Prayer Seminar

With Phil Strickland

Materials:
· Notebook to keep my handouts in to review at home each week, and to bring back each week
· Spiral-Bound Index Cards – to hand-write the scriptures we cover in the class, because the Word of God is THE greatest key to a successful prayer life.
Preparation for the Class:
· Pray James 1.5 -8
· Pray Colossians 1.9-13
· Pray Ephesians 1.16-23 and 3.14-21.

If you want to review the last lesson, and sometimes even catch the new notes, go to

Week One – Lord Teach Us to Pray (Foundation Scriptures: Luke 11.1-13;
Week Two – What is Prayer? (Ezekiel 22.30, 31)
Week Three - Why Pray? (1 Timothy 1.18-2.4; Mark 1.35-38; Matthew 6.1-6 )
Week Four – The Purpose of Prayer
Week Five - To Whom Should We Pray?
Week Six – A Guide to Effective Daily Prayer
Week Seven – How to Pray with Power
Week Eight – God’s Promises About Prayer
Week Nine – Planning Your Daily Devotional Time
Week Ten – The Prayer of Faith
Week Eleven – The Prayer of Praise and Worship
Week Twelve – The Prayer if Intercession


Prayer is more than “saying your prayers.” It is more than a religious exercise or duty. It is communication with your Heavenly Father. Learning to pray is deciding to make Jesus Lord of your life and to really follow him. A follower of Christ who doesn’t spend time in prayer beyond church, meals, and “bedtime prayers,” is not doing much following and should be asking themselves some hard questions.
Prayer is joining forces with your Heavenly Father to see his will carried out on earth. It is entering in to living, current contact with Father God at his throne to talk about everything and anything. It is asking to get something changed in my own life or possibly in someone else’s life.
Learning how to pray is learning how to enter the Father’s presence to visit or to transact business.
Prayer is designed by God to be answered, to result in fellowship/friendship, and to be a way for you and God to share in the benefits of each other’s lives. Answered prayer and holy living glorifies God. It brings his abilities and resources to bear on human needs and desires, whether they are your basic needs of life or the broader supply of spiritual benefit, power, and grace needed to meet the needs of the world that Jesus died to save.
Through prayer, we refocus on the reality of his authority and power and in his presence we lose our fear of man. We find forgiveness and then peace for our weaknesses and failings. And we find courage to go on. Some people have never experienced this kind of peace … That’s why you are here!

Now – make this determination:
I will not study and learn about prayer, and then just “hang the diploma on my wall.” I will use what I learn in my own prayer life. I am ready to improve/increase my prayer life. I am ready to give myself to God and:
· even if it is hard for me at first, I will set aside the time necessary and do it.
· Even if I fail at first, I will not quit setting aside the time to pray and
· I will stay with it until praying is an ingrained habit in my life.

Some people say they don’t have time to pray. I don’t have time not to pray, everyday! So:

I ask you, Father, to give me wisdom and understanding in the area of prayer. Jesus, give me grace to pray like you did and to recognize I cannot make it in life without abiding in fellowship with you every day. Holy Spirit, help me, guide me, fill me, strengthen me, and make me a person of prayer.
I ask all this in Jesus mighty name, Amen!

Name:
Date
Witness:
Daily Target Prayer Time:




Psalm 145:18-20 The LORD is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth. He fulfills the desires of those who fear him; he hears their cry and saves them. The LORD watches over all who love him, but all the wicked he will destroy. NAS

Week One
Lord Teach Us to Pray

Foundation Scriptures: Luke 11.1-13; Ephesians 6.18; James 5.16-18

Introduction:

Luke 11.1-13 The disciples began to see the fruit of Jesus life was connected to his prayer life. He was telling them that they were chosen to be with him, follow him and do the works he was doing. So, one of them finally asked, "Lord, teach us to pray..." And that is what he did. You will not learn to pray until you start noticing some of the things they noticed and then, start asking some of the same questions.

Answered prayer is the fruit of every believer's life, if they are abiding in Christ. Any Questions?

1. Have you decided to follow Jesus? Learning to pray is a practical way you can begin in your quest to follow Jesus. Here (Luke 11.1-4) is the simple outline that you can follow to remember the things you need to pray about. If you follow it, you will grow in your prayer life. Why an outline?
a. If you were going to talk to someone important, and you wanted to be sure that you didn’t get tongue-tied and forget the important things, what would you do? … The outline is like having that list …
b. Check out the Matthew version of the same prayer

2. Kinds of Prayer (Ephesians 6.18). There are different kinds of prayer and each one has its own set of rules or principles that make it effective. Suppose you were to announce that after church on Sunday, we are going to have a picnic and play sports out in the field. There will be baseball, volley ball, soccer, and American football. Only this time, we are going to use the same rules for all the sports. You would have mass confusion ... We need to learn that different needs imply the use of different kinds of prayer and learn to use the correct tool for the need.
That’s what I want to teach you in this class. And I want to see you begin, here and now, a lifetime of friendship with God, through His Word and prayer of all kinds.
3. Some of the “Kinds of Prayer” are laid out in 1Timothy 1.18 - 2.4. Some rules of prayer apply to all the kinds of prayer and some of them only apply to one kind of prayer. When you read a scripture or a story about prayer, see if you can:
a. Discover what type or kind of prayer is called for by the situation,
b. Did they pray the right thing?
c. Did they get what they were asking for?
d. Are there any principles or learnings I/we can take from the story?
4. What are the limits of prayer? (James 5.16-18, Jeremiah 32.17)
a. What are the limits of God? The power is not in the prayer, the power is in the God you to whom you are praying.
b. The limits of prayer are on the man side not on the God side. Look at James 4.1-4 and Matthew 17.19-21.
5. What can you do, right now, to start your life of prayer, or jump-start it?
1. Get serious about this class. Put the strategies we discuss into action in your life.
2. Set a time for prayer every morning and give it to God, even if you just sit quietly in His presence. Do whatever is necessary to make your body comply with the desire of your heart to pray.
3. If you lack desire for a strong prayer life, apply for (ask) Grace and Mercy - Hebrews 4.16. God's grace can create the desire you lack ... "Remember your creator ..." Ecclesiastes 12.1
4. Recognize the weakness of your flesh and adopt strategies and attitudes that help will help you succeed. This is no different than what a young person has to do when he/she gets their first job and has to start getting up at 4:00AM in order to make it to work on time. Problem is, they have never seen 4:00AM except in college when they stayed up till 4:00, partying. Their body is not conditioned for a real job. They have to make it hard on themselves, do things they are not accustomed to, in order to keep this new job. That’s how serious you have to take following Jesus as Lord and learning to pray. (See Psalm 5 and Mark 1.35)
5. Learn daily devotional praying and the difference between it and deep intercession and waiting on God … Many years ago, I had faced a serious career setback in my ministry and calling and I had become a grumpy person that my wife no longer liked very much. So I started asking God to fix my wife! I felt she needed help to become a more understanding person. (That was pretty dumb, but I didn’t know that back then!)
One day, as I was working outdoors, the Holy Spirit spoke to my heart (just a series of thoughts accompanied by his presence) about the answer to my prayer. He led me to stop doing my daily prayer and Bible reading alone and separate from my wife. He spoke to my heart that if we would read and pray together, his presence would begin to solve some of the problems we were having in our communication with each other.
I presented that to her, and we began to read a portion of scripture together every day, and then pray. We followed the outline of the Lord’s Prayer in a loose and fairly short manner. We opened by giving God credit for who he is, Our Father, Our Provider, Our Healer, Our Righteousness, etc., as he has been revealed to us through the scriptures.
We would not try to cover the whole Bible but just one of His names for today. Then, we would take turns expressing our shared needs, and ask our heavenly Father for the things we knew we needed for the day, such as safety, provision, healing for our family and acquaintances, and then thank him for answering our prayer today, even though the day was yet to be played out.
Sometimes we would have to stop and apologize to each other or to God for grudges and arguments. (1 Peter 3.7) This often happened while the feelings were still raw, but we wanted our prayers to work and to close the door to the devil, so … It worked. God did all that He promised and much, much more.

The benefits of learning to pray like Jesus did are astronomical. Please give this study the attention and the honor that it deserves. According to Ezekiel 22.30, 31, eternity alone will reveal what a difference it made … or didn’t!