Growing in Prayer (Part 1) – Mike Bickle

Session 6 A Practical Plan to Grow in Prayer Page 15

Session 6 A Practical Plan to Grow in Prayer

I.  Introduction

A.  There is more to developing a consistent prayer life than loving God; there are practical matters.

This is session six in a ten-part series on Growing in Prayer, Part One. Next semester we will have Growing in Prayer, Part Two. There is so much important material, I believe, in covering this vast and glorious subject. There is more to growing in prayer than just loving God. Some folks think, “If you love God, it all falls into place.” Loving God is certainly the central issue, and the revelation that He loves us is where it begins. But there also really are practical issues to growing in our prayer life and having a consistent prayer life.

B.  I understand the difficulties involved in developing a consistent prayer life because I have struggled through them myself. But by God’s grace, I have been able to maintain a consistent prayer life. I will share a practical plan to help you grow in prayer, a plan that has helped me for many years.

I want to tell just a little of my story, just a little snapshot of it, but only because I have proven in my life as a weak and broken person that it can work. I know how much I did not like prayer and I know how much I went, “Ugh.” I know if I can, you can.

You say, “Well, that was forty years ago, and it is different now.” I understand the plight and the journey that some of you are facing when you think, “Not a chance. It is never going to happen to me.” I understand the difficulties because I struggled through them. By the grace of God, and I want to say this humbly and tenderly, I have been able to maintain a consistent prayer life for many years, for some decades now. I do not mean my prayer life has been amazing. It has been consistent. I want to share a practical plan for you because I believe it will work for you. The reason I have energy on this is because it did work for me. I started in a position of not really liking this whole thing called prayer.

  1. Set a schedule for regular prayer times. A schedule establishes when you will pray.

The first thing I want to identify is the need to set a schedule. Schedule time for prayer right off the bat, if you have never done that. I have taught this for nearly forty years, and people respond, “Uh, no, legalism. Ah, set a time, no. Give me a few minutes. Scheduling time for prayer?”

You do not keep it all the time, but you put it on the schedule. It establishes when you pray. Not all the time you pray, but it gives you a beginning as a core to developing your prayer life.

  1. Make a prayer list. A prayer list helps you to focus on what to pray.

Number two, make a prayer list or prayer lists, plural.

  1. Cultivate a right view of God. A right view of God causes you to want to pray.

Number three, cultivate a right view of God. What do I mean by that? I don’t mean hearing one teaching on God loves you and thinking, “I got it.” I mean by speaking the word of truth before the Lord when the devil tells us lies about what God is like and how God views us. I mean taking a stand. Doing that spiritual warfare to break those wrong strongholds in our thinking about who God is and how He views us. I know a lot of folks who have heard about the love of God for years, but it does not move their heart or reset their emotions or form their emotions. Therefore their wrong view affects their prayer life in a very dramatic way.

C.  I was struggling in college to establish my prayer life. A leader suggested that I schedule a time each day and make a prayer list. He assured me that doing these two things would change my prayer life over time. He was right! I was hesitant at first, but his counsel to me worked.

My journey began back in my college days when a man at the university—I went to the University of Missouri—came to me and said, “I encourage you to schedule a prayer time every day and make a prayer list.”

I said, “What?” I told him how I was struggling in prayer. He assured me that this would change my prayer life. I looked at him and said, “No, that is not going to work.” But I respected him so much, and I met with him every week—he was quite a few years older than I—and he was holding me accountable and he asked me every time he met me if I did it. Just out of that I did it, and I found out over time it really worked.

D.  If you schedule time for prayer and make a prayer list, you will pray ten times more than you do now. I have made this statement for more than thirty years. People usually do not believe it, and some even argue against it. Nevertheless, I continue to say it, because I have proved the truth of it in my own life and witnessed the results of others applying the plan in their lives.

I want to make a bold statement. I have made this statement for over thirty years. I want to say it really boldly. You will pray ten times more in the next year or two if you will set prayer on your schedule and make a prayer list. You will pray—this is true for about ninety-five percent; there are a few exceptions—ten times more if you simply put it on a schedule and make a prayer list. I have said that for years. Folks protest, “No way. Legalism. That is not right,” but they continue for years without a prayer life. They are so afraid of doing it this way, but they are not afraid of going another decade without a prayer life.

I challenge them, “Do it for one year. Try it for one year. I assure you that you will be a satisfied customer.” The reason I have been saying this for thirty plus years, and I am saying it again tonight, is because it changed my prayer life, and I have seen it change so many other people’s prayer life. These simple three things: schedule, prayer list, and cultivating a right view of God.

II.  Schedule a Prayer Time

A.  There are many demands on our time. Therefore, we must be intentional about developing consistent prayer lives. If we do not set our schedules ourselves, others will set them for us, and the result will be very little time for prayer. It is of the utmost importance that we schedule time for prayer. It sounds simple, but setting a regular time will profoundly impact our prayer lives.

Schedule a prayer time. This is so simple, but there are so many demands on my time and your time. If we are not intentional about developing a prayer life, we will not develop one. You will not wake up one day deep in God. It does not work that way. It’s just like exercise or taking vitamins. Exercise does not make it all better in one day. It is over months and years. You can take vitamins and eat rightly. It is not in one day that you are energized in your health. It is over years of doing it. The same is true in our spiritual life. This is really obvious, but it needs to be said. I say it several times in the notes: if you do not determine your schedule, somebody else will. I promise you. If you do not set your schedule and determine to take control of it, somebody else will take control of it.

We have a lot of students and interns in the room; therefore a good part of your schedule is set in place. Beloved, that is just a crutch. Once you get through the program and that crutch is gone, will you have self-discipline? I have seen a lot of folks over a lot of years, I am talking about forty years, go to Bible School, go to an internship, have their schedule set for them. They do not really understand the value of that schedule. Then the schedule is lifted. They get out. A year or two later they do not have a prayer life at all. They think, “I did the IHOPKC thing. I thought maybe by osmosis I would wake up one day with a prayer life. I prayed a lot when I was there. At least I sat in the prayer room.” Beloved, sitting in the prayer room, even if you are not engaging, more is happening in your heart than meets the eye. I am all for engaging. Do not write off the time when you are there and you are thinking, “This is not really working.” There are other things happening positively in your life, even in that posture. Obviously, though, it is a lot better to engage with the Lord.

B.  Of course we will not keep our schedule 100 percent of the time, but we will keep it more often than not. I feel good if I show up to start my scheduled prayer times 85 percent of the time. I do not always stay in prayer for the entire time that I intended. But I set my heart to show up to start it, and then I go from there.

We are not going to keep our schedule 100 percent of the time. I am talking about when I was eighteen, nineteen, and twenty-years old. I am not talking right now about IHOPKC and our sacred trust. I am talking about something different than that, though our sacred trust is a scheduled prayer time. I am talking about life even outside of those parameters. I would set my prayer time—I remember when I was eighteen, nineteen years old—I set my prayer time at 9:00 every night. It was the dreadful hour of 9:00. At 8:45 in the evening I would begin to sweat because in only fifteen minutes the hour of death began. I wish that were a joke! I would think, “Oh, Lord, I would do anything besides talk to You for an hour. Please deliver me from this.” Funny now, but it was not funny then. I was convinced that I needed to grow in prayer to grow in God. That is true. I did not like growing in prayer, but I wanted to grow in God. I was in a catch twenty-two.

I have found over the years that I do not keep my scheduled prayer time 100 percent of the time. Here is one thing, if I show up and begin it—when I show up, I do not always stay in my prayer time the whole time on my schedule—but if I show up and start my prayer time—whether it is at home, my dorm room, now at IHOPKC or times in my office or at my home when I have times I set apart for prayer—I find I keep that schedule about eighty-five percent, meaning I show up and begin it. I do not always pray the entire time I scheduled. Sometimes it goes longer. Sometimes I get distracted, and I quit short. I am not talking about our sacred trust at IHOPKC. I am talking about something more general than that. If I am keeping it about eighty-five percent, I feel like I am really on a trajectory to succeed in my prayer life.

Often my mind is blank. I do not feel like praying. I say, “Here I am, Lord. I am opening my heart to You.” A lot of times I will go for the time I have set. Sometimes I will come up short. Sometimes I will get distracted. I show up. I think just by showing up, I mean before the Lord at that given time, it is remarkable after forty years how many times you actually will end up praying. Even though I do not feel like it before I come. I am busy, with a lot of things are on my mind. I start the prayer time. I do not always end it. I do show up. I have found it is remarkable how that one little point makes a huge difference.

C.  I treat my prayer time as a sacred appointment that I try not to miss except for emergencies.

D.  I do not limit my prayer life to my scheduled prayer times; I pray “on the run” during the day, which is part of abiding in Christ. You will sustain an “abiding dialogue” throughout the day much more consistently if you have regular times to talk to God set into your schedule. It may be necessary to tweak your prayer schedule at times to keep it working with other things in your life.

I do not limit my prayer time to that scheduled time. That is just the time I deliberately position myself before the Lord. I say, “I am going to do it no matter how I feel.” I pray when I feel throughout the day too. I pray many times outside that set time. Do not limit it to that time.

E.  There are 168 hours in each week. If we use ten hours a day to sleep, eat, and dress (seventy hours a week), that will leave us about 100 hours a week for work and other things. With creative scheduling, most people can find an hour or more a day for prayer if they really want to.

Consider this. Everyone on the planet has 168 hours a week. Everyone has 168 hours a week. That is seven days, twenty-four hours a day. If you take ten hours a day to eat, to sleep, and to get dressed—some people say, “I cannot do all that in ten hours.” For the sake of the idea, just go with me—ten hours. You sleep X amount, you eat X amount, and you fix your hair X amount. If you do that ten hours a day, beloved, that still gives you almost one hundred hours a week to manage your time. One hundred hours. Some folks work forty, some go to school forty, some do IHOPKC fifty. They have one hundred other hours to work with every week, if it takes ten hours a day to eat, sleep, and get dressed. My point is 100 hours. There are a whole lot of fifteen and thirty minute gaps of time that I find people squander and waste. Over decades, that is a huge amount of human life. Huge amount of life that just kind of goes by the wind.

I want to encourage you to lock in times for prayer. You say, “Lord, I am going to schedule my recreation, my entertainment, and my social times around the times I set with You. Not the other way around.” I believe that if you have a little bit of creativity with the 100 hours that you have after you eat, sleep, and get dressed ten hours a day, that nearly 100 hours with a little creativity, a person who really cares can move some things around, I am sure there are a few exceptions, and they really can find time to develop a prayer life before the Lord.