An On The Ground Battle

Four Parts of the 30-Thousand-Foot Prayer

Introduction to the 30 Thousand Foot Prayer – Part 10

For people who are less experienced in prayer, they all do it the same way. They share a common method of prayer which I am calling, the “30-Thousand-Foot Prayer.” A 30-thousand-foot prayer must become an on the ground battle. God helps us to bring our 30-thousand-foot prayer down to ground level, don’t miss it. Normal people don’t get this and here’s why. It’s those prayers that remain in the clouds that yield unfavorable prayer results.

Big prayers take time and actions. This is important to note because anything that big and time consuming needs a well thought out plan to follow. Am I saying you need a plan to pray? I know you don’t want to hear about planning, if you’re normal, average, or mediocre. This stuff, getting 30-thousand-foot answered prayers isn’t normal stuff. It’s like getting a degree, starting a business, or building a house. There’s a lot of work and time needed to see these desires fulfilled. For people of faith, there’s a lot of seeds that need to be sown, so that we can anticipate a harvest from our planting. Back to answering your question, yes, you need a plan. Put “normal” away, there’s no room for it in the 30-thousand-foot prayer request.

The Normal 30-Thousand-Foot Prayer Life Cycle

Let me demonstrate how a normal 30-thousand-foot -prayer works by explaining its life cycle.

  1. We encounter a big problem.
    The average person waits until their problem is unmanageable for himself/herself before ever presenting the problem to God. Does this sound familiar or close to how you do it; do you wait until you’re in despair before asking God? This is what it looks like.
    They wait until the car is being reposed.
    They wait until the house is being foreclosed.
    They wait until the spouse has begun a new relationship.
    They wait until the child can make their own decisions. You’ll get this one later, let it sink in.
    They wait until the judge has given a sentence.
    They wait until the wrong person is in office.
    They wait until a loved-one has already passed.
    They wait until the problem is bigger than life itself.
    Now we have the making of a 30-thousand-foot prayer request.
  2. We have no alternative but to pray.
    It’s here you’ll find the average person is ready to go to church. You don’t have to even invite or ask them when the situation is bleak. When the problems get so big, they go to church on their own. (To the left) I want to say to them, why go to church now? Why wait to pray until you find yourself in a bad predicament. You had no interest in God helping you before. Why has interest now that you’ve found yourself in dire situations? If I were God, I would say to you, go back where you came from and use the help you’ve always used. Let me get back on track. When you have no other alternative, this is what they do.
    They want the church to pray.
    They need to see the pastor immediately.
    They have no time to wait or to waste. The problem is dire.

    It’s like being on an airplane at 30-thousand-feet and looking down at the ground. You can see land for miles. You can see the problem as one large land mass. Everything appears small from this view. Your perspective is different about the landscape. You think if you can just get someone to pray, then they can perform a miracle on your situation. Here’s the biggest error normal people make. They confuse prayer with miracles. Praying and receiving a miracle are not the same.

    Let’s imagine what you see below you from 30-thousand-feet represents the size of the prayer request you’re presenting to God. This big prayer requests even, to you, seem like an impossibility. You at this moment don’t really want to pray, you want a miracle. You want an answer to your problem that doesn’t require you to do anything. You want someone else to do your work, take care of your issue, make your problem go away. That’s not what prayer does. This is when (you go to church, seek pastor, ask for a miracle) it rarely works out.
  3. We look for results right away.
    Now that you’ve gone to church one time, the pastor has prayed and even laid hands on you, the problem remains. You’re disappointed because nothing happened immediately. You want results and you want them now. This is what every normal 30-thousand-foot prayer requester wants, but what they don’t realize is that the plane must come back down to the ground. Their answer has to come back down to their level. Your prayer request has a way of meeting you right back at your level, ground level, the level that created the problem in the first place.
  4. We give up on our prayer.
    Less experienced pray-ers, would give up after spending a day, a week, a month, or even a year on such a request. This is just one of the reasons why people who pray big prayers give up on prayer and never see their prayers answered. After having gone through the trouble of going to church, seeking the help of pastor, and nothing happens to our satisfaction, we give up on our prayer request. We’ve discovered we don’t have time to put the work in or to do the church-thing. So we settle for whatever life, the devil, and our own mistakes have created for us. We’re talking about the 30-thousand-foot prayer request.

Well, if this is you, I have some really good news for you. God brings your prayer from 30-thousand-feet down to the ground. In other words, He pulls you down from the clouds and plants your feet (I like to say, your boots) on the ground. That’s where you will see the answers to your big prayers begin to take shape.

Over the next several weeks, we will use the story of Nehemiah to demonstrate this principle of having boots on the ground when it comes to seeing your 30-thousand-foot prayer answered. Until, next week, share this with a friend. Thanks for visiting NoLongerCommon.com.

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