Apostolic Life ( Prayer Warriors)'s Post

HOW TO ESTABLISH A PRAYER LIFE
A beginner's manual.

Prayer isn't a natural activity. It's not always the devil resisting you to pray. The flesh and your own human nature isn't designed to carry out that activity.

So, what do you do?

You stop criticising yourself and judging yourself and feeling guilty for why you can't pray as you would like. As long this is happening, more weight is added upon your spirit and it gets even harder to pray.

Then, understand that this is a marathon. Not a sprint. It's a matter of progression. It's a matter of building capacity, progressively.

How do you build capacity?

Same way you build muscles in the physical gym. Good eating and consistency in weight lifting.

Notice, if you were to build muscles in the gym, you don't start with heavy weights, you start at your current level, lifting the weights you can currently manage, then, with repetition and consistency, you gain more capacity to lift heavier weights, which then continues a progressive building of capacity.

So, likewise, you don't set goals which aren't at your level and you most certainly shouldn't be feeling guilty because you couldn't fulfil them. I don't say I want to pray for 3hrs when I've never prayed for 3hrs then feel guilty when l fail to do it. That doesn't make much sense. I don't yet have the capacity to pray for that long. Same with attempting to bench 100kg when I don't have the capacity to yet, I don't get discouraged by my failure to bench 100kg, I should be encouraged to train more until I do.

My focus then should be on repetition of exercise and consistency. I must establish this first in my life. I must establish regular daily prayers consistently. My first goal isn't how much I'm staying in prayer, no, it must be to establish consistency first. Establish the discipline first. If that pattern of consistency in prayer isn't established, there's no foundation for me to begin building capacity on. So, however long I pray is irrelevant at this point, the question I should answer is, am I praying regularly? Am I praying everyday? When this answer becomes yes, then, I go to the next step.

It's here now I must start becoming conscious of the duration of my prayers. I then need to be able to NOTICE growth in my prayer activities. My time in prayer MUST be getting longer. You will notice that, the more you pray regularly, the more you will pray longer. This will happen naturally just like building more strength and muscle in the gym. The more you lift regularly, the more you will naturally just begin to lift heavier.

As you exercise your spirit in prayer, the capacity of your spirit grows. This is a spiritual law. It isn't a matter of anointing or grace(This is for another time.)

Not forgetting the need of good food. A committed athlete pays great attention to his diet the same as he does to his physical training. Weak body will not be able to train. Same with your spirit. It's important to understand this picture, the same way your physical body is active in the gym and it's doing every exercise by it's strength, that's the same with your spirit, prayer is a spiritual activity, your spirit is doing as you're praying, therefore, if it hasn't been fed, it will not have the strength to do anything. This picture must get into your understanding. Your spirit needs food, it needs energy for it to be able to carry out spiritual exercises.

What is the food of the spirit?

The word. Same thing I've explained here to establish a progressive prayer life, it's the same approach you must use in establishing a culture of Bible study in your life. Again, it isn't a natural thing, it's a spiritual exercise. However, you ought to study Scripture regularly, this is the most nutritious food for your spirit. You will see a union between prayer and Bible study. As you grow in prayer, you will grow in Bible study. As you stop studying Scripture, your prayer life will die a natural death. Some of you, you're struggling to maintain your prayer life because you're neglecting to feed it by studying the Scriptures.
By: Apostolic Life via Apostolic Life ( Prayer Warriors)