Developing Your Personal Prayer Life - Brent Bear

The following video was recorded at Reach 2025 and released in collaboration with Christian Learning Resource.

Good morning. It is such a pleasure to be here with you today and also to be talking about what I would consider my favorite subject: the passion that is on my heart. So I'm blessed for all of you that are here today, and I'm enjoying just being with you all today here at Reach.

I'm going to start out with a story, something that took place little less than three weeks ago. Three weeks ago, on a Saturday morning, I had a life-changing message that came to my phone. This is the words: "Mother is on the way to the hospital in an ambulance. She's not responding. She just had a stroke.

Pray." As soon as I could, I went to the chair that I often pray at, and I sat down. As a message like that, it's very jarring. I live in PA. My mother lives in Ohio, seven hours away. And I tried to pray, and I prayed for around five minutes. And I had this message here on my heart. I had been refining the notes a number of weeks, and I thought to myself, "Okay, I'm going to be speaking about developing your prayer life. What do I pray right now, Lord? If someone else in this audience would have had what I just had, how would I tell them to pray? What should I be praying?" And I heard very clearly when I calmed my heart, God just said to me, "Brent, this is not the time to develop your prayer life.

This is a time to live in it and just abide." And then over the next three or four days, I experienced what the psalmist said in Psalm 23 when he says, "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me." And so I just want to share today, you do pray in those times of crisis, but the time to start praying, if you haven't prayed, are those times. But really, the time to start is now. You will begin to walk in that, and then as you go into those times, it will be part of you.

First Thessalonians, Paul talked to the Thessalonians, and he said, "Pray without ceasing." In essence, what my message is today is that it's, in essence, how to pray without ceasing. What would that look like for you, and what would it look like, and could you do that? Can you pray without ceasing? What does that actually mean? In a sense, this message here has been a three-decade struggle from my early 20s when I came through a time period when I realized I had prayed all the prayers that said, "Now lay me down to sleep." My parents had pointed me to God and said, "This is how you communicate with God." But as I reached my 20s, I remember thinking at one point, "My life is still so shallow.

What did I not catch? What is wrong in my life?" And I know that it was probably just my thickheadedness, but I didn't know where to start, and I had to take some action steps forward. And so what I'm sharing today is a path that I feel like I've actually stumbled on, and the Lord has actually walked with me and guided me and pushed me on. And I'm going to just communicate to you what that path is. And so if you're coming today to try to hear a formula, "Do these four things, and you will have a developed prayer life," I'm sorry, I'm going to disappoint you. I can only show you a path. I can't pray for you.

That is your activity, but I'm going to show you the path that I walked on and a path that I am fairly certain that if you walk on this path, you will actually have a developed prayer life in your life, and you will reach a point where you will have not just the desire to pray, but you will have the delight in prayer. And there's three words that came to me from a book years ago that I read that have held so true. This man said, "You first have to have the desire to pray." And he said, "Then as you have the desire, you have to use discipline to pray. And as you use that discipline, you will at some point reach the delight in prayer."

And I can say from my own life, that is the truth. I've had prayer times where I didn't want to leave. I had to go to my responsibilities, and I just tore myself out of my place of prayer. And that can be you. And so I'm actually telling you that not to talk about myself, but to try to tempt you that this can be you. This can be what you have. And we can have roomfuls of people like that. We can have churches that are like that. We can have ministries around the world filled with praying people and people at home that are praying for them. So as I go into that, I want you to just think of those three words.

Moses in Exodus 33, he had a desire. He said he wanted to see God, and then that desire had to motivate him, and it did motivate him to have some form of action, which I would call discipline, as he said to the Lord, "Show me your glory." And so that was the discipline part. He had to actually do something. "Show me your glory." And in the process, we know that God actually responded to that, and Moses had the delight. He passed in front of him. He actually came out of the tent of meeting glowing because he had that delight that was with the Lord. And that can be you. You will come out of your prayer life.

You might not be glowing like Moses, but your face will be shining because of what God has done in your life. And so I'm going to go to and catch my notes up. I'm going to go to three things that you must have in your prayer life in order to follow this path. The three things are in front of you. The first one, you must have the belief that prayer will make a difference. And this is a very simplistic thing to say, but if I'm honest with myself, there were times in my life where I wasn't sure if my prayers would make a difference. I had a profound experience in 1994. I was serving just a very short time period, several weeks, with Northern Youth Programs, which I did over a number of years.

But on that particular year, I was on a canoe trip with a young boy, and his name was Howie. And we had shared numerous times with them as we canoed with them and having small devotionals. And he whispered to me one night in my ear because he didn't want any of the other of his companions to hear it. He was embarrassed. He said, "Does God really hear you when you pray?" And we had a small little whispered discussion, and then I talked to him more about it privately later so that he wouldn't feel embarrassed about it. He had that question in his mind. He suddenly had a thing that, "Maybe God hears my voice." And I told him, "He even knows your thoughts.

You can think that prayer, and God will hear it." And so we had that. But that's a question that actually all of us have to answer for ourselves. Does prayer make a difference? But I'm going to say two questions. Does prayer make a difference? But then does my prayer make a difference? That's a huge difference in believing that. You might believe that somebody that you know or some minister or somebody that you know is godly, you know that their prayers makes a difference. But do you believe that your prayers make a difference? If you do, you will actually walk in that, and it will cause certain activities to happen in your life. If you look at Second Kings 4 and think about Elisha, when he raised the Shunammite woman's son from the dead, he sent his rod with his servant, and it was laid on that son, and the son did not raise from the dead.

And Elisha went and laid on top of that person, and that person came back to life. He had a belief that if he did those things, which I think are interesting, to lay on a dead body, to raise it up to life, he had a belief that his prayers would work. Hannah in First Samuel 1:9 cried to the Lord. She had no other hope, but she had one hope. She thought, "I can do this. This is one thing I can do. This is one activity I can do." And she had a belief that her prayers would be answered. And as Eli responded to her and said, she actually walked out knowing by faith her prayers were going to be answered.

And so this is the question that I want to ask you. Do you actually believe that your prayers will be answered, or do you just believe some of them, the easy prayers, but not the hard things are going to be answered? I find it just fascinating as I look at Mark 9 and look at Christ when the disciples brought to him someone that they could not cast a demon out of, and he cast that demon out on the spot. We're not told that he had spent a lot of time right at that time period in prayer and fasting. We see it all through his life. But then he responded and said, "This kind cannot go out but by prayer and fasting."

In other words, I have developed my life. I am doing regular prayer and fasting, and I have the belief strong enough that I believe this will happen. And it did because he had a strong belief in the Father. For each one of us here, do we have the understanding? What is your thought? If you prayed one minute a day for the rest of your life, just one minute, would you believe that people would be saved? Missionaries would be sent forth? The Spirit of God would be moving? Do you believe that you would see people around you repenting from sin, people that you prayed for? Now, just think about this. What happens if you would pray for 30 minutes a day for the rest of your life?

And I know I'm putting numbers, and I'm putting a formula to it. And I said earlier, there's no formula. But what do you actually believe, and what will actually make a difference in the way that you pray? Will you pray 30 minutes, or will you pray one minute? It's going to make a difference how strong you believe that your prayers will work. Every one of us in this room, if you are quiet and will ask yourself the question, "God, what burden have you put on my heart?" you will discover there is a burden there. God has put a burden on every one of our hearts for something. And if you will walk in that, you will actually see answers to specific things because God has actually ordained every one of us to carry something forward in prayer, and that is for you, and it's for me.

Those are burdens that on some days you will have a heaviness and a sadness because you will see God's burden not being moved forward that you can visibly see. You will actually visibly have. I have times in my life that I don't know how to describe, but I feel a sadness for the Lord, or I feel an anger for the Lord. And then there are also other times that I feel an intense joy as I see someone come to salvation, someone that we have prayed for years. And to see that person cross the threshold, you can rejoice with God. And those are those times when you are with the Lord in prayer, and you are walking his burdens forward with him because you are his representative on earth with the Holy Spirit inside you.

When we think about praying, I think that it is an activity that doesn't use a lot of silence. When I think about prayer, I actually think of two examples in the Bible. I think of Hannah, as I referred to earlier, as she was crying so strong. She was so moved that she actually looked to those around her like she was drunk. Maybe a better example, I think of Blind Bartimaeus. He couldn't be quiet. He knew that he wanted something, and he was willing to walk for it, and he was willing to actually make noise to have it in spite of anybody else around him telling, "Be silent." And those prayers that God has put burdens on your heart for should be those things that you can't be silent about.

In fact, when you go into your closet, it's probably going to be at a place where other people can't hear you because you will actually be crying out loud and bearing that to the Lord because of the passion that you have in your heart for God's burdens to be able to move. And so as I say all of that, I just want to—and I'm sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself—can you identify your specific piece?

I just want to point you to this before I go on to the next thing. You must, first of all, break through the barrier in your mind that your prayers will make a difference. Your prayers will make a difference for those around you, and they will actually—in essence, they will actually make a difference in your own life because as you see things being accomplished in God's kingdom, and it was things that you prayed for, it will actually continue to build your faith that you can pray and you can achieve with the Lord the desire of his heart, which is all men coming to the knowledge of the truth. And that just takes us to the second step here that I really want you to think about.

This is the action step. This is the discipline step. And this is a step that could look a little bit like a formula, but I don't want it to be. You must have a plan that actually works for you. And this is probably part of what I feel like has took place in my life in my 20s. I basically just stopped and said, "Okay, what can I move forward in one small anth of a degree that I can get closer to God?" I can almost guarantee you 100% that you will not pray continually. You will not have that as part of your life if you're not intentional about it. There's a million ways that the enemy wants to distract you and will try to take you from this endeavor.

And I experience this regularly, and it's actually become worse in my life as I became married and became a father and as I took on more responsibilities in work and other things around myself. In fact, it was something I had to kind of work through as I continued to grow in what I was doing, is that I had what I called less and less time. But the truth of the matter is we don't have less time. We just have different priorities, and we have to make sure that we keep prayer as a priority. But I made a decision when I was in my early 20s, something that actually changed my life. And this is what actually brought me to the fact to tell you this, that you've got to make a plan.

I was 20 years old. I was voted in as the youth president. It felt like a monumental task to me at that age. We had around 30 people in the youth group, and I felt like Solomon with a great people that I was supposed to lead, and it felt very inadequate. And one small piece that I did to enable me to fulfill my responsibilities for those next two years was I took every person in the youth group, I wrote every person's name on a piece of paper, and then I divided it by seven for seven days of the week. And then I began to pray each day for that one specific group. And after each week, I would have prayed for every single person in the youth group.

And as I began to do that and as I began to see things changing in their lives and as I began to even question, "What do they need in their lives so that I could meet that need or else I could pray for that need to come to pass in their life?" I saw some of the delight come in my life as I would see God's pieces moved forward. And so that was the first that I had seen a plan in my life. And I just want to say to you, as you make a plan, the first part of it is that you've got to have to carve out some time. And there's four things, and I'm going to go through each one of these four.

There's four things: carve out time, deal with distractions, use a structure, and grow your faith. And so as we think about carving out time, we all would have the excuse, "I don't have time." Let me just—I'm getting ahead of myself. If I was here to ask any one of you in this audience, could you drive to Jackson Hole, Wyoming for me starting right after this session to get something for me? I have a suspicion that probably many—it's around 27 hours from here—I have a suspicion that most of you here would say, "I'm sorry, Brent. I appreciate your friendship, but I don't have time." But now, if I would tell you, would you have time to drive 27 hours to Jackson Hole, Wyoming to pick up a box that has $20 million in it?

And if you pick it up and bring it back, I will give you half of that. I have a feeling that there is a large percentage of the people here, if they believe me, that they would actually do that. And so that just illustrates to me that you actually do have time. It's just a matter of what you prioritize over something else. And I found that in my life, that in order to do one thing, I have to stop doing another thing. In order to start praying, I had to stop sleeping or stop doing something else that I enjoyed, maybe being with friends or doing something else. You have to stop one thing in order to prioritize another.

It's just part of the laws of being a physical human being. We only have 24 hours in a day, and you must use part of that time in your day to pray, or else you will go through entire 24-hour cycles, and you will not have prayed. It's not a real—it's not a very profound thing to say, but it's just the truth. And so I want to just tell you, there's numbers of ways that you can make time in your schedule to pray. I have a friend that actually uses this as part of his daily routine. He has a task list that he goes through. There's any number of apps that we can use on our phones to walk through something.

He uses a Trello app and then just basically has his prayer list on that. I've had my prayer list written out for years to the point where I actually know what's on that list. I know who's in the number one spot. I know who's in the number four spot. I know who's in the number three spot. Just for myself personally, on most lists that I have, I've found that I cannot do more than seven people or seven needs or seven things at once. That's just for me. You likely can do more, possibly. But there are ways to organize your day, and you may have to just put it as part of your task list.

Second thing that you really must do as you approach prayer and as you go down this path is you must deal with distractions. And I discovered this early on because I would try to pray, and the first thing that would happen to me—I'm a very goal-oriented person. I was just thinking earlier this morning, I think the last time that I remember being bored was probably when I was about five. Ever since then, I always had something to do. I always had something I was working on.

Right now, I have many things that I'm sure likely won't get done in my life because I won't have time to do all of the things I'd like to see done. And so when I go to pray, I sit down, and if I'm quiet and I put my head down, lots of things start coming into my mind. And so for myself, one of the things I had to do to deal with distractions in my life was I had to—I started this in my early 20s. I have not stopped it today. I pray out loud. That is the way that I can keep my mind focused on what I want to do at that exact moment.

And a lot of times, if you are praying out loud and if there are people that are in your vicinity, you will have to do that at another place because it might distract them or it might bother them, or you may even feel just a teeny bit weird depending on how passionate you get about your prayer life. And so that was one of the things that has helped me tremendously over the years is just to pray it out loud. Obviously, praying in the car is a tremendous thing when nobody else is in the car with you because you can pray out loud and for long periods of time regardless of who's going past you on the road.

So deal with distractions and figure out ways to focus your prayer. The second thing that I have found, and I referred to it, is that solitude is the best thing that you need for prayer: getting at a place where it's maybe away from other people or else at least distant in some way from other people. You might be in a big crowd like this, but you can step off to the side. You can go in places that you will find that you will have your degree of solitude. A famous woman from the past named Susanna Wesley, she had a house full of many, many children, and this was her place of solitude. It was both for her, and it was also a symbol for the rest around her.

She would take her apron and put it up over her head, and everyone knew in the house when she had her apron over her head. She was in her time and place of prayer. They were not to disturb her. And she had some very powerful sons that took the gospel forward and actually changed the world. But she stayed at home and prayed. So who did the work? The sons or her? They both did. But she had a way that she had that symbolized her solitude time. Something else that I have found, and this is not a formula, but just something that I found for my own life, is that if I have a familiar place that I've prayed in, there's something about walking into my familiar place, sitting on my familiar chair, or by a certain place in the room that actually makes a difference in my life.

And I've done many different ways. I've taken many different paths to do this. Early on in my life, when I was living with my parents, I knew likely I'm going to move on. I simply went out and bought myself a prayer chair, a metal chair with padded nests on it. And I took that chair, and I knew that at some point I'm going to move, and I'm going to be moving out of my parents' house. And I took that chair with me. And so my place of prayer went with me, and it went with me for many years. This last fall—and I want to just really make sure that I say this—is that you need to look at your life with the seasons that are in your life.

This last fall, I was cutting up a tree that had fallen down on our property. It was a beautiful fall, and I cut myself a log stump, and I placed it back in the woods. And that became my place of prayer for a number of weeks, even months. I always went to that log. And so that log for that specific time was my place of prayer. When I sat on that log, I knew, "Lord, I am going to be walking with you today." The third thing—and I'm going to try to keep moving because I need to for the time—but the third thing—and I've referred to it making a plan, but I referred to this point as making a structure.

Something that actually helps is having a specific structure and way that you pray specifically. Now, you need to be really careful with this because as you make a structure, it can be just a list, and it can become stale. And you need to be careful that it doesn't become that. But one of the things that we see in scripture that took place is the disciples came to Jesus, and they said they saw him praying, and they came, I believe, as a group and said, "Lord, teach us to pray. We see you praying, but teach us to pray." And what Christ did was he actually essentially laid out for them a structure of how he prayed and a way to pray.

And so if you will study the Lord's Prayer, you will find seven distinct ways that he starts out: "Our Father," which art in heaven, is the first one, "hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," and so on and on and on. And what I found earlier in my life was that I may not pray through every single one of those pieces every single day. I did for a number of years, but I will at times pray through one of them. Maybe I will come to my time of prayer, and I will say, "Okay, today I'm just going to hallow your name. Who are you to me?

Who are you in my life? Who have you been in the past in my life?" And that will be my prayer time. The next time, I might say, "Give us this day our daily bread," and I'm going to focus on needs that I have in my family, needs that we have in our church, or needs that I see in the community. So each one of those sections—there are many books written about the Lord's Prayer—you will be able to find them easily if you just do searches for them and take each one of those categories and pray through them. Or if you have longer times of prayer, pray through from start to finish. And it's a powerful way to use the structure that the Lord gave you.

These are ways that you can even pray in groups together with others as well. And I'm going to be talking about that some this afternoon. So there's three lists primarily. If you take the Lord's Prayer, I have three lists that I personally use on almost everyday regular basis. And the first list is the discovery list of who God is, who God was to me, and who he is. "Hallowed be your name. Our Father." He's my Father. That's the first list, the discovery list of God. The second list is my intercession list. And this is a very broad category of needs that I have and things that I need that I see in my life that I need from God and areas that I believe God wants to work, people that he wants saved, people that need to come to the knowledge of the truth.

And this is the intercession list. Even spiritual warfare falls under this category: categories that God wants to move pieces forward where there's wickedness in the world that I believe God wants to bring peace in those situations. And then the last list, which is the last part of the Lord's Prayer, he says to, "Thine be the power and the glory forever." And this is my praise and thanksgiving list. And there's two parts to this. One is the praises for all of the things that I've seen him doing right now in my life right now. These are the things that I've seen him do, and I saw him do in the past. And then there's also the list here that are the things that I believe he's going to do because of the prayers that I've been praying.

And so these are faith praises. These are praises, "God, I believe you are doing this. I believe that as I prayed this, those prayers ended up in a bowl in heaven," like it says in Revelation, "and they're going to be poured out. And I thank you for that time that I see coming when those prayers are going to be poured out." So there's three lists. If you want to just break this down to a very simplistic thing: your discovery list of God, your intercession list, and your praise and thanksgiving list. And then I'm going to go to the last piece that I believe is part of the plan that you need to make. And this is to grow in your faith.

I think it's pretty obvious that all of us need to eat every day. We need to eat so that we can sustain the life that we have. And as we were younger, our parents tried to make sure that we got the best nutrients possible because they knew that our physical bodies were actually growing, and they were getting taller, and they were expanding, and our minds were being developed. And this is the exact same—this is not profound—this is not a profound thing to say, but if you don't realize it, you will suddenly find yourself in seasons in your life where you have not spent any time growing. So part of growing in your prayer life will require you to grow in your faith in the Lord, and it will take intentionality on your part.

Romans 10:17 says, "Then faith—so then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." The pure word of God is the best way to grow. You need to take the scripture and read it from cover to cover. And I'm going to just tell you something from my own life. This is from my last year. One of the things—I'm 52 years old—and one of the things I just—it really came to me in the last several years of my life that I have been in church. I have been in Bible school. I have studied for years. I have read through the Bible multiple times. And there are times when I read the scripture and I say, "Yes, I know that.

Yes, I know that. Yes, I believe I'm doing that." And as I ask myself in the last year, am I actually reading the Bible to actually mine out what is in there, or do I think I know everything in the Bible?

It's absurd for me to think that I am doing every single thing that it says in the Bible. And so I have started several years ago, as I read in my devotions, I'm actually writing down on a journal what am I finding from today that I didn't think about before or that I am not doing completely, that I need to actually grow in. These are things that I need to grow in, that I need to take inside myself, and I need to put this into practice in a lot greater way. And I have found much in the Bible that I feel like I was actually passing over. And this is my way of growing. And in addition to that, as I think about growing, read books.

One thing I really wanted to point out to you is the fact that you need to be really careful because you will easily find yourself wanting to grow in something and think, "I just need to buy another book for something." But you need to be very, very careful that you don't just go to books. You need to actually—prayer is an action. Prayer is not just a thing of reading books. Reading a book does not commune with God. You need to actually read a book, and then you need to pray to God. So be careful. But at the same time, I mean, I've read massive amounts of books. Take books and use them. God has given you all kinds of resources that many people in the past did not have.

Utilize that. There are many people that can guide you in their steps that you can see what the truth is that God has said from the word. So look to that. I just want to point out to you a piece that I read. I have a longer period, but this is a small blurb out of something that Billy Graham said when he thinks about growing. This is what he said in an admonition at the end of his life. He said this: "I would spend more time studying the Bible and meditating on its truth, not only for sermon preparation, but to apply its message to my life. It is far too easy for someone in my position to read the Bible only with an eye on a future sermon, overlooking the message that God has for me through its pages."

When I read that several years ago, I thought to myself, "I agree with that." I've had many times I was reading my devotions, and as I read a certain passage, I said, "Oh, this would make a great message. This is something I should take to the church." And I saw that exactly what he said. If you're a pastor in this audience or you're someone that actually leads other people, it's very easy to go to your devotional time in the morning thinking, "How can I get something so that I can use it in the future?" And we need to be careful with that. It's powerful to use those things, but at the same time, that word is for you.

It's for you and your life. It's not just to pass on right at that moment. You need to actually take it deep into your heart. And I heard famous Pastor Billy Graham said that exact thing. He would have spent—if he looks back over his life—he would have spent more time reading in the word and studying it for himself.

One warning that I just want to give you as I end this section and go to the next one is just the fact that there needs to be a balance. You can do all of these four things that I have on the screen. These can be an action step. As human beings, we love action. We love things to do, and we make our lists, and we accomplish them. But there's something about doing, and then there's also something about abiding. And there's something about discipline, and then there's also something about being spontaneous. And I just want to point out to you that no matter what you do, relationship with God is not just a do. It's an abiding.

It's a walk with God, and it's a walk with him. And that leads me to my next point. And I just want to point out to you what that is. And that is this. And I probably knew this, but I feel like in some ways in my life, as I began to reach out to God in a greater way years ago, I discovered it in a way that I had not understood it before. And likely, it will be the same way for you. And that is the third must-have, the must-have. You must have the Holy Spirit as your advocate.

I mean, I knew this by my mind because people told me that when I accepted Christ as my personal Savior, that the Holy Spirit came to live inside me, and he was going to walk with me, and he was going to show me all truth. And yet, if I'm honest with myself looking back, I was walking on my own. I was walking ignorant of the fact that he was living with me, and I was trying to walk it out on my own. And I'm sharing that because I have a feeling that there could be some of you that might have some of that as well. John 14:26 says, "But the Comforter, which is the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you."

Romans 8:26 says, "Likewise, the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities, for we know not what we should pray as we ought. For the Spirit himself itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered." There are times when you will walk with the Holy Spirit, and you will say, "How do you want me to pray? How should I pray in this situation? I have a friend right here beside me. This friend is weeping because something is going wrong in their life. Holy Spirit, how do you want me to pray for this person? I don't know how to pray for this person. Pray through me." And then I ask God, as his Holy Spirit inside me, to pray out through me and put those words in my mind and guide my steps because I don't have all knowledge like God does.

I need and depend on the Holy Spirit for that. We know that he is with us because Christ said he was going to send him to us when Christ went to his eternal place with the Lord. John 16:7 says, "Nevertheless, I tell you the truth. It is expedient for you that I go away. For if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you. But if I depart, I will send him unto you." And I'm here to proclaim to you, he has come. He came on the day of Pentecost, and he started inside those people, and he is now with us thousands of years later, and he's with us. But we need to learn to walk with him and give him the relationship with us and through us that he wants.

Something that is really easy to forget is that we have the Holy Spirit inside us, but it's a two-way street. God has actually very clearly made known that he has a desire to be with us. One of many passages in scripture, Revelation 3:20, says, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock." God is knocking, and he is constantly knocking. What I found in my own life is that any door that you open, the farther you open the door, the more he will come in. You might open the door partway, but he will continue knocking. He will say, "I want in farther. I want more. I want more relationship with you," which is really such a powerful thing to realize that God cares so much about each one of us individually that he wants to walk with us.

As I saw my mother on her deathbed, I looked and I thought, "She's just one soul of millions and millions and millions." And yet, God is watching her just like he watched Hagar. He was a God who saw her. And God sees me, and he sees you, and he sees your soul, and he cares about your soul, and he wants to walk with you. Won't you just open up your door to him? And many of us have opened our door to him, but there's ways that we can open it even farther. He says that he will come in, but it takes a response from us, and it takes an invitation from us to walk with the Holy Spirit.

It's your choice, and it's my choice. It's something we have to make. This is part of the path of prayer: to open up our life to saying, "I want more of you, and I want more of your Holy Spirit in my life, and I want to walk with you." Years ago, as I would pray, one of the things that I had discovered along my path of prayer was that I often looked at God as so distant. When I would pray, I would think to myself, "I'm praying, Oh, God," and I would be lifting my hands, "Oh, God." But I knew in my mind, "Oh, Father, I'm praying to someone that is out there." And at one point in my life, I realized, if the Holy Spirit is living inside me, if he is actually speaking to me and guiding me and nudging me, God is not way off.

God is something he is right there. He can hear me. And my prayer instead turned from, "Oh, God," to, "Oh, God." I pictured him as right here. He's my Lord. He's eternal. He's so full that if he passed by me like he passed by Moses, I would not be able to live because his glory would be so overpowering. But yet, at the same time, he's right there. He's inside me. It's a profound mystery. And so as you do that and as you come to your place of prayer, come to a God who is close to you, a God who wants to walk with you and wants to walk through you.

I shared earlier that it's helpful to make lists. Those lists are simply there to help remind you of things that your finite mind will possibly forget so that you don't forget and so that you can continue to take those to the Lord. But those lists can so easily become stale, and they can so easily become something just from rote memory. "Lord, pray for this. Lord, I pray for this. Lord, I've been praying for this for four years, and I pray for it again." But they can become very, very stale. Your life with God, when I talk to my wife, I don't get a list out and give her things that I've told her over and over.

I don't say, "It's on my list." I need to say, "I love you." I say it because it actually comes from my heart. Your lists need to come from your heart, and that's part of the thing that you need to remember, that you're going to be in many different seasons in your life. There are going to be seasons when you will pray a certain way. There might be seasons that you pray in a different way. And you do those because you are fresh in your approach to God, and you don't come in a staleness in your approach to God. So make sure that you walk very carefully in the lists that you do make out.

And if God is beginning to nudge you and telling you, "Okay, you've prayed for this, but let's just stop here for a period of time." And actually, instead of praying this list as a request, begin to pray this list to me as a praise. "Lord, thank you for doing this." I've had a number of times in my life where God gave me a peace in my spirit, that this prayer is answered. Now it's just a matter of praising. My mother, when I was born, they had a very hard, difficult time with conceiving, and she prayed for each one of us in our family to the point where I knew when I was told when I was born that God actually spoke to her and said, "Yes, you will now have a son."

And then she went to a time of praising for that. Each one of us can have that if we will pray long enough and if we will connect with God in such a way that we have his heart in us, he will actually guide our steps and guide our prayer time.

Christ anticipated our lists. He anticipated the things that we're going to pray over and over. In Matthew 6:7, Christ said to the disciples, "Don't pray like the heathen." They just prayed over and over and over and drove on and on. He said, "Don't pray like that. It's not like that." But at the same time, he said something kind of unique. He also said, "Pray over and over and over." In Luke 18, he talks to them about a persistent widow, and he complimented and said, "This is actually how you come to the Father. How much more will I answer your prayers? An unjust judge answered a request from a widow. And yet, if you come to me persistently, I will actually meet those needs that you have."