What Have You Forgotten about Prayer?

Dannah Gresh: Are your prayers God-centered? Here’s Leslie Bennett.

Leslie Bennett: How would our lives and our churches be different if we prayed for a fresh vision of the glory of the Lord? We must do whatever it takes to regain all of God’s glory. Praying God’s Word will restore the wonder of God’s glory. 

Dannah: I’m Dannah Gresh. This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of A Place of Quiet Rest, for April 27, 2023. 

Nancy: How would you describe your prayer life? Whether you’ve walked with the Lord for many years or you’re just starting to go deeper in your relationship with Him, I think we can probably agree that our prayer lives are not what we wish they were, not what they should be, or what they could be. 

Leslie Bennett is a long-time, precious friend of mine, and she has such a heart for prayer. She's really influenced me in this area. She's influenced this ministry in this area of prayer. She serves with Revive Our Hearts as the Director of Women’s Ministry Initiatives. I love her heart for revival and her heart to get women praying in meaningful ways. Leslie spoke about prayer in a workshop at our True Woman ’22 conference this last fall, and we wanted to share part of her message with you today. If you feel like your prayer life needs a makeover, I think you’ll find today’s program inspiring. Here’s Leslie in the first part of her breakout session titled, “Unleashing the Power of Prayer.”

Leslie: The story has been told of a man who lived in rural South Carolina. This man was living under the poverty line, and he really didn’t have a lot that he owned. But he owned some land, and he had a little shanty, I guess is what I would call it—a kind of broken-down house on his property where he lived in rural South Carolina. 

Well, one day there was a knock on his door, and it was the South Carolina Department of Transportation coming to let this gentleman know that there was going to be a new interstate built that was coming right through his property, and the state of South Carolina was going to allow him to keep his house. He didn’t have much at all, but he did have that piece of land. They were letting him know that the interstate was going to come right through his property and that he could keep his little house if they could buy out his land from him. 

So they said to him, “Sir, we are offering you $75 million for the land that you are living on so that we can come and build this interstate.

So here is this man living below the poverty line in South Carolina with not hardly anything to his name. He receives a $75 million check, and in an instant he becomes a millionaire. 

Well, the interstate was built, and during this process, it was noticed that the man never moved out of his house. So, one of the engineers went up to his house and just said, “Sir, you’re still living here. Why do you choose to still live here? You’re a millionaire.” And they looked up and saw on the wall where the man had taken the $75 million dollar check, and he framed it. It was hanging on the wall. 

Well, that’s how I see prayer for most of us Christians. We’re glad for it; we are thankful for it. We use it when life throws us a curve ball or when tragedy strikes. We pray at meal time. We pray for people with cancer. But for the most part, prayer is an underutilized gift from God.

Prayer is like a $75 million dollar framed check that is worth nothing unless it is cashed. Amen? 

Well, in the Bible we see miracles in response to prayer. We read about mountains being moved if we have faith. And then we wonder why we don’t see that same spectacular result in our personal prayer lives. 

I want you to sign the back of the check, because God, even though He’s the sovereign God of the universe, He cannot answer our prayers that are not being prayed. Can He? Now, He can do anything He wants without lifting a finger, but God doesn’t answer wishful thinking or worries that haunt our minds, but never voice themselves as a plea to the Lord God Almighty for His help. 

 

It often feels like in our prayer lives that God is either silent or that our prayers are either hitting the ceiling and bouncing back down. It’s easy to get discouraged in our prayer lives. God doesn’t wear the same watch that we do. His Word tells us that a day with the Lord is like a thousand years. And a thousand years with the Lord is like a day. 

Scripture is also clear about what hinders our prayer lives, and that is what this session is going to cover. I am going to save a little bit of time and give you some tools to lead to corporate prayer gatherings that will fuel spiritual momentum and revival. How does that sound? It that why you are here?

Yay! Let’s go! 

I want to share with you six big obstacles to powerful prayer. Six big obstacles to powerful prayer and I’m going to go ahead and give them to you now. Then we will walk through them together. 

• It’s the me-centered prayer. 
• It’s the earthly-minded prayer.
• It’s the dirty hands prayer.
• It is the zippy prayer.
• It is the kitty cat prayer.
• It is the lazy prayer. 

Have I got your attention with that crazy list? But these are the kinds of prayers, the six kinds of prayers that will according to Scripture dilute our prayer lives, and that’s not what we want. 

So, ladies, I am going to throw a lot at you today, but as you listen and take notes, just ask the Holy Spirit, “Show me the one or two of these things that I need to focus on.” Because you may have five of these, and there may be only one that you’re realizing, “Okay Lord, this is something that You’re wanting me to change.” 

This workshop could also be called “What You Have Forgotten about Prayer.” What I’ve forgotten about prayer, so these will be good reminders for you as well. 

#1: The Me-Centered Prayer

If God answered every single prayer that you prayed, would the world look different? Would our churches be changed? Would there be revival in your community, or would just your family be safe, healthy, and happy?

Good place to start, right? 

Often, the bulk of our prayers consist of cul-de-sac prayers. So, what in the world do I mean by that? 

A cul-de-sac prayer is a prayer that never exits the front door of your house and into the street. This type of prayer is limited to what makes me and my family comfortable. That fixes people who bother me. It keeps my friends from getting sick or running out of money. That’s the cul-de-sac prayer. 

Now, contrast a cul-de-sac prayer with how Jesus prayed. His prayers were God-centered. As you look into the Word and you see how Jesus prayed, you know what He prayed for more than anything else? He prayed for God’s glory. 

And the ultimate goal of prayer is to see and experience the glory of God, and for God Himself to be glorified in and through our lives. 

Lately, the Lord has been leading me to pray to behold as much of God’s glory as I possibly can. And for His glory to be what shapes me as a woman and as a child of God.

My pastor likes to say, “Gaze at the glory of God until you are consumed by it.” Ladies, if you do that, that will change you, according to 2 Corinthians 3:18. We will become like glory lanterns, shining the light of God’s Son wherever we live, work, and play—in our schools, in our neighborhoods, and in our workplaces. 

Moses prayed in Exodus 33:13, “If I have found favor in your sight, please show me now your ways, that I may know you in order to find favor in your sight.”

Now, let’s talk about the context of that prayer, because it’s actually surprising in some ways. You see, God had just agreed not to abandon the stiff-necked Israelites because of Moses’ intercession. But even that wasn’t enough for Moses. He said, “I’m not going unless You go with me,” and God agreed to that. But that wasn’t enough for Moses. 

In verse 18, Moses pressed into the Lord and he said, “Show me your glory.” Well, hadn’t Moses already seen God’s glory? Didn’t He see God’s glory in the burning bush, when God said I AM the great I AM? Hadn’t Moses communed with God on Mt. Sinai for forty days and forty nights? Hadn’t Moses seen the shekinah glory of God repeatedly?

Well, in this moment before Moses prayed, now show me Your glory, he could have prayed for 100 different things. In the previous chapter, you’ll remember in Exodus chapter 32, the Israelites had just persuaded Aaron to fashion a golden calf from their jewelry because they were tired of waiting on God. 

Well, if I had been Moses, at the top of my prayer list in that situation I would have said, “Lord, deliver me from these stiff-necked people, and send my brother Aaron to a different ministry. I’m going on without him.” 

And yet, Moses knew something that we need to know: in every trial, in every crisis, what we need most is a fresh vision of the glory of God. 

The prophet Habakkuk was given a promise from the Lord in 2:14, “For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” 

Ladies, what if we began to pray that every day? How would our lives and our churches be different if we prayed for a fresh vision of the glory of the Lord? We must do whatever it takes to regain all God’s glory. Praying God’s Word will restore the wonder of God’s glory. 

Well, God-centered prayer blazes the highway of holiness for God to come in revival. God-centered prayer begs to see and experience the glory of God, and for God Himself to be glorified in and through our lives. 

Let’s go to number two: earthly-minded prayer.

C.S. Lewis said, “It’s only when we’re heavenly minded that we can be earthly good.”

Often our priorities in prayer are not the same priorities for God’s children and His beloved Bride of Christ. Prayer is intended to be an echo of the heart of God, of the desires of God. Our prayers are simply an echo. They shouldn’t even originate from us; they are to originate from Him. 

But see, not unlike Moses, too often we want answers, but we don’t want God Himself. Let’s call that exactly what it is, cheap prayer. We must ask ourselves if we want God’s blessings without knowing Him. Do we beg for God’s favor as long as He doesn’t mettle or interfere or discipline us?

Prayer isn’t a method to get what we want, it’s a method to get what God wants. It’s not us reaching up, it’s God coming down to be with His people. 

So, ladies, until you believe to the depths of your soul, that God is good and that the cross of Christ proves that He is 100% . . . Can I say 1,000%? Is it okay to say that? 1,000% for you and not against you, and that His plan for our lives is far superior than anything we could imagine and that when we get to heaven, we will rejoice that He did all things well, that there were no mistakes, that there were no mishaps. Until we truly believe that Heaven rules, our prayers will be short-sighted and anemic. 

Then and only then can we say with peace and expectation, “Have Your way, Lord.” Are you at the point where you can pray that yet and really mean it? Have Your way, Lord. To truly pray, “Thine will be done,” as Jesus taught in the Lord’s Prayer, requires unconditional surrender.  

 

You may be wrestling with the Lord right now. Ladies, let me just tell you, it is time to stop fighting and start surrendering. We don’t have to be the fight back girls. God knows how He wants to shape us. He knows precisely which tool and which person He will use to accomplish His purposes. It’s exhausting to hold back certain parts of our lives from the Lord. 

I really like the way Nancy said it so much better than I did just now. She said, “Your arm is not long enough to wrestle with God.” 

I’ve written five personal prayers in the front of my Bible, and the first one is: Have all of me, Lord. 

Henrietta Mears once said, “The greatness of man’s power is the measure of His surrender.” It’s not a question of who are, or what you are, but whether God controls you. You see, when God owns all of us, we won’t pray predominately me-centered prayers, or earthly-minded prayers. We won’t try to pray away the very things that God wants to use to shape us like Christ. Anybody been guilty of that besides myself?

We won’t pray away those things. You won’t find one instance of Christ praying His troubles away. It is simply not there. 

Number three, the third obstacle to powerful prayer is “the dirty hands” prayer.

Now, if you love digging in the garden, like my friend Patsy, then there’s no better feeling than to get dirt under your fingernails, while making things grow. 

Even if you don’t like gardening, imagine planting and weeding in your garden and in your yard all day long, having the best time, and then walking into your kitchen to prepare dinner without washing your hands. 

What’s a little dirt in this soup, and in the bread, or in the rice and beans? It doesn’t really matter, does it? Really? Really? Not a big deal? Well, the Lord takes sin seriously, and we should too, but the big problem is thatI don’t see my sin as a big problem.

That’s the big problem, I don’t see my sin as a big problem. And at the heart of it, sin is a rejection of God. It's choosing sin’s allure over the true lover of our souls. Sin is not neutral. Sin is not simply not a bad habit. It’s destructive, it’s progressive. Willful sin that is not confessed and repented of and cleansed never ends well. 

Psalm 24:3–4 asks this question: 

Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord?
   And who shall stand in his holy place?
He who has [what?] clean hands and a pure heart,
   who does not lift up his soul to what is false
and does not swear deceitfully.

See, Jesus is that perfect man who prayed with sterile hands and 100% pure heart. Jesus shed His blood on the cross so that we could pray the same way He did, through His name. And do you know this truth?

The writer of Psalm 66 did. 

If I had cherished iniquity in my heart,
   the Lord would not have listened.
But truly God has listened;
   he has attended to the voice of my prayer.” (vv. 18–19)

That’s the prayer of a repenter who knows God is listening to his prayer.

The cross has broken the power of sin, but still, our human flesh makes it impossible not to sin. You know Paul, “I do the things I don’t want to do. I don’t do the things I want to do” (see Rom. 7:15). And the beloved disciple John said we’re actually calling God a liar if we say we are without sin (see 1 John 5:10). “Confess your sins to one another,” James the brother of Jesus said (James 5:16). 

Be honest with God, be specific, He already knows it anyway. And yet, sometimes I’m really surprised when I pray with a group of women that some ladies still don’t know how to confess their sins. 

We have to be specific, not generic, not general, not “we” but “me,” Lord. It’s me, Lord. I need to be forgiven. John Bunyan put it this way, and it’s very succinct about what we’re talking about about, “Prayer will make a man cease from sin, or sin will make a man cease prayer.” 

Just remember repentance adds fuel to the flames of prayer. You will pray powerfully when you pray with clean hands and a pure heart. 

Number four: “zippy prayers.”

Now, I found out that there are Zippy restaurants in Hawaii. I’ve never heard of that before, but it sounds interesting. Anybody ever heard of that? Anybody from Hawaii in here? We have Zippy car washes. We have Zippy storage units. There’s a Zippy technology company.

Modern culture is infatuated with anything “zippy.” And add to it our smart phones and social media. Algorithms are rewiring our brains for shorter attention spans. Do you ever feel numb from the massive amount of information that your brain is constantly trying to process? Is it just me? I mean, I know I am getting older, but is it too much? It’s too much. 

If we could listen in on each others’ prayer times, I wonder if we could peak into in our hearts. I wonder if you might see this, not spoken, but in our heart, “Lord, let’s make this quick. Because in five minutes I’m off and running, and you know my brain is going to be gone if we don’t make this quick in about five minutes.” 

We have forgotten what Jesus taught in John 15:7: “If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish and it will be done for you.”

This exposes a hidden issue that drains power from our prayers. We aren’t abiding. We aren’t sitting in the Lord’s presence and in His Word, long enough for our hearts and minds to be transformed into His image. 

So, as a practical point, when my mind goes off the tracks, because believe you me, it is going to . . . Every time I sit down to pray and I am in the Word of the Lord, I just ask the Lord to help me focus. If a person is brought to my mind, then I believe, “Okay Lord, that’s from You, I’m going to pray for this person, and I might not even know what’s going on in their life, but I am just going to pray for that person.” Then I am going to quickly go back and return to prayer. 

Or if I’m distracted by something, I’m going to get rid of whatever it is that’s distracting me. What distracts you in prayer? Your children? Your to-do lists? Your phone? Your brain spinning? Sometimes at my house it’s the barking dog that won’t be quiet. Whatever it is, we have to get rid of that, move that out of the way, and return to prayer. 

And ladies, I am going to say this, unless you are a young momma in the room, and I’m not speaking to you, but the rest of us, we need to get a good night’s sleep. 

Now, you young mommas are in a season of life where that’s not really always possible, but the rest of us don’t have an excuse. We’re guilty of pushing our bodies beyond the finite limits that God has put in place. 

I might be stepping on your toes right now. I’ve had to learn this the hard way. We’ve got to learn to rest, and that will fuel our prayer life. 

As I travel and connect with many women in churches, what I find missing is women with a lifestyle of prayer. Pastor Bill Elliff translates 1 Thessalonians 5:17, which is “pray without ceasing,” or pray continually, or pray constantly, depending on the translation. He translates that as prayer without intermission. Don’t you love that? Prayer without intermission. 

So, to harness the potency of prayer means your prayer life does not come equipped with a power on and off switch. Think of prayer as a living prayer journal. Your prayer life is a living prayer journal with blurred edges. And what I mean by that is, instead of a prayer life or prayer time that is starting and stopping over the course of our lifetime, we will learn to walk with Jesus moment by moment . . . and that grows very slowly.

Some of you older prayer warriors in the room, you have learned that over the years. And if you are a younger woman, I want to point you to some of those older women, who have learned to walk with Jesus, moment, by moment. 

A lifestyle of prayer is believing the Lord is my helper. Believe you me, I need help. You need help. So, it’s believing the Lord is my helper, and it’s knowing that the Spirit of the Living God resides within me. I can talk with Him, and I desire to talk with Him constantly. 

In fact, I am absolutely shocked sometimes that the God of the universe wants to talk to me. That’s mind blowing, ladies. That’s absolutely mind blowing. 

A lifestyle of prayer is turning to Him to give thanks when things go right, or when challenges are resolved. It’s turning to Him first when problems arise, and it’s praying with others in this moment. 

For me, here’s what this looks like, and I don’t do it perfectly. I don’t do it 100% of the time, but it’s like let’s pray about this right now. We’re talking about a challenge, we’re facing a challenge, let’s just pray about this right now. Or someone starts sharing about maybe their child is going through something difficult and they’re asking for prayer, then it’s like let’s pray about this right now. Let’s go to the Lord right now. 

At my age, I talk to myself a lot. What I have found is as I’ve gotten older, and I’ve began to talk to myself a lot, I just have kind of made a switch to that, instead of talking to myself, I just talk to God. And so, in my household, my husband is hard of hearing. I’m talking to God, and you can image what it’s like at my house. He’s like, “Huh? Huh? Are you talking to me?”

“No, I’m talking to God.” 

You can just make that little switch, and begin to talk to the Lord instead of just talking out loud and talking to yourself. 

You see, those quick zippy prayers are puny and cultivating a lifestyle of abiding with God in prayer. It is like a booster to the rocket. Our prayers are forcefully propelled into the throne room of Heaven. “Abide in me, and I will abide in you. Ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done.” How is that possible? Can that really be true?

Well, that is because, God’s desires when we are sitting with Him and we are abiding with Him and we are living a lifestyle of prayer, His desires become our desires. That’s how we can ask for anything that we wish, because we wish God’s will to be done. 

Nancy: Leslie Bennett has been explaining some of the biggest obstacles we face when it comes to prayer. Did you see yourself anywhere in her list so far? Again, those prayer obstacles were:

• the me-centered prayer, 
• the earthly-centered prayer, 
• the dirty hands prayer, and 
• the zippy prayer.

I know at various points I’ve been guilty of all of those. But God’s word calls us to powerful prayer.

We’ll hear part two of Leslie’s breakout session from our recent True Woman conference tomorrow, as she shares the last two kinds of prayers that get in the way of powerful prayers. Dannah?

Dannah: Thanks, Nancy. You know, sometimes I think we don’t pray simply because we can’t find the right words. Has this ever happened to you? If you find yourself not sure of what to say to the God of the universe, try starting with Scripture.

God’s Word is full of prayers that we can adopt as our own to pray back to Him. Finding the Words to Pray is a helpful book from Revive Our Hearts that gives you fifty prayers taken from Scripture. Our hope is that this resource will help you intentionally seek the Lord and use His Word as a guide.

You can get a copy of this beautiful new book when you make a gift of any amount to Revive Our Hearts. It’s our way to thank you for supporting the work God is doing through this ministry. Visit ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1-800-569-5959, and ask for your copy of Finding the Words to Pray. Not only do we hope this book will encourage you, but it would also make a great gift for someone.

Speaking of gifts, Mother’s Day is coming up. Have you thought about how you might celebrate the moms who have made an impact in your life? It’s not too late to shop the Revive Our Hearts Mother’s Day sale. Today and tomorrow, you can find meaningful gifts, books, and other resources to encourage them this Mother’s Day. Save on titles such as 30 Reflections to Start Your Day by Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, Expect Something Beautiful by Laura Booz, and more. The sale ends tomorrow, so be sure to check it out at ReviveOurHearts.com. 

I hope you’ll join us tomorrow as we hear more from Leslie Bennett on what hinders powerful praying. Please be back for Revive Our Hearts.

Helping you live in the power of prayer. Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth is calling you to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

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