On September 4th, I listed seven prayer secrets. This week, I’m breaking these down and talking in more detail about each one of them.

1. Let your gaze be on God, your glance on your request.

2. Let prayer be your first choice, not your last.

3. Let your prayer be filled with praise and thankfulness.

4. Pray more from conviction than from crisis.

Too many times we go through our days and when crisis occurs, we are pressed into prayer. Now, there is nothing wrong with running to God when we are in a crisis. But, some crises might be avoided if only we were praying out of conviction.

For example, we should pray out of conviction for wisdom to lead our children’s hearts to follow God, so that we might not find ourselves praying out of crisis because they are running away from the heart of God.

We should pray out of conviction to live in understanding of our spouse, so that we might not find ourselves praying out of crisis because of our complete misunderstanding with them.

We should pray out of conviction for our church to practice selfless love toward each other, so that we might not find ourselves praying out of crisis because we acted with selfish, unChristlike disputes.

We should pray out of conviction to live with honesty and integrity, so that we might not find ourselves praying out of crisis having dishonored God by dishonest and disrespectful actions.

5. Pray specifically, not in general.

Here are two examples where Paul prays specifically.

Philippians 1:9-11 “And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, 10 so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.”

Ephesians 1:15-18 “For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, 16 I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. 17 I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. 18 I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you…”

God deals with specifics and Satan deals in generalities. Satan says to us, “You are a sorry person.” God says to us, “What you just did was a sorry thing.” If we should pray, “Lord, forgive me of my sins,” God will say, “My forgiveness is available; what specific sin would you like to talk about?”

Have you ever been in a church gathering and people were sharing prayer requests? Have you ever had someone say, “I have an unspoken request?” I must tell you, the Scriptures know nothing of an unspoken prayer request. If what you are struggling with is too personal to share with the larger body of believers, may I suggest that you develop a relationship with two or three other people who you know that you can share anything with them in confidence and not be judged by them? Go to them and ask them to pray specifically about your situation.

While I’m here, a few Sundays ago I shared in Sunday School a new paradigm for prayer in our group meetings. Before you request prayer for something or someone, ask yourself, have I been prayer about this personally? If not, tell the group you know you need to pray about a matter and you lead the group in prayer for that matter. Then, as the Lord leads, others may join in agreement with you. Even if you are uncomfortable praying in a group, at least share only things that you yourself have been praying about.

Now, go pray and be specific as you trust in God for the answers.