How Do You Pray?

I have often written about prayer in my blog. For me, it’s one singular action you can never get wrong because things happen when we pray. In my post of the 6^th of November, you will find a discussion about God saying in Exodus 3:7-9 that He had heard the cry of His children (Israel) and had come down to save them. The cries go up to heaven if we dare to cry to God in prayer. As a matter of fact, we find in Revelations 8:4 that the smoke of the incense, together with our prayers, goes up to God. So, the efficacy of prayer cannot be overemphasized.

I strongly believe in the power of communal prayers. Jesus said, “When two or more gather in His name, there He will be in their midst.” So, when we come together to pray with oneness of heart, it becomes a powerful force. Solomon said, “One will chase a thousand, but two can put tens of thousands to flight.” There is power in praying together.

However, an exchange happens when you spend quiet time alone with your Maker. The kind of prayer I love the most is the dialogue prayer, where I get to speak to God and take the lead from Him, and I pour my heart out to God as though I can literally see him and feel the warmth of His comfort. This, for me, is a kind of Jeremiah 33:3. Going to God in this prayer pattern is not just about going to talk; it is more about going to receive.

Interestingly, God spoke to us through an intermediary in the days of Moses, Aaron, Samuel, Nathan, and all other prophets of old. But by the perfect finished work of Jesus, God speaks to us not with a mouthpiece but directly, and if you have trained your ears to listen to His voice and adhere to His instructions, then you can't go wrong.

You will wonder where Derin is going with this prayer talk in today’s blog. It’s all about offering a word in season. Many of us take a good time to join prayer meetings, which is a good habit as God is still in the business of doing miracles. But some breakthroughs and miracles come from a place where God tells you or leads you to do something; this comes as a specific instruction to you for a specific situation in your life. Now, this is not as a group instruction but as a Father to His child. You will miss the opportunity or struggle if you have not trained yourself to listen to His voice.

When you have not developed the habit of cultivating the presence of God and dialoguing with Him in prayer rather than just talking without receiving, you leave your life to chance and the possibility of frustration. We remember the story of Peter and the catch of fish in Luke 5; in verses 4-5, when Jesus told Peter to launch into the deep for a catch, he replied by saying He had toiled all night and caught nothing but at the word of Jesus, he will let down his net. Now, consider you as Peter, struggling to put it all together without learning to hear the voice of God on which direction you should go. I am sure you probably would conclude that God is a lie because you have prayed so hard and worked so hard with nothing to show for it. But what you are missing is your ability to hear His voice and discern His leading. He would have been creating opportunities and leading you in advance, but you simply have not been yielding because you don't recognize His voice. Just fix that little problem, and everything else falls into place.

Sometime in 2022, I landed a six-figure job without applying or using any connection or referral, simply by being able to discern the voice of God and doing what the voice told me to do. Before this exciting morning, I had been taking some online courses. I finished one of the modules and just heard a voice within me to update my resume on LinkedIn. The voice was clear, and it was like a pressure on me. Like a robot, I opened my laptop and updated my LinkedIn profile. I had totally forgotten about it until about six weeks later when I got a message on LinkedIn asking if I was available to take on a role in the field where I had completed the online courses. Initially, I thought it was a scam; I had told myself I would not leave my house in the name of any job interview. And just to know it was God doing His thing, I did my interview online on a Zoom call. My offer letter was sent to my email box, and I worked from home for the 3 months of being on that job. The contract ended 2 days after I left my home country.

Just imagine what I would have missed if I had not learned to pay attention to the voice of God. God speaks, and we should learn to listen to His voice. But be mindful and careful not to mix the voice of God with your desires and personal objectives. Be sure that you have heard from God and not your inner longings. Be objective enough to differentiate between what you want and what God tells you to do. When God speaks, He backs it up with evidence. You will always have your receipt to show for it.