Deep Spirituality, Part 5: Deep Prayer

Prayer prepares my heart

This morning is the beginning of learning how to talk with God more deeply, so you need to prepare your heart with two prayerful questions:

• Do I believe God is listening to my prayer attentively?
• Do I believe that he is deeply interested in hearing my heart?

Scripture sets my mind

During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.

Hebrews 5:7 NIV

No one prayed with greater depth than Jesus. His “Deep Prayer” was filled with conversation (prayer), perseverance (petition), and intensely focused emotion (fervent cries and tears).

Questions focus my reading

If you are serious about developing a deep prayer life, then you will need to read the Book of Psalms in it’s entirety from chapter 1 to chapter 150. You should set aside 14 days for this, which means you will need to read between 10-12 chapters per day.

If you refuse to do this, because you don’t want to read this much Bible, then you should consider the Quiet Time called “Deep Reading,” then come back to “Deep Prayer” after you have completed it.

• How deep are your prayers?
• Do you treat prayer like a conversation, where you speak and listen?
• Do you persevere in prayer or give up?
• How close do you feel to people who give up on talking to you?
• Do you share all of your emotions with God?
• Do you share these emotions with the same intensity as with a person?
• Do you share a variety of emotions with God, or the same ones every time?
• How close do you feel to people with whom you share little or no emotion?

Read, annotate, note

Prayer improves when our view of God improves. As you read, write down the positive and negative thoughts you have about God. Selecting a fresh notebook for this would be advantageous, because we are going to have to work on eliminating those negative views of God.

Probe, examine, reflect

Probe your heart for the negative views you have of God, and how they keep you from praying at all, or from praying deeply. Examine your feelings toward God each morning for the next 14 days, write it down, and at the end of the day reflect on how that initial feeling affected your ability to pray intimately, vulnerably, and expectantly.

Prayer, faith, power

Since we are working on deep prayer, we need to select 1-3 things we are going to pray about, so we can work on moving God. Deep prayer moves God, so we should be aiming for some significant things.

Maybe pick 1 for you, and 2 for other people, since God loves to respond to unselfish hearts when they pray. If you haven’t received your answer in the next 14 days, keep praying until you do.

Identify

Write down the one obstacle you must overcome to experience deep prayer.

Share

Select 1-3 friends and ask them to pray with you. Spend time each week praying with them, so you can grow together. This is a tremendous way to turn superficial relationships into deep ones.

Decide

Decide to become someone with a reputation for deep and extraordinary prayer.

Act

Create two great Bible studies on prayer, and share them with family and friends, so you can help others on their way to a deep prayer life.