A Better Way To Pray Serious Misconceptions. Don't let Satan beat you up because you don't spend thirty minutes to an hour a day locked up in some closet tearing down strongholds, rebuking demons, screaming and hollering, and such! There's no need to feel condemned. God's already as pleased with you as He can be! Much of the traditional teaching on prayer is impossible to implement in daily life. Are you the mother of small children? You'd be missing God if you locked yourself in a closet to pray for an hour or two each day! His will isn't for you to separate yourself for prolonged periods of time while your children go unsupervised. Letting your kids destroy the house and kill each other while you're in there "talking to God" is not spiritual. In the times when you can't be alone with Him, you can pray without ceasing all day every day in the midst of everything else. You can be in constant communion with God, and He's pleased with that! Prayer ought to be something you can fit into your normal day. If you can have some special time alone, on your knees, eyes closed with nothing distracting you, take advantage of it. Just remember that prayer doesn't have to be that way to please God. You should be able to pray while you're driving down the street (eyes open, of course!), working, maintaining your house, doing laundry, etc. Be creative and find ways to commune with Him all day long! Go to Bed! You simply cannot live life in the real world the way many people teach prayer! They talk about waking up two or three hours before anyone else in order to pray. Then they pump you up and send you out full of inspiring stories. If you can do it, great! But if you have kids that keep you up until ten, awaken you two or three times during the night, and then have to rush off to work by 5 a.m., you won't be able to get up that early to pray; and God doesn't want you to either! "It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late…for so he giveth his beloved sleep" (Psalms 127:2). When I first started seeking the Lord, I had a strong desire to serve Him. They told me I had to either stay up at night or get up early in the morning to pray. I remember staying up late and trying to pray. I'd fall asleep and then feel so condemned over it! One time after waking up late at night on my knees feeling this way, I prayed, "God, I'm so sorry! What can I do to keep from falling asleep when I pray?" He answered, "Go to bed and get a good night's rest. Then you can pray without falling asleep!" Nowadays, if I fall asleep while studying the Word or praying, I just take a nap! After getting some rest, I return to whatever I was doing before, and everything's just fine. What I'm communicating is destroying some popular attitudes and models of prayer. We might as well face it: God's not pleased with all of our religious calisthenics! Really, that's all they are. Many Christians are just like these hypocrites Jesus spoke of. They pray for the recognition they receive from others. They pray to soothe their conscience, thinking that doing their religious duty forces God to "move" and give them what they want. God doesn't work that way, and He's not impressed with how long you spend in prayer! God Already Knows. Matthew 6:8; Be not therefore like unto them [the heathen using vain repetitions and long prayers; for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him. Prayer is not to inform God how bad your situation is. He already knows what you need, even before you ask! Have you ever prayed, "Oh God, the doctor said.." and then followed with a detailed rehash of your medical professional's negative report? God understands the situation better than you do! He doesn't need to know what your boss, spouse, banker, or anyone else, has said about it. It's simply not necessary or beneficial to give God a detailed description of your problem! Many Christians picture in their mind a huge desk in heaven piled high with millions of prayers for God to process. They assume He's swamped and it might take Him months to get to their request. Therefore, they take it upon themselves to inform God of their urgency, praying, "You need to get to this one quickly!" They hope He'll then move their request up to the top of the pile and stamp "approved" on it. This mental image and its related attitudes are completely wrong. God is not bogged down, months behind, or unaware of your urgency. Prayer is not to inform "poor, misinformed God" about how bad your situation is! Because most people are ignorant of this, problems, need, and urgency occupy a large percentage of prayer! If telling God about problems and how bad they are were removed from people's prayers, not much would be left. That's why I advise most women to quit praying for their husbands. "Oh God, my husband beats me, abuses the kids, and even kicks our dog. He spends our money out drinking, gambling, and buying dirty magazines. He's a complete reprobate!" They tell God how bad he is for forty-five minutes before closing the prayer with "…but I believe You're going to save him, in Jesus' name." Five seconds in faith and forty-five minutes in unbelief rehearsing the problem. Then they ask, "Why am I not encouraged?" That's not an encouraging prayer! Death & Life. Proverbs 18:21. Death and life are in the power of the tongue. Even in "prayer," your words produce either death or life. Praying God's solution from the Word releases life, but praying negatively and focusing on your problems only energizes and strengthens them, whether you realize it or not! The Lord interrupted Charles Capps one time while he was praying: "Charles, what are you doing?" "I'm praying!" "No, you're not. That's complaining!" Many people who think they're praying are really just griping, murmuring, and complaining. They are releasing the power of death into their lives through their negativity in prayer. God's not pleased with that! Prayer has become so religious! We need to recognize these hypocritical forms and attitudes for what they are. After we clear out everything that prayer isn't, we'll be able to lay a proper foundation of what it is. Again, I am speaking first and foremost from my own life. I'm not going to criticize anything that I haven't already done. Moody once said: - "I used to organize all-night prayer meetings. After rounding the people up, we'd intercede our hearts out as the sun went down. However, I ended up staying awake and praying all night long by myself, because everyone else always left by 10 or 11 p.m." -Here endeth Moody's quote. My mentor Andrew Wommack said: - Here begineth Wommack's quote. "I've prayed all night many times! As a soldier on bunker guard in Vietnam, I prayed four hours every night for thirteen months. Four hours! This was before I spoke in tongues. You can pray for the whole world in thirty minutes if you don't speak in tongues! Four hours wasn't easy, but I forced myself to do it. I've done all these things that I'm now teaching against at one time or another in my life. I'm not doing any of them now and am receiving better results than ever before. I love God, and He loves me; we have a great relationship! He's not upset at all that I'm not doing any of those things anymore. You might be tempted in your heart to condemn me, but until you start getting better results, maybe you should consider making these changes." - Here endeth Wommack's quote. Dwight L. Moody began as a poor shoe salesman teaching Sunday school to youngsters. He didn't even have a third-grade education! Over time, Moody's legendary zeal and success in leading others to the Lord opened the door for him to preach on every continent and in front of such royalty as the Queen of England. Hundreds of thousands of people were born again under his ministry. This man was powerful in God! Moody led a disciplined life, which enabled him to do much of what he did. He devoted forty-five minutes to prayer and Bible study from noon to 12:45 each day. That was it, because the rest of his time he was out ministering and traveling in various ways. According to current models of prayer being taught in the body of Christ today, it would be considered impossible for Moody to be so effective. Yet he was. One hundred years later, he still impacts the world through the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago and another school in Scotland. The man did more than most of us have ever dreamed of! We have some serious misconceptions regarding what prayer is all about!