7 Ways To Reignite Your Prayer Life

Do you feel like your prayer time is lacking or missing that spark? Then try these 7 strategies to reignite your prayer life.

For many, prayer is just that thing we do before a meal or before we go to sleep at night. We have turned our prayer time into nothing more than an obligation we have to label ourselves “Christian”.

The reality is, prayer is the most intimate and powerful thing we can do to connect with God.

For me, I’ve noticed that my prayer life seems to change based on the current season of my life. In those seasons where everything seems to be falling apart at the seams, I fall to my knees and really dig deep into prayer.

During these seasons I always see so much deliverance and growth. The only problem is, afterward, I often find myself falling into a state of self-reliance and my prayer time becomes sparse and colorless.

It’s important for us to understand the power of our prayers and take our short laundry list of needs and turn them into sincere conversations with our heavenly father. We need to form a meaningful, engaging and purpose-driven pattern of prayer into our daily routines and these 7 tactics will help you do just that!

7 Ways To Reignite Your Prayer Life

 

1.Go To A Quiet Place

 

We live in a world flooded with distraction. With TV’s in every room and phones in our pockets, it’s rare that we have a quiet moment at all during our day.

We all need to take a break from the noise now and then. Using this break to spend time with God will not only give you a rest from the chaos, it will also rejuvenate your soul.

I know from personal experience that I often find my prayers turning into quick shout-outs to God when I’m in need of something or if I see someone in pain.

Taking time out of our days to physically go somewhere quiet to be with Jesus allows us to really give him our full attention. It’s in these quiet moments that truly allow ourselves to listen to that still small voice.

The privacy also allows us to get personal with our savior and be completely open and honest with him.

If you want to get serious about having a quiet place to spend time with Jesus, you can clean out an old closet or rearrange an unused room and turn it into your very own prayer room!

2. Kneel Down

 

Do I always kneel down when I pray? No. Does God only listen to the prayers of those who take this posture? No.

Then why bother?

Kneeling puts us in a humble position like a servant bringing a request to a king and reminds us of God’s holy and awesome power.

Every time I’ve needed to have serious prayer time this is one of the first things I do. It reminds me of my dependence and constant need of Jesus in my life.

It also reminds me of Jesus praying in the garden of Gethsemane in Luke 22, in verse 41 it says “He withdrew about a stone’s throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed,…” Further, in the passage it says his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.

Wow.

This is the only time we see Jesus struggle in the Bible and what does he do? He gets alone and Kneels down in prayer, humbling himself before his heavenly father and submitting to His father’s will.

I know this one seems old school and unnecessary but there is just something about taking this lowly position before God that truly allows us to just be vulnerable and pour out our hearts to Him.

Every time I kneel down to pray it allows me to put myself aside and fix my heart on Jesus Christ.

3. Pray Specifically

 

This is probably one of the most neglected aspects of many or our daily prayer lives. Why? Because it’s hard. It takes real faith. I don’t know how many times I’ve kept my prayers broad only to make sure that I wouldn’t be let down.

We all do it. How many times have you heard someone end a prayer with, “but your will be done father not mine”? Now I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be praying that God’s will be done but come on. If no one else will say it I will… there have been times where I have said this purely out of fear that my prayer would not be answered.

It’s so important to allow perfect love to drive out fear in our lives because for most of us it’s severely hindering our prayer life. Jesus makes this clear in Matthew 21:22 If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.”

When we push out fear and step forward bravely in faith we allow ourselves to start praying specifically and confidently.

Not only does it take faith to do this but it also forces us to pray more thoughtfully. This makes us focus more intently on our prayer instead of just murmuring the same words each night before we lay our heads.

Most of all praying specifically puts us in a state of eager anticipation as we excitedly await God’s powerful intervention.

4. Always Give Thanks

 

Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. 1 Thessalonians 5:18 NIV

It so important that no matter what season we are in, we always give thanks to God for all he has done.

No matter how dark our current situation may seem we should always remember that God sent his one and only son to die on a cross to redeem us. Even if He never did one other thing for us that would be enough. For our hope doesn’t lie in this world it rests on the promise of the life to come.

Not only does thanking God reset our focus from this world onto that of heaven but it reminds us of God’s faithfulness. If we understand that God is unchanging we can realize that for God to be unfaithful would require him to change.

It is not even possible for God to be unfaithful!

We need to also remember that often our timing and God’s timing rarely align. But we can take heart in knowing that in all things God works for the good of those who love him!

One of my favorite things to do is to give God thanks in advance for what He is going to do. I love thinking back in these moments, to times in the past where I have thanked Him in the advance and now see how awesome his plan was for that situation.

5. Pray with friends

 

One of the greatest things I started doing this past year was joining the men’s prayer group at my church. Not only has it helped me deepen my prayer time with God but we have seen Him answer our prayers in such a powerful and awesome way.

“Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.”  Matthew 18:19-20 NIV

 

When we first started the men’s prayer group it was just my friend Sam and I. It seemed discouraging at first only having the two of us show up but we always hung on to the confidence we found in this scripture.

Its funny sometimes how God decides to reveal the truth of his word to us. I feel like we often think in order for our ministries to be a “success” we need a lot of people to show up. But we see Jesus here speaking about the power of small groups.

A year later our group has not grown even by one member! We have had the occasional guest stop by but the group has never consistently grown beyond the two of us.

I now feel like God has kept the group this way so we could see the power of the truth we find in Matthew chapter 19. We have seen so many of our specific prayers answered in such a powerful and awesome way over the last year.

I can not recommend this one enough. Not only is this a powerful way for us to grow our relationship with Jesus through prayer but it is also an awesome way for us to grow our relationships with each other.

6. Remain In Jesus and In The Word

 

Have you ever had a conversation with a friend you have really fallen out of touch with? It’s usually awkward and filled with long moments of silence as you try to think of what to say next.

Maybe this sounds like your prayer time with Jesus. The more time you spend in Him and His word the closer you will grow and the more comfortable and engaging your prayer time with Him will be.

Jesus said in John 15:7 “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.”

Well, how do we know if we are IN Him? John talks about this in 1 John 2, he says, “This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did.” Is this a reflection of your life? Are you currently living as Jesus did?

And what about his words? Are his words in you?  

It takes more than looking at a daily piece of scripture or following along in our Bibles in church on Sunday. We need to spend quality time in the Word of God.

We can take this one to the next level by memorizing scripture. I started taking my scripture memorization seriously and ended up memorizing the entire gospel of John in just a few months.

When the word of God is constantly flowing through our minds it has nowhere to go but past our lips as we lift our prayers to heaven.

7. Pray In Jesus Name

 

Don’t let the fact that this one is listed as number seven fool you into thinking that it is anything but the number one most important thing you can do.

I felt that it was appropriate to place the thing we say at the end of our prayers at the end of this list.

A lot of people think that when we pray in Jesus name, we need Jesus to bring our prayers to God.

But Jesus himself said in John 16 “I am not saying that I will ask the Father on your behalf. No, the Father himself loves you because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God.”

When we pray in Jesus name we are praying with His authority and according to His will.  According to His will is key.

1 John 15:14-15 says: “ This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.”

When we live in Jesus, His will becomes our will and we have an unshakable confidence before God as we bring our requests and praise to Him.

While there is no right or wrong way to pray, the Bible gives us lots of insight into how we can effectively reignite our prayer lives. These 7 things are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what the bible tells us about prayer.

Just adding one of these 7 tactics can completely transform the way you pray. The best thing we can do is honestly evaluate our prayer time to better understand what is lacking.

If you’re reading this right now and you know that your prayer time needs a complete overhaul, try applying all of these strategies and completely reignite your prayer life today!