The Power Of Your Prayer Life – Radio Classic – Dr. Charles Stanley – How To Talk To God Vol 2 Pt 4

Transforming, energizing, life-giving — there’s nothing like praying to Almighty God. Yet so many of us struggle with spending dedicated alone time with Him.

In this motivating message, Dr. Stanley details how to build a powerful prayer life and explains the benefits that come with doing so. As we spend time on our knees before the Lord, He is busy transforming the world around us and the world within us. What could be better?

This message is Part 4 of the series: How to Talk With God – Volume 2

With a message from god’s word, here’s Charles Stanley.
A powerful prayer life.
And if you’ll look in Luke chapter 11, and I want us to read the first four verses of this chapter together, And it came to pass, that is he, that as Jesus was praying in a certain place, when he ceased one of his disciples said unto him, lord, teach us to pray as John also taught his disciples.
And he said unto them, when you pray, say, Our father, which art in heaven, Hollow would be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done as in heaven, so an earth.
Give us this day by day, our daily bread, and forgive us our sins.
For we also forgive everyone that is indebted to us.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
The apostles had watched the lord Jesus Christ heal. They had watched him teach.
They had watched him perform miracle after miracle, but there was something very unusual about him when he had come out of a place of private prayer.
And so in this particular verse, it says it came to pass that as he was praying in a certain place, when he finished, one of those disciples said to him, lord, teach us to pray.
And not just so much how to pray, but lord teach us to pray as John also taught his disciples to pray.
I want you to listen very carefully to this statement.
Your private prayer can transform your life and your human power, your natural power into the supernatural power of god.
Your private prayer life can transform your natural power your human power into the supernatural power of god.
When you look at the life of Jesus Christ and watch how he prayed, I want you to look at some scriptures, if you will.
And if you’ll begin with Mark chapter 1, because what I want us to talk about today is your personal prayer life.
And if I should ask you to describe your personal prayer life, some of you could write it on the end of your little fingernail.
And you’d have to write n o n e.
Because the real truth of it is you don’t have one.
You may pray on the run, but that’s not what I’m talking about.
And I want you to look how the lord Jesus prayed in verse, In chapter 1 of Mark and and beginning in verse 34, he healed many that were sick of different kinds of diseases cashed out many devils and suffered not the devils to speak because they knew him.
So he was busy, healing, and teaching, and performing miracles.
And verse 35 says But in the morning or in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out and departed into a solitary place, and there he prayed.
After a very busy day of serving his father, the scripture says that Jesus went aside early in the morning, which I believe was the habit of his life just about every day, and he got along with the father and talked to him about his life and about the events of the day.
If you look in Matthew chapter 24 chapter 14 for a moment, And, um, Jesus in this 14th chapter of Matthew has This is the discussion about John the Baptist, uh, being beheaded and so forth.
And, um, then comes the performing of the miracle of beating the 5000 And in the midst of all that, uh, verse 22 says, and straightway or immediately after he’d fed these 5000 besides men, women, and show women women and children.
Verse 22 says, and immediately, Jesus constrained his disciples to get into a ship and to go before him.
And to the other side, while he sent out or sent the multitudes away.
So having performed these miracles, he says it’s time to stop all this.
And verse 23 says he went up into a mountain apart to pray, and there was alone when the evening time came.
So he finished the day of service and prayer. Look, if you will, in Luke chapter 6 verse 12.
And Luke, uh, is the, um, uh, right of the new testament who gives us and teach is more about the prayer life of Jesus than anyone else.
But Luke chapter 6, Uh, Jesus had been having some real problems here with, um, the people who were arguing with him about this, that, and the other.
And First 10 says, and look around about, uh, on them, he said to the man, stretch forth on hand, and he did so, and his hand was restored whole as the other.
They were filled with madness and commune one with another, what they might do to Jesus.
And it came to pass in those days that he went out into a mountain to pray and continued all night in prayer to god.
And when it was day, he called into him his disciples.
And of them, he chose 12, of whom also he named apostles.
Now that night, he prayed all night long because he knew that the next day, He had one of the most momentous decisions in his life to make, and that decision was he had to choose among all of his followers 12 men who would follow him.
Now you know that Jesus prayed at his baptism.
He prayed, um, uh, when he was tempted by Satan, all throughout his life, he was praying, and he was god.
Now if the lord Jesus Christ who was god felt the need to begin his day in prayer, and felt the need to end his day in prayer and felt the need to pray all night long before he made great decisions how much more should you and I feel the need of personal private prayer?
And that’s what I want us to talk about today, and that is your prayer life and my prayer life.
The first thing I want us to look at in this 11th chapter, and that is the motivation.
What is it that motivates us to get alone to pray? I’m not talking about praying in groups now.
I’m not talking about praying with your family. I’m not talking about praying with your friends.
I’m not talking about a bible study.
I’m talking about you getting along with god and spending time alone with him, just the two of you, together.
Which many, many people who named the name of Jesus Christ do almost none of because there are excuses that they’re so busy doing so many things that they’re too busy to pray.
But I want you to examine for just a moment, several things, and I want you to listen very carefully.
What is it that motivates you to pray?
Let me just tell you what motivates some people to get a loan to pray.
But many people, they do not get a loan to pray unless there’s a time of decision.
That’s what motivates them. When there’s a decision, if they don’t seem to be able to get an answer for, then they’re willing to stop and take time to get on their face before god or kneel and talk to him.
For other people, it is a time of great difficulty.
When the surroundings or the situation is such, they don’t know what to do next, And so they begin to pray and ask for the lord to give them a sense of guidance and direction.
For some people, they have to get to the point of being absolutely desperate before They fall on their face before god in private communion with him and begin to pour out their heart and express their desire and their need.
Out of difficulty in discouragement and desperation decision making, we are driven and motivated to pray privately in earnestly before god.
But would you not agree that the one thing that ought to motivate us to pray above everything else?
I mean, to get along with him is the fact that our own devotion to Jesus Christ.
Should that not be sufficient reason to motivate us to get along with him?
Because we love him, because he’s done so much for us, because he desires fellowship with us.
And because we ought to desire fellowship with him, of all the things that ought to motivate us to spend time alone with Jesus Christ ought to be that we have a genuine all consuming love and devotion to him.
And in order to build a relationship to him, that’s what we must do. We must spend time with him.
But then there’s the last reason that I think is so essential, one that ought to motivate us in our own private devotion.
And that is the desire to develop our relationship and to strengthen our relationship to him.
There’s not a woman in here who will not agree with this, And that is she would sit at her husband.
If you wanna build a relationship with me, you and I must spend time alone.
Every man in you knows that if he’s gonna build a relationship with his wife or his children.
He’s got to set aside some time to spend time with them alone.
I don’t mean the family outing and the family vacation. I mean personal private time alone.
Having the world can you not develop a relationship with god, the father, through his son, Jesus Christ, if we’re always with someone else and always in the midst of no is and always in the process of doing this and going there and being busy here in Yanda.
It is absolutely impossible to build a relationship with Jesus Christ where there is no time given to him alone.
He longs to have time for those alone.
Where he has our undivided attention, where he has a shut up unto himself, where he can love us, where he can cover us with his presence, where he knows that we are absolutely and totally consumed with loving him, expressing our love toward him, and worshiping him in private not going to church.
You can go to church every Sunday of your life. You can read the Bible every day of your life.
But if you neglect that time alone with god on your face somewhere, I wanna tell you You remember this that you will live no better than you pray.
A man preaches no better than he prays, sings no better than he prays, teaches no better than Then he prays, we do nothing any better than we pray.
And the reason the body of Christ is so weak and the church is so weak in preaching and teaching and singing and leading and and all the areas of service in the body of Christ.
The reason there’s so much we businesses because our prayer life is so weak.
We are so inundated with so many things that absolutely flood us and cover us and harass us and fill our minds with so much we say to poor god, I don’t have time to pray when every single one of us knows, that we may have excuses for not having private time with him, but there’s not a man woman boy or girl alive who can offer god a reasonable acceptable reason for not spending time with him.
Well, What motivates you to get along with god? Listen.
Will it take god causing the bottom to drop out in your life to get you on your face before him?
Or do you love him enough that every day you just want to get along with him?
You don’t need any troubles. You don’t need any heartaches. You just love him and love.
They wanna be alone with a listing.
You show me a teenager, young person, a college student, or an adult.
Who’s really and truly in love.
Man, they can’t fell, they can’t wait to get home, and the guy can’t wait to get over to his gal’s house, a vice versa.
You know why? Because love draws them.
And you see a prayer light that is weak and feeble and filled with everything else but relationship Jesus Christ says something about I love to him.
Man, we can sing that we are blue in the face.
Oh, how I love Jesus, and he’s not impressed in the least. What he wants is not our singing.
He wants our silent submissiveness unto him quietly, prayerfully before him.
And then When we have been alone with him, he doesn’t mind us being publicly with him talking and praising and praising him.
That’s the second area here.
I want you to notice, and that is the battle we have of mastering a time to pray and to be alone with him.
The devil will fight you over your private devotion to Jesus Christ above every single thing in your life.
It is a constant battle in my life.
It is a constant battle in the life of every person who wants to be what god wants him or her to be.
It’ll always be a struggle that 6th chapter of ephesians when Paul has described the armor of the believer.
He says the Hellman of Salvation, breastplate of righteousness, lawns gird about with truth.
Feet shower the preparation of the gospel of peace.
He says, the sword of the spirit and above all, the shield of faith. Then he says, praying always.
What is he saying that a man must be prepared to pray that we will oftentimes have to battle Satan even in our prayer life?
Satan had rather you read the Bible than to pray. He’d rather me preach than pray.
You sing then pray. You teach then pray.
Witness and pray, do anything you wanna do, but stay off your knees at all cost.
Because the devil knows that when you and I fall upon our face before god, he begins to transform our natural into the supernatural.
Our human into the superhuman god does a very special work in the life.
It’s like he covers that life with that, which is absolutely humanly indescribable when you and I fall upon our face before him and began to worship him and love him and listen to him and express our devotion to him in privacy alone with him and no one else.
He’ll transform your life, your family.
God can ignite a little teeny itsy bitsy flame in this place that could spread across the world.
But I’m gonna tell you, he’s not gonna do it by preaching. He’s not gonna do it by singing.
He’s only gonna do it by praying. And that doesn’t start with corporate praying. It starts with private praying.
So there are four things I wanna say to you.
First of all, If you go to develop a prayer life, it’s gonna make your life powerful in the eyes of god.
The first thing you’ve gotta do is you’ve got to decide that you’re gonna set aside some time.
Now let me just just think about this.
And let’s just throw off all the cloaks and forget all about I’m the preacher.
And I want you to listen to hear this from god almighty.
If people who named the name of the lord Jesus Christ in America would spend 1 10th of a time on their knees that they spend watching television.
God, would bring about an awakening in America. They would shake every square inch of this globe.
Now, the only way for me to say this too is just say it this way.
It is a sin for Christians who have heard the gospel for years years years.
And have watched god answer prayer over and over and over again to sit down and spend 1, 2, 3, 4 hours a night watching television and get up where their moms buckled with the world, and then whisper.
A lord blessed me tomorrow and helped me in my job and bless my family.
Care of my kids and supply needs in Jesus’ name on my way to sleep.
You know why I didn’t get too many laughs? Because you know it’s the gospel truth. Amen?
It is the truth.
And that’s where god’s people spend time bowing down before the god, worshiping the god of this world, the pleasures of this world, before television, when there is almighty supernatural omnipotent omnition, loving god sitting in heaven, waiting to pour out his blessings upon his people, but they’re too well fed.
With the world. And there is absolutely no excuse.
Amen? There is no excuse.
Don’t ever tell me you don’t have time to pray.
Don’t tell god you don’t have time to pray. There is always time.
Listen, If you don’t know how to start, could I make a suggestion?
Would you just decide, lord, by your help and your strength?
And I’m gonna tell you this, don’t say that lord, if you’ll help me forget it.
When you and I know what to do, we can do it.
If it is god’s will, we have all these systems we need.
I want to challenge you to do something.
I wanna challenge you to start today, not tomorrow.
To set aside 15 minutes beginning today, by yourself, alone before god, and just start talking to them.
You say, well, now look, I don’t know how to pray. Let me tell you how to pray.
You just talk to them. Like you’re talking to your best friend, Don’t use any big words.
Don’t try to impress him. Just talk to him. Now here’s what’ll happen for some people.
You’ll pray about 5 minutes and you’ll say, Kenneth, I’ve been mispraying an hour.
Let me show you something very interesting. You’ve been there, haven’t you?
Let me tell you something very interesting. I see this and just blesses me.
You watch your fellow get saved and god began to work in his or her life.
And they first start praying. They pray about 5 minutes, and they prayed all the way around the world.
They’ve covered everything. There is to cover. They think I’ve been praying an hour.
And then as god begins to deepen their life, he just turns that over, and they’ve prayed an hour, and they think my goodness have been praying long been promised.
They’ve been praying about 5 minutes, and then it’s an hour.
You see, it says something about my relationship to Jesus Christ. Got to set aside time.
Listen. There’s not a man, woman borg.
You don’t care how early you have to get up in the morning or what you have to do.
There’s not a person here who can’t start with 15 minutes.
And you just open your Bible to some passage of scripture and read it and tell god you want him to get you ready.
And start the day off. Listen.
If Jesus Christ who had the ministry he had could spend all or the early hours when he said, well, he didn’t have to go to work at a certain don’t fool yourself.
The crowds were thronging him oftentimes at Daybreak.
That’s why he had to get a great while before day to pray.
15 minutes to start with, and tell god that you want to develop a relationship with him like you’ve never had before.
And just tell him, well, I don’t know how to I don’t know how to pray.
I don’t know what to say. But I’m just gonna tell you the best I know.
And did somebody said, you know, the this lady said, she said, I discovered with a group of ladies and we started praying together.
We know how to pray, but we got burdened We learned how.
The only play the only way to learn how to pray is to pray.
You don’t learn to pray, listening to sermons, reading books, and going to seminars, you learn to pray by praying.
Now those things may help, but they don’t teach you to pray. Second thing you’ve gotta have is a place.
You say, why can’t I prayed driving down the expressway and going to church and all these things. Sure.
You can. But let me ask you this.
Isn’t it evident in the life of Jesus Christ that as he walked the dusty roads of Galilee?
As he preached and taught and healed and performed miracles and discussed with his disciples, that he was in a prayerful mood all the time, but that wasn’t sufficient for him.
A great while, while, before daybreak, he prayed. All night, he prayed.
Somebody says, well, you pray all night. You’ll be so dead the next morning, you can’t even pray.
You can’t even work. I wanna tell you something. That is the devil’s lie. There is a mystery.
There is a supernatural mystery about prayer for which there is no human explanation all the world that a man can pray all night long, and the next morning he’s absolutely fresh is a blooming Daisy.
So how do you explain that?
I won’t even begin to try and offer an explanation for that. There is no explanation for that.
That’s the supernatural power of god, but I can tell you this.
There’s a little verse in Isaiah 40, which I have to quote to myself very often.
But they that wait upon the lord shall renew their strength.
They shall mount up with the wings like an eagle. They shall run and not be weary.
They shall walk and not faint. Well, what about that place?
When I was growing up as a kid, sometimes live in two rooms. This all didn’t have a place.
How’d you go turn and pray. That’s the only place I could go.
One place I could get by myself and close the door. You may have a place in your home.
Maybe you’re dead when everybody’s gone in your bedroom or an room or a closet.
I went to visit a family.
This church not long ago, and they were playing a tape for me of some music.
And and the midst of doing that, the fellow opened the door of his folding doors of a large closet there.
In fact, not too large, but, um, maybe about 3 feet deep and maybe 7 feet feet long and so forth.
And He opened it to get another tape out, and I noticed I could see a Bible on the floor with a pencil and a and a pad.
I knew by looking in his closet, that’s where he prayed.
There’s always a place to pray when I was growing up, and there wasn’t any place that got a load.
I found a Sunday school class, room went on the basement about he had to go through four doors to get to that room, just a tile floor, hard, cool back then the summertime cold back then the wintertime.
I knew there was a place that I could get along with god and battle out all the decisions and all the battles I had to face.
There’s something about a place, and let me tell you why the place is important.
When those are placed in your home or somewhere where you come with god and you battle out the big decisions in your life, all of a sudden, You wake up to realize one of these days that place has become your altar before god.
That place is very special. And if it can be a different room and a place that you don’t do anything else in necessarily or an extra room in your house or or, uh, some other place.
Maybe it’s in the basement somewhere.
Put you up a few two by fours and put just some old ball board and make your place to pray.
It didn’t have to be pretty.
In fact, you don’t want anything in it, but four walls, if necessary, because you don’t wanna be it by anything.
You don’t wanna glorify and picture and beautify a place to pray.
You wanna absolutely, with nothing there that a place, the lie down stretch out before god.
But I wanna tell you something, that place will become sacred and hold it to you, and here’s what’ll happen.
If it can be a place that’s separate, when you walk in, it’s like god prepares you just like that.
Because it that’s the thing you do when you get there.
And so your mind, this program, that when you walk in that place, that you kneel at that particular place, It can be down beside your bed.
You’ve got a particular spot or over in a particular chair where you kneel in over behind the chair in a corner.
Now if you still, I can just pray just as well any old way, then you have tried what I’m talking about.
It’s interesting me that the Bible says that Jesus went up in the mountain apart to pray.
He was always getting up there away, secluded to pray, because he knew the value of seclusion being shut up to the father without being interrupted by anyone else.
There’s something precious and special about the place. Then let’s talk about the purpose.
When you get along with the lord, What’s the purpose of that? You say, well, that’s very simple.
You’ve been talking about praying. No. No. Wait a minute.
What is the purpose of our spending time along with the lord?
Is there any purpose except interceding for others and petitioning god for, um, my needs?
Is there any other us for prayer than that, and I wanna tell you that there is a higher purpose than making petition, a higher purpose than interceding for god and the behalf of others.
The greatest purpose of prayer is not so much what I get from god, but it is the fact that I am in the lord’s presence, and I am aware of his presence, shut up to him, loving him, praising him, worshiping him, being quiet and listening and talking to him.
What does he do? I’ll tell you what he does.
When you and I get along with god kneeling before him, it is like the lord.
Begins to move over our life, like he covers us with an awareness of his presidency. Well, I’ve been praying.
I never felt that. Keep praying, brother.
If you’ll just keep praying and you’ll ask god and tell him that that more than you want anything that he has to give, you want him.
And you see, the greatest prophet in praying is not what I get from god or by some material thing.
The greatest prophet of praying is what?
As we are in his presence, we are being gradually conformed to his likeness.
For example, what we look at and what we focus our attention upon what we think about most is what we become like.
So what? So you on your face before god and you’re looking to him.
Now you’re not gonna see him physically, but you can close your eyes.
You don’t even have to picture what it looks like because none of us know what it looks like.
You can close your eyes and talk to the lord, but one thing for sure, whether you’re faced down flat on the floor, on kneeling and looking up to him, your face is pointed toward almighty god.
Now listen, what is happening while you’re praying and talking to him?
Your countenance and my countenance is going to reflect what we look upon the most.
What we think about the most?
When you and I get on our face before god and we concentrate on him.
And we talk to him, and we share our heart with him.
And we open our soul to him, and we pour out our innermost being to him. What are we doing?
But focusing our accountants upon him.
And what does he do in the process of our praying, privately, along with him?
He is very silently, but quietly doing what transforming us into his likeness, fashioning us into his likeness, giving us his mind, working into our life, his very being pruning out of our lives, those things ought not to be there, you can never come out of a place of private devotion to him, like you entered.
But there’s one last thing, and that is you ought to have a plan.
Because if you’re not here’s what you’ll do. Somebody’ll sound easy to pray for him, and you’ll pray 2 days.
That’s the end of it. You forget it.
So let me just tell you a real simple thing that you can do.
Just buy yourself a stenographer pad, It’ll set up because it has, um, little wire on the end of it.
Leave this set up. If you wanna set up, you can flip the pages, lie it down, anything you wanna do.
At the top of it, you’re right on the left hand column, left hand side what you’re praying about at the end of that, put the dates you started praying.
And then as god answers that prayer, draw one line through it.
Don’t draw more than one line, so you can see what you have to draw one line through it and write the date that god answered your prayer.
And here’s what’ll happen. As you begin to add things to that prayer list and as god begins to answer your prayers and you keep drawing lines, through those things.
Every time you pick up that pad and you see all those lines, every one of those lines says that what?
God answers prayer. God answers prayer. God answers prayer. God answers prayer.
Because each one of those lines represents an answer and out to the side of it.
You have a date. You’re talking about building your faith. Nothing will build your faith.
Nothing will deepen your desire to be alone with god, like keeping a record of what god has been doing and is doing in your life.
And don’t get your pad and go home and fill it up. You get your pad and you go home.
And before god, you send the lord, I want you to show me what to pray about.
God will show you what to pray about what he intends to answer, and god will work.
Now that’s 4 simple suggestions that every single one of you can utilize if you are wise enough to take heed to what you’re listening to.
Now here’s the question. The big question is always this. What am I gonna get out of it?
What’s god gonna make me if I if I if I really give myself to prayer?
Is god gonna make me more eloquent so I can speak better?
Is god gonna make me more eloquent so I can teach better?
Is god gonna call me to the mission field? Make me a great missionary?
I gonna be able to sing better? Am I gonna be able to exercise leadership better?
What thing is going to happen to me if I pray?
Well, what would happen to you if I told you as far as the world is concerned, more than likely nothing?
Some of you would say, well, I I don’t have time for that.
Well, I want you to do me a favor.
I want you to turn to a beautiful pastor scripture that more than likely you’ve never seen it in like this.
In Isaiah chapter 32. Now, I want you to read it.
I just want you to turn there for just a moment. As a chapter 32.
And when you get that, I want you to hold that just for a moment, and I want you to think about something.
When you and I develop a relationship with the lord Jesus Christ and we become devoted to him, we wanna spend time with him because we love him.
Wanna open the word in his presence. Want him to work in our life.
Here is the most beautiful picture in the scripture I believe of what happens to a man or woman who really internally develops a private, intimate relationship with Jesus Christ through prayer.
Now watch this. Chapter 32 of Isaiah verse 2.
And a man She’ll be as in hiding place from the wind and are covered from the tempest as rivers of water in a dry place.
As the shadow of our great or mighty rock in a weary land.
And listen, I want you to look this way. Watch.
When you and I begin to pray, and god, when you and I begin to establish that private time alone with him, being quiet, and god is able to hover over our life, hover over our life, and cover us for those minutes, or ever how long you choose to pray.
God begins to conform you and transform. You know what’s gonna happen? The anxieties disappear. The worries disappear.
The direction becomes clear. The fogginess that hinders your decisions begin to live.
God begins to do a sweet, wonderful work in your life, for which and where which, whereof, you will find no other place and no other action.
That’ll bring about the same result. But all that’s private.
Here’s what god will do in your life and behalf of others.
As you become a person whose life is characterized by prayer, Listen.
He will make you a man who is like a hiding place to others.
When the winds of trouble begin to blow against them, he says, you’ll be like a hiding place to those who are being wind blown with the troubles and the heartaches of light.
He says, When the storms beat down upon them, they’ll find you like a covering where they can run to and find some help and some encouragement and some protection.
He says when those lives are walking through deserts and they’re empty and lonely and frustrating and hurting He says, what?
You’ll be like a beautiful spring of water flowing in the desert.
Like a river, in dry places.
When our prayer life is like god wants it to be, he says that you and I will be like what?
Like he says, watch. As the shadow of a great rock in a weary place.
And you know, when you have a great rock and you have a shadow, And the heat of the day is there.
In the shadow, there is coolness.
And when I read this past scripture, I thought, lord, You want your people to be like that rock, a place in the midst of heartaches, and burdens and storms in the heat of the day, and the blowing winds, the hot winds of trouble that come across us.
When a man’s in that kind of trouble, he needs or she needs to meet a person who’s been alone with the lord, Nobody in the world may ever know you by name except the folks around you.
But let me ask you this.
Would you say that to become that type of person, to the people around you would be worth you spending time alone with god.
Because what he’s really saying is you’ll become an Oasis in somebody else’s desert.
If you’ll learn to stay along with god, until he transforms your life, and until that becomes a habit of devotion and love and praise to him.