Mobilizing People For Prayer — God is a loving Father who listens at a moments notice and always answers as quickly. The field of prayer is so vast that it would be difficult to catalog all the varieties of prayer, the rules of prayer and the methods of prayer known to Christian people. But prayer works; we must believe that. Richard Foster in his book Celebration of Discipline said, "We are working with God to determine the future. Certain things will happen in history if we pray rightly." Remember the scripture from James: Elijah prayed that it would not rain, and it didn't; then he prayed that it would rain, and it did. James' presumption is that history would have been different if Elijah had not prayed. So what does it take to help us as individuals have a superior lifestyle of prayer? Let me list four rules.
1. The first rule is praying with faith. "This is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us" (1 John 5:14). The more certain we are that what we are praying for is God's will, the more faith we can have.
2. The second rule of prayer is praying with a pure heart. We must constantly be on guard that the motives behind our prayers are the right motives. "When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures" (James 4:3).
3. The third rule of prayer is praying with power. All spiritual power we have comes through God's Word and the Holy Spirit. "If a son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone?" and then He immediately adds: "If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!" (Matthew 7:9-11).
4. The fourth rule of prayer is praying with persistence. Praying about something just one time is not enough; we must pray for it again and again before we see the answer we are expecting. The persistent widow in Luke 18 is a great example of how each of us need to continue to pray persistently and fervently.
