The solution to a dry prayer life, read if yours is parched!

Have you experienced a dry prayer life? Maybe when you get into prayer, you become distracted. Maybe when you get into prayer, you begin to doubt this is useful. Maybe when you get into prayer, you have the desire to IGNORE prayer. The solution is not that you need to get your prayer life built up to a certain degree, where your success in your prayer life depends on how much experience you have with prayer. This idea of that being the solution is FALSE; that prayer is a skill to be achieved, or that your prayer life will miraculously thrive at some point. This writing is for those who seek the antidote, to a dry, lifeless prayer life.

We begin by asking ourselves, what is our goal to achieve in prayer? Well. Our goal is important. And if our goals are not in the right place, we risk approaching prayer with the wrong mindset. So I ask you to take a moment to collect your thoughts and make your goal known. If your goal is pure, it might be to increase your spiritual sensitivity to the Holy Spirit and overall increase your spiritual performance. Now let’s say a man named James is new in his walk with Christ. James here would think to pray, but never really understand the art of prayer. During the day, James would go into his bedroom and pray in silence, as he should. (Mat 6:6).

Then after settling down at a spot to pray, he becomes startled as he is bombarded with thoughts like, “I could be playing the new video game I bought”, or, “Let me pray over at that spot, let me pray in this position” Why did he suddenly begin to get chaotic? Well. This happened because he tried to calm his mind down when it isn’t u s e d to. The brain is in his body, the body is his FLESH! The flesh was killing James. The flesh panicked, as it was not used to this. Again, the flesh is our brain. And if our brain directly controls us, what controls our brain? Our soul! Our brain is attached to our soul. And if we are born again, we know the Holy Spirit lives in our SOUL.

Therefore, if the Holy Spirit is present, then all we have to do is get his assistance to aid us every time we begin to pray. So how do we get his assistance? By praying wholeheartedly. Let’s go back with James here. Again, in James' case, he has a chaotic mind when he prays. James would have to calm his mind down by making it focus on one certain thing. Focus, just focus. When we try to look at many things, we will struggle to look intently at each thing, so we can only look at a thing. A different way to put this is the mind becomes calm when we get it to focus on ONE subject.

Similar to sleeping, we calm our mind down before we sleep and we would do so by winding down before sleep. Or we may do some exercises before we sleep, like, progressive muscle relaxation or watching satisfying videos. It’s not that books are boring or that they may not be for you, or that you are not a “book” person. But it’s that you have not found the gist of them, or found the book you like. Those books you tried to read last year, have been accumulating dust because you have fallen into the illusion that books are “boring”. There is an ambient, there is an ATMOSPHERE, that is waiting for you and has NOT been found.

That atmosphere waiting for you is an atmosphere where you are pouring out your heart into the words you speak, and maybe in tears overwhelmed by the gloriousness of prayer. You just need to get into that atmosphere every time you pray, and you are SET. Another word for that atmosphere is wholehearted prayer. To get into that, all we must do is direct our full ATTENTION to GOD. By directing our full attention to GOD, we engage in prayer, which is key. And there are many ways to achieve this, but here are six great ways I use.

1. Place any device at hands-reach away from you, if you have to go to another room, go ahead and do so.
2. Pray that the Holy Spirit may lead your prayer and anticipate it.
3. Pray about your requests.
4. Worship GOD. That could be reciting things GOD has done.
5. Pray towards a specific object and imagine the LORD is there.
6. Pray your prayer out loud. Either quietly, normally, or with an intense tone.

Once you begin implementing this concept into your prayers, you will see RESULTS. You might want to never stop praying because that precious atmosphere is so tender and soft. You might have an intense desire to pray again, because, it is JUST so EASY to get into. But that's not all, do you think your flesh won’t fight back? It will fight back and get help from the enemy to throw you down. This is the barrier you must get through. This is the battle that takes place in your mind when you begin to pray. Doubt, lack of confidence, paranoia, and much more will come your way if you do not counter the flesh’s arrows. How do we counter the attacks from our flesh? With the word of GOD. But before we use the word of GOD, we must recognize the attacks from our flesh. An attack would be, us doubting that prayer will never stop being boring. It could be YOU, doubting the concept I am sharing with you in this writing. That’s an attack from the flesh. Doubt. We can recognize these attacks by observing ourselves, do you lean more towards thinking negatively about your success or do you lean more towards optimistic thinking? If you usually think negatively, you now know, it's your flesh that is the one who has made you think this way. That’s the culprit. To apply the word of GOD, you must know the word of GOD.

A good way to quickly access the word of GOD without searching the whole bible is to look it up on Google. In the previous example, the attack from the flesh would be doubted success. I’d go on Google and look for verses about doubt and boom, that easily I know the truth. Here's a result I would find if I were to look this up on Google: James 1:6 “But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.” A good tool I often use is openbible.info, this is a website that produces verses based on keywords you would type. This is something to take advantage of! USE the resources the LORD has blessed you with.

Now with the knowledge of the word of GOD about a negative thought, you can apply it by motivating yourself with it, you could do this by repeating it over and over (meditation), you could do this by reciting this verse in your own words, or just VISUALIZE it! After you’ve done this, you’ve now won against the lies of your flesh. That barrier goes DOWN and now comes the GLORY of praying in the spirit. I would also highly suggest you have a prayer routine, that is praying at designated times. Of course, it is essential to pray during the morning and night, so get to mastering that first and you will be set.

Here’s one final secret of prayer I’d like to share with you, this is something the Holy Spirit has shared with me and has boosted my prayer life a thousandfold. The secret is, praying to pray more. I usually do this when I wake up or during a bathroom break in the morning, I pray to the LORD to give me a fruitful wave of prayers during the rest of the day. It works wonders, so I would suggest you try it. You might be tempted to slump on this concept I have shared with you, but remember it's your FLESH. You choose. Obey your flesh, ignore this concept, don’t get anywhere, and try to search for different ways. OR, obey the voice of the spirit, acknowledge that the mind is the battlefield, where thoughts infiltrate. Counter the attacks of the flesh with the word of GOD! Put on the full armor of GOD mentioned in Ephesians 6, and praise Jesus!