Jack Hayford - Walking the Path of Prayer: 10 Steps to Reaching the Heart of God

Walking the Path of Prayer

In this manner, therefore, pray: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

Matthew 6:913

T he aged apostle Paul, as he concluded one of his letters, gave a series of concise commands summarizing essentials for disciples (see 1 Thessalonians 5:1227). One of them was, Pray without ceasing (v. 17).

Whatever else may be said about living as a disciple of Jesus Christ, about walking with Him by faith and in love through trial and in power, clearly prayer is the one discipline above and beneath all others.

I have heard it said that more books have been written on the subject of prayer than on any other worthwhile theme occupying human inquiry or aspiration. Few thinking persons deny there is something to this practice. This has often been true even when the person denies there is someone there to whom prayer may be offered.

Prayer is a word and idea used by the materialist and the Eastern mystic to describe quiet creative reasoning or transcendent meditation. Still others characterize prayer as anything from describing a good feeling (toward a cause or person) to an impassioned cry for help from whoevers out there.

At a fuller, deeper dimension for the disciple of Jesus, prayer is person-to-Person communicationa combination of worship, fellowship and intercession:

• Worship through adoration, praise and thanksgiving to God
• Fellowship through devotion, communion and conversation with God
• Intercession through supplication, fasting and spiritual warfare before God

Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit is a phrase inclusively covering this triad of prayer, one Paul enunciates in his concluding appeal to the Ephesians (6:18). The NIV reads all kinds of prayers, a worthy translation that points us to a learning path of applied growth in understanding the means and methods of prayer.

The Bibles call to prayer is not a call to the mystical or the theoretical; rather, the pathway of prayer is preeminently learnable. It is not intended to be mysterious, but instead, always practical.

Starting with seven basic steps of prayer as outlined by Jesus when instructing His disciples how to pray, we will conclude with three keys to effective asking in prayer and attacking through prayer. Throughout we shall move toward applying the one constant the Bible teaches the earnest disciple: Pray without ceasing.

To learn to live in the spirit of prayer is to learn to walk in the presence of Jesus. Always.

W herever... thou shalt be, pray secretly within thyself. If thou shalt be far from a house of prayer, give not thyself trouble to seek for one, for thou thyself art a sanctuary designed for prayer. If thou shalt be in bed, or in any other place, pray there; thy temple is there.

St. Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, 10911153

You are all sons of light and sons of the day. We are not of the night nor of darkness.

1 Thessalonians 5:5

N othing is more crippling to effective prayer than not having confidence in our relationship with God. When Jesus refers to God as the Father, He helps us to understand the glorious relationship we are intended to have with Him.

Our Father in Heaven

In this manner, therefore, pray: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name (Matthew 6:9). Jesus opens His teaching on prayer with an emphasis on our relationship with God as our Father. In doing so, He establishes the foundational truth that we are given grounds for confidence in prayer on the strength of a Father-child relationship, which the Bible says is established and secured through Christ: Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him (1 John 5:1415).

Unfortunately, the concept of father has been marred for many through disappointing earthly relationships with parents or other authority figures. Because of this all-too-common human fact, Jesus made a point to show us the Father in a way no one else ever could. For in Christ Himself we see that God is a Father who transcends even the finest earthly father; He is able to redeem us from the broken images or painful memories of our lives. As we follow Christs teachings about the Father and see how He showed us the Father in His life, we come to understand the power of His words to Philip: He who has seen Me has seen the Father (John 14:9).

The Story of the Prodigal Son

In Luke 15, Jesus uses the story of the prodigal son to paint a magnificent picture of what our Father God is really like. Here is a young man who wasted everything he had been givenhis inheritance, his opportunities and his fathers trust. He ended up working in a pigpen in a foreign land. But in unfolding this story, Jesus unveils Gods heart toward each of us through five essential phrases. He shows that, regardless of what we have wasted, Gods arms are still reaching toward us, openly and lovingly.