Because We Know Our Prayers Are Working

Building Your Prayer Time – Part 2

What Manner of Prayer is This? – Part 5.2

This is what we call next-level prayer. In the words of Shaun-T, it’s time to “dig deeper.” If you want the results that no one gets, you will have to do what no one does. It’s prayer that goes beyond what is normal. If you’re going to stay average, you can stop here and close this message now, or you can close the book, or you can exit from this website. You can leave this alone because this isn’t your ordinary stuff, right? In fact, we are on a mission. My wife and I together, we’re on a mission to end ordinary, average, being like everyone else. We think that everyone can go to the next level, even when it comes to the exercise of prayer.

Know What You Are Planting.
Prayer is like a seed that you sow to produce a harvest. Now, if I were to ask you, how much have you planted, could you even list it? If you don’t know what you’ve planted, how can you know what you’re looking for in a harvest? Thanks to Mark Pettus we have prayer requests that we put on a corkboard in our bathrooms.  We place topics for prayer on index cards along with other various prayer requests we have on this board. We ask God intentionally and specifically for these needs as we pray. “Lord, if you would send us the status for each specific request so that we’ll know when to remove these cards or know how to continue praying.” We don’t take the requests lightly. They stay up on our prayer-board until we see something happens. I can see the cards in my mind right now, as I write. We know the cards on the board are for different people, folks we are really close to or have a connection with or someone we just bumped into along the way.

I’ll share just one example of the cards we’ve had on our prayer-board to give you an idea of how to build out your prayer time. There’s a lady by the name of Julie. Julie worked at Chick-fil-A. Her mom was going through some serious health related challenges. Julie, her mom’s caretaker, would meet Tamia and me each morning as we ordered our breakfast. One day, I decided to ask Ms. Julie how she was doing. She came back with, “well, I’m having some challenges” and she told us about her mom’s situation. In response I said, “Ms. Julie, we’re gonna be praying for you and your mom.” So we came home and wrote her name on a card and we placed that card on our prayer-board.

You see, we got to pray for and see God’s favor abound in Julie’s life. We continue to pray over Julie because I know what she was going through is tough. More importantly I know what prayer will do for Julie. In the same way, we wish to encourage you to keep track of what you’re planting in prayer so that you know what harvest you’re looking for. This is how you pray in a manner to take prayer to the next level.

Compassion Results in Prayer.
The Bible says Jesus had compassion on people. We had compassion on Ms. Julie because we know she’s going through a situation we’ve yet to go through. Therefore, we prayed for Ms. Julie because she served us each morning with a smile. In return, we asked our Father to do something special for her. When was the last time you asked your Father in Heaven to do something for someone other than you? When was the last time you flexed a little. You see, since I’m a child of The King, I’m confident in the requests we make. Therefore, as often as I can I find a reason to ask God for something. We felt Ms. Julie’s pain.

My definition of compassion is to place oneself in the shoes of another. What if it were my mother? How then would I pray? Placing yourself in the shoes of the person requesting will alter how you pray. This is how we take prayer to the next level and why we build out our prayer time. We don’t want to miss an opportunity to ask our Father to favor someone who’s been good to us. We’re not going to hear of a situation, not have compassion, and not pray. We’re going to pray because we’re sowing seeds. Having compassion or praying with compassion yields results when you pray. This is next level prayer.

Your Prayer Will Impact Your Experience in Heaven.
I want to take a moment and tell you about heaven. Fortunately for you, I’m fortunate enough to have interactions with God where He enlightens my thoughts. His thoughts are better than mine so I often ask Him to teach me. ^[1] Therefore, I want to leave you with one thought that I tell the people in our prayer room quite often as people who pray. When you pray it sows these invisible seeds into the Heavens. Those seeds produce results every time. Even a little, messed up, prayer goes a long way. I believe that God is so gracious that when we don’t even get in the ballpark with our prayer requests, He loves us so much He interrupts our thoughts and makes up the difference. ^[2]

Here’s what’s going to happen when you get to Heaven. Heaven is actually not like you think it is, it is much better. It’s better than Earth. So everything that we have on Earth, just take it to the next level. That’s how Heaven is going to be. If you think Earth is great, wait until you get a glimpse of Heaven. If God made Earth and He did, what do you think He has in store for you in Heaven. Even Jesus said I’m going to prepare a place for you. ^[3] He’s not going to prepare something less for you in Heaven than He’s already given you on Earth. His ways far exceed ours. ^[1]

I’ll give you an example. We’re going to be meeting and socializing in Heaven. You are going to meet people that you didn’t know during your time on Earth. There are going to be people you don’t know or don’t recognize. There are gonna be lines of people throughout eternity waiting to get to meet you. Because you impacted someone through a generational chain of events. What I mean by that is this. You may be praying for somebody today that transforms a family in such a way that someone’s great, great, great, great, great-grandchild is being a recipient of that prayer. Prayer is just that powerful and even more powerful than that. Your prayer will have transformed a great, great, great, great, great, great father or mother. As a result, when you get to Heaven, that great, great, great, great, great-grandchild or person is going to be in line to meet you. The beauty of Heaven is that you will have access to all knowledge in a way you’ve never had it before. The closest thing we have on Earth is the Internet. We’re going to know things that we should not have been able to have known under Earthly conditions. We’re going to be able to see things we couldn’t see while in our limited minds on Earth. The limitations will be removed in Heaven. Heaven is great.

When you realize the connection of that person to your simple prayer in a time that’s long gone, you will then understand. And that’s when I get to be escorted to the front of your line, so that I can simply say I told you so. That person impacted by your one prayer is going to say to you, “you don’t know me but you prayed for my great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather, my great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandmother, and it changed my life.”

This is just a small example to give you a clue as to what to expect in Heaven. So there’s going to be a long line of people just waiting to say thank you for your prayers because prayer works. They are words that go up to Heaven that God takes hold of. The Scripture says there’s a basin that He has collecting our prayers. If He’s collecting our prayers, He’s tracking them. And if He’s tracking them, so should you. Your prayer is like seeds planted to produce a harvest like no other. Know that when you pray it impacts Heaven. This is next level prayer and why we build out our time of prayer.

The reason we build out our time in prayer is because we know that we know that we know, our prayers are working. Therefore, we don’t miss a beat when it comes to this exercise. We know what we are planting so that we know what we are waiting to harvest. We pray with compassion because this is the greatest way we can show someone our gratitude. We’re asking our Father who can do anything to help someone with something small in His hands. We build out our prayers so that we can stay on track with how we’re impacting Heaven. We live on Earth, but our citizenship is recorded in Heaven. We choose to go beyond normal, average, and ordinary so that we can get to the next level in prayer.

Question: what is one thing you can look forward to as you build out your prayer time?

[1] ‭‭Isaiah 55:8-9 NLT‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬, Bible.com, accessed September 28, 2022, https://www.bible.com/bible/116/ISA.55.8-9.NLT
[2] 1 Samuel 16:7 NLT‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬, Bible.com, accessed September 28, 2022, https://www.bible.com/bible/116/1SA.16.7.NLT
[3] John 14:2-3 NLT‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬, Bible.com, accessed September 28, 2022, https://www.bible.com/bible/116/JHN.14.2-3.NLT

All Scripture references used by permission, see our Scripture copyrights.