, Reliable God, Jehovah Rohi, Jehovah Shikenu, Alpha Omega, Bishem Adonai, Elshadia, Elohim, The Lion of the tribe of Judah, The Almighty, The Ancient of Days, my Dependable Father, Olowogbogboro (That’s right, you can hallow His names in your dialect)”

At this point, even you who is hallowing His name has already caught fire in your heart. Hallowing His name alone can take you over an hour, because His names are innumerable. Just incase you don’t know His names, you’d be amazed what a Google search for the names of God will bring.

Hallowing His name also involves thanking Him for what He has done both for you and for the world you live in, and then praising Him for the details He put into doing everything He has done. Hallowing His name in thanksgiving and praise is the surest way to secure His presence during prayer. That’s actually what Psalms 100:4 tells us. “Enter His gates with thanksgiving and into His court with praise. Be thankful unto Him, and bless his name”

Once you’re done hallowing His name, the next thing is to pray about His agenda on the earth. For example, God desires that the world will come to repentance, so you can pray about that. Pray about that your colleague or neighbour that is not saved yet. Pray about your uncle or aunty that is involved in malicious activities. Pray about the advancement of His church. Just pray about anything that advances His kingdom.

Everything Jesus mentioned from verses 11 to 13 are personal prayer points and there’s no particular order, neither is there a compulsion in praying them. If you feel you don’t need forgiveness, then that’s not something to pray about. If you feel you don’t need daily bread, then it doesn’t need to be prayed. Of course, everybody should always pray that God will not lead us into temptation.

My point is, once you’re done hallowing His name and praying about His kingdom, you’re free to do anything else from that point till you close. You can pray for your spiritual growth, that the fire of the Spirit of God will continue to burn in your heart. You can pray to be used by Him. If we’re to go by what Jesus said in Matthew 6:33, we really don’t need to pray about our personal needs after we’ve prayed for the kingdom, because all our personal needs would be added to us as a reward for praying for the Kingdom. Isn’t that powerful?

I hope this has brought enlightenment to someone.

Remain ever blessed, in Jesus precious name!

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