The Designated Places for Prayer

Where Do I Go When I Need to Pray?

The Environment for Prayer – Part 1

While I believe one should have a place where she or he can converse with God uninterrupted, I also believe in being able to talk to Him anywhere as He is everywhere. For it is in Him that we exist. ^[1] For example, Nehemiah was standing before the King and prayed before he responded to the king’s question. ^[2] Are you limiting your prayer time to prayer at church or even prayer over your meal? In this section, I use a quote Pamela gave me, “the only person who can’t hear from God is the one who doesn’t know what to listen for.” I use this because most of us pray, but very few are in a position or place to listen for His response.

In this new series we’re entitling “The Environment for Prayer” we are going to discuss the places for prayer. Keep in mind that our premise is that we know very little when it comes to the subject of prayer. There is a lot that we’ve not learned that can be learned. To get us started on this journey of taking this topic to the next level, we will begin with this question. What places can you think of that are designated for prayer?

What places can you think of that are designated for prayer?
Focus for a minute on all the places you can think of that are designated for prayer.

• The Prayer-Closet – One of the most common places of prayer is the prayer-closet. However, I’d like to challenge the idea of your prayer-closet and ask you, is that even in the Bible?
• At a Meal – Most people know how to pray at their dinner table. The dinner table is a place where we often find people blessing a meal. It is interesting that we don’t even call it a prayer anymore but we call it blessing our meal. However, on another thought, is blessing our meal really a place of prayer? Is that really your place of prayer?
• Quiet Time – I’m often offended when someone refers to prayer as their quiet time. What is it that a person has against saying they have a time for prayer or better stated a time for speaking with God? We call it quiet time, a place where one can simply be quiet for a moment. Is quiet time a prayer?
• Prayer at Church – Then you have prayer at church in our church services. I call this the religious prayers. If we’re not participating in the activity then can we truly call it prayer? Are we totally convinced that we’ve spoken to God when we’re at church? Do we leave church feeling as if God has spoken to me?
• Prayer Meetings or Prayer Service – How about a prayer meeting where we gather together specifically for prayer? What happens when we assume we know how to pray, but we really do not? How does this play itself out in a prayer meeting
• Prayer Room – Then there’s the “prayer room,” the place where people called to pray meet to pray specifically for their local church. More on that later in this series.
• Invocations – When we pray before a sporting event, a stadium event, or large group of people, we call this an invocation. That word in itself almost gets a little confusing because we don’t use the word “prayer.” Even though the speaker asks you to bow your heads and then recites a prayer, it gives off an expression of prayer without saying that it’s prayer. Why is that? Are we now ashamed to use the word “prayer?”
• Moments of Silence – You know, they say you can no longer pray in your schools. So they have moments of silence. Is this prayer? Have we led others to believe that this is how we talk to God? More on that to come.

What environments are conducive for prayer?
In this series we will discuss the designated places for prayer. Some of us have places that we’ve designated, a place in our home, or maybe it’s a place outside of our home. Maybe it’s a place that we have to go to. Maybe it’s a trail that we get on. Maybe it’s a hill that we’ve climbed. Nonetheless, there are environments we feel are conducive for prayer. What is your environment of prayer like? This, and much more, is what we’re going to be discussing in this next section of next-level prayer.

How can you find your place of prayer? You should have that favorite place that you should enjoy praying. I have one of my own, I can’t wait to share that with you. We are going to build upon what we already know and have been taught on prayer. We would all agree that we were taught by somebody who lived before us like a grandmother, great grandmother, a mom or a dad, who taught us to pray. In this series, we will use their ways to give us the inspiration to do something new.

In fact, here are a few items that we plan on covering and touching on as we go through this next chapter. Obviously, we’re going to touch on what I just mentioned above, the places of prayer. In addition to that, we’re going to talk about kneeling prayers, when you kneel in prayer. Should you kneel in prayer? Then we’re going to talk about bedtime prayer, when you pray before you go to bed, or maybe right when you get up from being asleep. Don’t forget about the infamous prayer-circle. Then there is praying on the mountain top or the housetop. Some people have said they’ve climbed a mountain to go up in prayer. I like that, we’re going to discuss that and how we can use the concept. All of this and more designed to take what we do to the next level.

The scripture says that God is doing a new thing, can you not perceive it? It’s time to do a new thing. ^[3] And then the last thing we’ll talk about, as we conclude this area is how to look for the signs for when we should enter our environments for prayer. All of this in this chapter that we’re calling the “The Environment for Prayer.”

Question: what are you looking to gain as we discuss the environment for prayer?

[1] ‭‭Acts of the Apostles 17:27-28 NLT‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬, Bible.com, accessed July14, 2022, https://www.bible.com/bible/116/ACT.17.27-28.NLT
[2] Nehemiah 2:4-5 NLT‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬, Bible.com, accessed July14, 2022, https://www.bible.com/bible/116/NEH.2.4-5.NLT
[3] Isaiah 43:19 NIV‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬, Bible.com, accessed July15, 2022, https://www.bible.com/bible/116/NEH.2.4-5.NLT
All Scripture references used by permission, see our Scripture copyrights.