An Effective Prayer Strategy

… brings about victory. Without an effective Prayer strategy, it’s going to be hard to capture God’s attention. So, in this post, we’re going to show you how to develop one that gets results every time.

Prayer Is A Strategy

It’s a smart, well-executed strategy.

I know you’ve heard a lot about how to pray and you’ve tried every trick in the book to get your prayers answered. In many cases, nothing happened.

In this post, we’ll attempt you to help you overcome that hurdle with an effective prayer strategy that works for us every time.

It’s not a formula. It’s a strategy.

And with every strategy, it’s how you apply it that makes all the difference.

Yes, prayer is communion between you and your Maker.

And it is.

But it’s more.

It’s a weapon of war, an effective strategy to combat everything the devil will throw at you.

It’s the ONE thing that brings about every blessing you can conceive.

That’s why we begin every year with a well thought-out prayer revolution. Our Prayer marathons are designed to reinforce God’s best plans for you as we begin the year.

Through prayer, heaven’s will is implemented on earth. Without prayer, it isn’t.

So you see, prayer is a conversation, but it is also a strategy…to get what’s in heaven down here on earth.

Without prayer, it will be hard to receive anything from God.

God designed every good and perfect thing you could want to get to you through the avenue of prayer.

And if that’s the case, then what you need is a well-executed effective prayer strategy.

Even though prayer is communion with God, there’s a lot that happens in the spiritual realm the minute you pray that can determine the result of your prayer session.

Misguided Interpretations About Prayer

For most Christians, it’s the misunderstanding of activity in this spiritual realm activity that confuses them and leads to many misguided interpretations about prayer.

Have you heard someone say:

I tried prayer and it didn’t work for me.”

Or

I prayed and… nothing. I felt nothing.”

This one relates to all of us…

Maybe I was praying for the wrong thing.”

This is a common one…

I prayed and didn’t get an answer.”

How about this one:

No answer is still an answer. Maybe God wants me to pray about something else.”

Most of these assumptions are just that.. assumptions. In most cases, they aren’t true.

It’s Time To Go Back To Basics

Why would God insist that you pray without ceasing if you had a 50:50 chance of getting it answered?

It’s in times like this that we need to buckle down and figure what’s wrong and fix the issues.

Like this annoying thing called sin…

Did you know God can’t and won’t answer your prayer if there is sin in your life?

Did you also know that He can’t answer your prayer in any aspect of your life if there is sin in that area that is unconfessed?

We’ve been taught so much about the God-Of-Grace that we’ve forgotten about God-The King.

So we ignore little sins in our heart, come before God, pray for five minutes and hope He will hear us.

Unknown to us, God-The King always consults His constitution when you come to Him in prayer. If the law that addresses your need in His constitution is met, you will get answers faster than you can blink.

If you are going to have answered prayer in your life, then we need to learn and employ an effective prayer strategy that gets results every time.

What You’re Going To Learn In This Post

1. How to make prayer your secret weapon
2. How to structure your prayer
3. The ONE gateway to answered prayer
4. How to effectively deal with hidden obstacles that prevent answered prayer
5. How to effectively petition God without running the risk of rejection
6. How to avoid the debilitating syndrome effect of ‘scattered prayer’
7. How to know if your prayer has been accepted by God
8. How to know if your prayer has been answered

Step 1: How To Make Prayer Your Secret Weapon

The first thing to do in making prayer your secret weapon is to understand the sheer power, dominion and authority that prayer yields.

Once you understand this, you will realize just how fearful the devil is about this strategy.

He will do everything to prevent you from effective prayer.

The devil knows when you realize how powerful and terrible the weapon of prayer really is, nothing can stop you from achieving your God-given mandate.

Let’s see this in practical application.

Significant clues that point to the importance of prayer

Clue #1: Jesus spent the whole night in prayer before He selected the 12 disciples the following day.

Our Take-Out: Prayer is your secret weapon for clarity in every life-changing and important decision you will ever make.

Clue #2: Staying with Jesus, He spent the whole night in prayer in Gethsemane before the terrifying events of the next 36 hours.

Our Take-Out: Prayer gives you extraordinary power to overcome and fulfill your mandate through the most terrifying of circumstances.

Clue #3: The disciples came to him and said, “Rabbi, teach us how to pray.”

They saw the miracles he was doing, and how every unclean spirit obeyed him instantly. They wanted this secret power, this powerful effective strategy for absolute authority over every circumstance.

Our Take-Out: All the authority you want is nested in prayer. The disciples analyzed everything that Jesus did and attributed it down to one thing – the technique of prayer application.

Clue #4: In The Book of Acts, the disciples said it would not be right to give up prayer to wait on tables.

The apostles are referring to the ministry of mobilizing the people of God to pray together.

What did they do? They assigned seven workers full of the Holy Spirit to carry out the tasks of food distribution to widows while they dedicated themselves to prayer and ‘Diakonia’ of the word.

The result?

They turned the entire known world upside down within 15 years of that declaration. Eventually, that became the entire known world within 50 years.

It may seem counter-productive, that they should work and then pray. But they employed the exact opposite technique.

Drowsiness during prayer sessions

… is a BIG sign that someone is up to something. That someone is the devil causing you to get all drowsy and prevent you from having an effective time in prayer.

Think about it: When you are doing other activities like watching TV, radio, having a party, you’re alive and excited. When it comes to prayer, you’re suddenly sleepy.

So the next time you feel drowsy in prayer, you know what the devil is up to.

What’s the problem?

It’s the realization of the devastating consequences of effective prayer on the Kingdom of Satan.

Suppose Jesus and the disciples were overwhelmed by sleep while they prayed?

Well, Jesus would have had to do a number of job redundancies in his three-and-a-half year ministry. The disciples would have impacted Jerusalem only.

The disciples would have impacted Jerusalem only.

You see? Prayer is the secret super-effective weapon that turns everything the right side up.

Step 1 to making prayer your secret weapon is realizing the sheer magnitude of the power you yield when you dedicate yourself to prayer.

Our Take-Out: Pray. Get the answer. Then work.

Step 2: Structure Your Prayer

Well then, if prayer is this powerful weapon, then why does it seem to be ineffective and boring?

That’s partly because we simply get into it without a lot of thought and babble our way through it.

Wrong strategy.

Great Structure, Great Prayer

For prayer to be effective, you need to structure it well. Prayer follows a sequence. Remember God is Holy and those that approach Him must approach him in spirit and truth.

We, therefore, need to investigate any and all elements that don’t match up to that in our life and deal with it first. There is a process of doing that in prayer.

Know Who You Are Addressing

First, you need to know who you are praying to.

Here’s where we slip up.

We usually pray to Jesus. That’s not what Jesus told us to do.

We are to approach The Father in the Name of Jesus.

You were about to get shocked, right?

Who you address matters just as much as what you say and how you say it in prayer.

Align Your Petition To God’s Original Will

Secondly, you need to know what captures God’s attention, find out what’s in His heart and then align your petitions, requests and supplication before Him in a manner that He will accept.

Proclamation

Thirdly, you recognize and proclaim the majesty of God, The Father.

You proclaim His ultimate purpose – to bring heaven to earth.

Thy Will be done, on earth as it is in heaven…” Matt 6:10

Here’s our take-out: Everything you ask for needs to be aligned to His ultimate purpose of bringing heaven to earth.

Step 3: Use The ONE Gateway To Answered Prayer

An organized structure to prayer recognizes the value God The Father places on the Name of Jesus Christ. The only gateway to answered prayer is the Name of Jesus Christ.

Jesus told us that “I am The Way, the truth and the Life. No one comes to the father except through me.”

We are commanded to come to The Father in the Name of Jesus Christ.

That leads us to our third strategy step: The Name of Jesus Christ.

This is the only gateway to answered prayer.

Without this powerful secret, every prayer you pray will fall flat on its face.

The Name of Jesus is the most powerful force on earth… and in heaven. He overcame every sin and every temptation that man faced and that triumph gave Him the authority to transfer his victory and righteousness to any believer that approaches the Throne of God in His Name.

It’s the “… Name that is above all other names; That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father..”

Imagine the sheer power this Name commands when you are in prayer! Every force, every obstacle has to bow down and let your prayer reach its destination – the Throne of God.

Every force, every obstacle has to bow down and let your prayer reach its destination – the Throne of God.

Step 4: Deal Effectively With Hidden Obstacles

There are hidden obstacles that prevent our prayer from reaching heaven; or arriving from heaven.

Remember what we said earlier on about God being holy?

Any trace of sin will stop your prayer as soon as you begin it.

So on a piece of paper, write down every sin and every iniquity that’s plaguing your life.

Bring it before God and repent of each sin deliberately and purposefully.

Seal every doorway that gave that sin entrance in your life with the blood of Jesus to prevent a reoccurrence of the same problem.

There’s one more step.

Repent of every sin your parents committed in knowledge or ignorance. Then do the same for your ancestors on both sides of your bloodline.

Why?

God is a jealous God, visiting the iniquities of the fathers down to the fourth generation. The reason some of us are experiencing a lifetime of struggles and judgment is because we are paying the price for our forefather’s secret sin.

This is the prime reason why Daniel spent so much time confessing the sins of his forefathers.

Daniel’s Deadly Effective Repentance Prayer Strategy

Now this is where we show you how we effectively apply this strategy of repentance.

We spend at least 3 days, examining ourselves, and repenting of any and every sin that comes to our attention thanks to the help of the Holy Spirit.

Then we repent of every sin our parents committed in ignorance or meditation.

If we don’t know what those sins are (because they were iniquities – not full blown sin – at the time they were committed) we apply Daniel’s powerful repentance strategy in Daniel 11

The reason we choose to dedicate at least 3 days to absolute repentance is because as we discover in Daniel’s case, there are powerful forces in the 2nd heaven that will do everything to prevent your answer from reaching you.

You may ask why this is necessary…

Because you may be experiencing the full-blown effect of the sins of your ancestors without your knowledge.

Now it will take me a longer time to really break this down for you.

However, if you email us, you will get a special Free Report titled “Breaking The Obstacles That Prevent Answered Prayer”  that breaks this down in detail. This report will shows you how to avoid the frustration of unanswered prayer.

Step 5: Know Who You Are Battling in Prayer

This is the untold part of every prayer story.

The minute you pray, invisible forces in your backyard will attempt to prevent your prayer from getting to the throne of God the Father in heaven.

These forces will dig up your file searching for any trace of unrepented sin, iniquity and ‘illegal’ activity that they can accuse you with, especially those that are directly related to your request.

They will use this to accuse you and show God that you don’t deserve an answer because you ‘broke the law.’

Does this sound strange?

Let’s take a peak at Ephesians 6:12

It doesn’t sound so strange now.

If spiritual forces don’t find anything in your life to attack you with, they’ll scout for any record in your bloodline – from your parents to your grandparents and ancestors.

Now it’s becoming increasingly clear why we spend more than two days in active repentance prayer.

Every one of these forces must be neutralized and vanquished to enable your response to get to you.

The time needed to realize this result may vary, depending on your level of holiness, your environment, and your need.

Daniel lived in an ungodly land. The Bible tells us there was a Prince over the land that actively fought the angel assigned to bring Daniel’s answer, to the point that he needed to get heavenly backup to win the war.

And this battle was happening in the spiritual realm!

Think about your environment and the state of your life.

If you find it hard to pray, and if you feel uncomfortable in your present environment, then you may need to really engage in intensive persistent prayer until every spiritual force over you is totally broken.

Some requests may need the whole arsenal of heaven.

Some may not.

You may never know until you get your answer and the entire story is unveiled.

See what you have to deal with in prayer?

Step 6: Keep At Prayer Until You See Your Answer

So, by this time, you’ve dealt with both hidden obstacles and secret forces intent on preventing you receiving your breakthrough, what do you do?

You keep at prayer for as long as it takes to see your answer.

Daniel did.

Effective prayer strategy demands persistence. You have to knock on Heaven’s door until you see your answer. You need to do it over and over again. You need to do it until nothing else matters but this answer.

This is where we go wrong.

We pray regarding an issue for less than 5 minutes and then let it be.

Then we wonder why we didn’t get a response from heaven.

Some answers will only come to you after more than 17 days. Others only after 21 days.

I know it sounds harsh, and it’s taken me a long time to understand it.

But it’s spelled out for us quite simply in the Bible.

Jesus himself tells us that the:

Kingdom of God suffereth violence and the violent take it by force…”

Is there a minimum period to pray about any issue?

Daniel gives us a clue.

He kept at prayer for 21 days before he got an answer.

He didn’t pray once, not twice, not even thrice. He prayed every day for 21 days.

Imagine that!

21-freaking-days!

When he finally received his answer, he realized that unknown to him, the angel was battling forces in the 2nd heaven hell-bent on preventing any answer from getting to him.

Thankfully, Daniel was discerning enough to realize that he needed to keep on praying until he got a revelation – a tangible revelation that the answer was safely in his custody.

And that leads us to the next strategy.

Step 7: Avoid The Debilitating Syndrome Effect Of Scattered Prayer

Scattered prayer is prayer that causes you to jump from one request to another in the same breath.

Daniel kept at one request for up to 21 days. It’s a strategy that you should employ.

The angel that responded to Daniel made it very clear that he was responding to the singular prayer item that Daniel prayed about.

The point is this: Too many issues cloud your objective and the focus of your prayer.

Keep at one thing a time. By doing so, you strengthen your angels and ensure the answer gets to you without delay.

It’s going to take more than 5 minutes on an issue if you want to see Heaven respond to you.

So don’t take any chances.

Keep at persistent, stubborn prayer dedicated to ONE issue until the answer is firmly and securely in your hands.

Step 8: Effectively Petition God Without Running The Risk Of Rejection

Step 8 really seals up the deal.

There’s one secret strategy that is NO match for the devil.

It guarantees that God Himself will stand up and immediately attend to your petition, out of the millions of petitions that arrive at His Throne every day.

What is this secret?

Before we answer that, let’s establish the foundation…

Remember that God The Father is first and foremost a King.

A King always operates according to a constitution. That constitution governs everything he does. In this case, God has said He has exalted His word above His Name. Meaning that He has made Himself subservient to his Word or to phrase it differently – His constitution.

Coming back to our secret strategy…

Many times we blabber before God, saying lots of things – some of it great, some not so great and some sounds so empty the minute we say it. That’s why we find prayer so boring…we run out of things to say.

Our words may be rejected by God because as Isaiah puts it,  I’m a man of ‘unclean lips.”

In other words, your words have little power to win the prayer war on their own merit. The devil can block every word you speak with not a lot of effort.

But there’s one word he can’t block at all.

The Word of God. The Constitution of God.

Gosh! This is incredible!

Consider for a minute every prayer request embedded with God’s Word spoken back to Him about your very need. There’s no option but for heaven to respond, and respond quickly!

So instead of using our limited words to express ourselves to God, use God’s Word and speak it back to Him.

Let’s take our cue from Jesus

One of the most unusual things that happened in the desert during the temptation of Christ was his blunt curt responses to the devil during each temptation.

In each case, Jesus responded to him directly from the Torah!

See it for yourself in Matthew 4 (Bolded Emphasis added )

³ And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.

⁴ But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

⁵ Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple,

⁶ And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.

⁷ Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.

⁸ Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them;

⁹ And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.

¹⁰ Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.

¹¹ Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him.

The Match Score

Jesus 3. The devil: 0

How To Test-drive this secret prayer strategy from today

So, if Jesus Himself used the Word to respond to the devil every time, why are we not doing the same in our prayer life?

Food for thought.

Instead of using our limited words to express ourselves to God, use God’s Word and speak it back to Him.

God Himself said in very direct language, that his word will not go back to Him void, but accomplish the thing He sent it out to accomplish.

(To help you get the gist of this prayer strategy, if you email us about any specific issue you are facing, we’ll send you a free prayer strategy with 17 power-packed prayer points culled directly from scripture that will cut through any problem you are facing right now. Test this prayer point strategy from today and share the results with us.)

Step 9: Determine If Your Prayer Has Been Answered Using These Clues

So by now, you have approached God The Father in The Name Of Jesus, dealt with obstacles, invisible forces, quoted God’s Word back to Him, used the Powerful Name of Jesus to back up your request… how do you know your prayer has been answered?

God will give you clear signs.

Peace: The Most Obvious Sign

Peace, or the lack of it, is the obvious sign. If you are still troubled in your spirit, you don’t yet have breakthrough.

This shows you the issue has not been effectively dealt with.

You may need to go back into prayer again and deal with any issue like sin, iniquity or forces hampering your prayer. You may extend your prayer session, or add another three prayer sessions across the day.

Elijah Was No Exception To The Rule

Keep in mind Elijah was no exception to this rule. Before it finally rained, he had to go back and pray seven times before the dark clouds of rain formed.

You will know when God has answered your prayer if you

• You receive your answer in a manner you easily distinguish
• Experience unmeasurable joy in your heart.
• A peace from God that transcends all understanding
• Receive a dream from God with a detailed instruction or confirmation of the answer.
• The Holy Spirit directs you to a certain passage in the scripture that highlights a similar situation to the one you are seeking God about.

In Conclusion

We’ve spoken about many factors that combine to develop an effective prayer strategy that works every time.

We’ve explored:

• How to make prayer your secret weapon.
• How to structure your prayer.
• The One gateway to answered prayer.
• How to deal effectively with hidden obstacles.
• How to know who you are battling with in prayer.
• How to keep at prayer until you see your answer.
• How to avoid the debilitating syndrome effect of scattered prayer.
• How to effectively petition God without running the risk of rejection.
• How to know if God has answered your prayer

The question is now, “How will you apply these strategies?”

If you need help in formulating an effective prayer strategy, I’d encourage you to enlist in the Camp of Joshua.

We take you step by step through each of these sequences in the Camp of Joshua, our advanced prayer coaching program, until you experience an powerful victorious prayer life; and one that commands the attention of heaven.

You’re A Soldier, So Soldier On!

Pray Until Something Happens

It takes work and a lot of effort, but the results are well worth it.

Share your testimony by leaving a comment below. We’d love to hear from you.

The post How To Apply An Effective Prayer Strategy…That Gets Results appeared first on David Makuyu.