How To Pray

 Before you can harvest a crop, you have to plant the seed. Before you plant the seed, you must prepare the soil.
 

Prayer is the preparation for the seed of Biblical Truth that will produce the harvest of a Community Engagement and a Transformed Culture.                  
  

Pray for Blessing and Prosperity   

• While in captivity, God's people were instructed to "seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile."  For even in captivity, if the city prospered, they would prosper. 
• Luke 10 records Jesus sending his disciples out without him to minister.  The first  instruction he gives them is "Go" followed by a prayer instruction.   (Luk 10:5)  "When you enter a house, first say, 'Peace to this house.'  It is also important to note here his instruction in verse 9, " ....  "The kingdom of God has come near to you."

Pray for Deliverance from Deception 

• As we look at America today, if there is one thing that explains the "upside down  logic" we see it is deception.  We are no longer walking in the Spirit  and Word of God.  Generations have been taken captive by the lies of  Satan.  Paul told us so in 2 Corinth 4:3 & 4  "And even if our  gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing.   The god of  this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see  the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the  image of God." 
• Paul's mission was "to  open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the  power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a  place among those who are sanctified by faith in me." Acts 26:18 
• As Paul himself did, we must pray for God to open doors for us to deliver God's message of Truth. 

Pray for God's will and purpose to be accomplished 

• Christ instructs us to "pray this way..."  in Matt 6:9-10 "your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."  

This is often an area where we confuse God's will with our own motives.  It is God's first and primary will that none shall perish. 
 

Romans 14:17 further states that the kingdom of God is "...not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit."  God's will is life, and life to the fullest.

Pray for Spiritual Hunger 

• Pray that the people of God would begin to feel the emptiness in the things of  the world.  Pray that there would be a renewed desire for the things of  God and the fellowship of His people. 
• Pray that those who do not yet know God will begin to feel the futility in the  things of this world; that they would begin to see the emptiness in the  answers that the world has to give. 
• Pray that the two, the empowered people of God and the empty people of the world,  would begin to cross paths and our prayer for open doors would be  answered. Before you can harvest a crop, you have to plant the seed. Before you plant the seed, you must prepare the soil.