Enjoying Everyday LIfe Teaching Moments

Prayer has amazing benefits! On this episode of Enjoying Everyday Life, be encouraged to pray throughout each day as Joyce Meyer shares testimonies and scriptures that reveal the power and purposes of prayer.

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I’ll see you soon. Prayer is so amazingly powerful and I think we turned it into a have to instead of a want to, I have to pray well, when we pray, we’re not doing it for God, we’re doing it for ourselves.
It’s like when we study the Bible, we’re not doing that for God. He already knows it.
We’re doing it for us because we need to learn the wisdom that’s in it.
And any time Satan can get us with a legalistic mindset, which means feeling that you have to do something as a law.
Otherwise God’s gonna be upset with you automatically our nature rebels against that.
And then we end up not wanting to do it. Are we feel pressured when we do it?
So I think the first thing we all have to realize if we want to have a better prayer life is that it’s a great privilege.
It’s not a have to. It’s a privilege. Jesus told his disciples.
He said after I’m gone, you’ll no longer have to ask me anything but you can go straight to the father in my name because when he gave us his name, it represents all that he is.
So thank God when I go pray, I don’t go in the name of Joyce because if I did, I don’t think I’d get very much, you know why none of us really actually deserve anything.
I mean, no matter how many good works we do, we can never reach God’s standard of holiness and righteousness without Jesus Christ.
So what he has done for us is so amazing and we need to think about it on a regular basis.
And so prayer is not an obligation. It is our greatest privilege should never be.
I have to pray. But I want to pray and let me just say that keeping prayer simple is one of the ways to really enjoy it.
I remember one time a long time ago because I had this thing going on in my life like he talks about in Matthew six that you know, the validity of prayer is not based on how many words you say.
And Jesus told the people then don’t, don’t just be repeating phrases over and over and over just to keep saying something.
And so the Lord challenged me one time.
He said, I want you to ask me for what you want or need in the fewest words possible.
And you know what it was hard and I still find it difficult because it’s almost like if you’ve done something wrong to just say father, I confess my sin and I ask for and receive your forgiveness.
Amen. That’s just like, well, that’s not enough.
I mean, that’s the way you feel. So then we gotta go on and on.
Oh I’m so sorry and I’ll never do it again and you know, on and on and on and I find that with a lot of things, you know, it’s like you have a need, ask God to meet it, trust that he will meet it the right way at the right time and set yourself to be satisfied with that.
But I, I kind of tried to form a habit a few years ago of not just praying, but when my prayers were answered to make a little note of it in my journal because I think a lot of times we, we just, we pray for something that happens and we don’t even realize that it was God.
And I had a good example of this just recently.
We were out of town and there was uh an Elvis impersonator that was gonna be at this theater.
And I was a teenager in the Elvis mania days.
And so I wanted to go see this guy and he was good and the theater was small.
And so it sold out right away.
And my daughter decided that she wanted to come on this trip also.
But it was after we had gotten the tickets.
And so we managed to get favor and we got one more ticket, but her, her ticket was not with us.
So she’s sitting in one place in the theater and we’re sitting somewhere else.
Keep in mind this has been totally sold out for a long time.
So I told her the day before when I said, let’s just pray that God will open up either a seat next to us, our seats next to you, you know, your natural impulses are like, well, it’s not gonna happen, you know, but we’re sitting there in the theater and I saw one empty seat that was down in the front and lo and behold, when the show started, there were four empty seats right next to her.
Now, you can think what you want.
I choose to believe that was God answering my prayer and we waited for a little bit to make sure nobody was gonna come in late and then we were all able to sit together.
Well, even my daughter who was part of that.
I said the next day I said, you, do you do realize that God that was God answering that prayer that we prayed.
She said, you’re right. And see, I just think a lot of times we, we just forget we get like the leopard who all got healed, but only one came back to give thanks.
And I believe that if we watch more for what God does in our life that it will make our relationship with him so much more exciting.
You got to be very careful that you don’t get just used to God.
Let’s stay amazed at what God is doing in our lives.
You know, recently I realized that I had, let my prayer life slip a little bit.
It wasn’t that I wasn’t praying, but I wasn’t praying quite as much or in the same way that I used to pray.
And for me, in my relationship with God, if things are not the way they need to be, I’ll start to feel disconnected.
I can’t stand that. I have to keep a good connection with God.
And so I recently have just made a recommitment to some things in prayer that I used to do.
And I’m mentioning that because I think we all sometimes have to recommit, you know, we commit and then sometimes we have to recommit or you, you have to look at your prayer life and maybe it’s gotten a little bit out of balance, maybe it’s too much petition and not enough intercession.
You know, maybe you’re praying too much for yourself, which is nothing wrong at all with praying for yourself and your needs.
But to be honest, I think our petitions should be probably a small part of our prayer compared to what we thank God for and the things that we pray for other people for now.
Thankfully, with prayer, you don’t have to be in any certain posture, any certain place that doesn’t mean that’s not good.
I think we should all have a place where we like to pray.
And I think it’s good to take more of an extended time of prayer.
But I can tell you that most of my praying is done throughout the day.
And I learned a long time ago not to see a need and, and say, well, when I pray, I’ll pray about that.
So I said, well, when I pray, I’ll pray about that and the devil loves that because by the time we pray, we’re gonna forget it.
And that’s because of that old religious thinking that well, you can’t just pray in the grocery store.
I mean, you can’t just pray, walking down the hall or going up a set of stairs.
We have to be in a certain posture in a certain place and that’s just not true.
So you can pray anywhere, any time about anything.
The only thing is, and I believe this is a prerequisite. Your prayer has to be sincere.
The sincere heartfelt prayer of a man makes tremendous power available. Give you an example.
I was eating my dinner last night, Dave wasn’t home yet.
And so I turned the television on, I was going to sit in front of the TV and eat and I’ve been busy all day.
So I was looking forward to putting my feet up and I was really hungry and So I started to do one of those.
Thank you Lord for this food and just go to eating.
And uh God just reminded me because of this new commitment that I just needed to put my fork down and put the TV on pause and say a sincere decent prayer.
It wasn’t long but not just to throw something up at the master of the universe, the king of kings.
But if I’m going to thank him for my food and ask him to bless it to my body, which today we better pray over our food and it just felt so much better than that kind of halfway.
Well, God, I’m in a hurry. But thanks because I know I’m supposed to do this.
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