It's Personal

The Power of Simple Prayer: How to Talk with God about Everything
by Joyce Meyer

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Everything about our spiritual lives depends on our personal faith in God and our personal relationship with Him. We can enjoy that relationship because Jesus' death on the cross gives us free, unhindered access to our heavenly Father and our faith makes it possible for us to have an intimate, dynamic relationship with Him.

I recently read Ephesians 3:12, which says: "In Whom, because of our faith in Him, we dare to have the boldness (courage and confidence) of free access (an unreserved approach to God with freedom and without fear)." As I meditated upon this Scripture, I became quite excited to realize that as ordinary human beings we have free access to God at any time through prayer. We can approach Him boldly without reserve, without fear, and with complete freedom. How awesome is that! Personal faith in God opens the door to unlimited help from Him.

Early in my prayer journey, I came across a wonderful little book that has helped millions of believers over the years learn how to pray. In this classic volume, titled With Christ in the School of Prayer, Andrew Murray addresses this matter of asking God to teach us to pray, and writes: "None can teach like Jesus, none but Jesus; therefore we call on Him, 'Lord, teach us to pray.' A pupil needs a teacher, who knows his work, who has the gift of teaching, who in patience and love will descend to the pupil's needs. Blessed be God! Jesus is all this and much more... Jesus loves to teach us how to pray."2 Don't just try to pray, ask Jesus to teach you!

Jesus not only loves to teach us - corporately - how to pray, He also loves to work with us as individuals. He wants to take us just the way we are and help each of us discover our own rhythm of prayer and develop a style of prayer that maximizes our personal relationship with Him. He wants prayer to be an easy, natural, life-giving way of communicating with Him as we share our hearts with Him and allow Him to share His heart with us. Prayer is so simple; it is nothing more than talking to God. It also includes listening to what He has to say. God speaks to us in many ways. If you desire to learn more about how He speaks, I encourage you to read my book entitled How to Hear from God.

God is far too creative to teach every person on earth to interact with Him through prayer in exactly the same way. He is the one who designed us all differently and delights in our distinctiveness. As I stated previously, there are "prayer principles" that apply to all believers, but God leads each of us as individuals. We are all in different places in our walk with Him, we are all at different levels of spiritual maturity, and we all have had different types of experiences in prayer. When we learn principles of prayer, we need to move beyond intellectual knowledge about how to pray and take those principles to the Lord and say, "Teach me to apply this in my life, in my situation, to my heart. Show me how this idea is supposed to work for me. God, I'm depending on You to teach me how to pray, to make me effective in prayer, to make my relationship with You through prayer the richest, most rewarding aspect of my life."

Embrace Your Uniqueness

Because we relate to God as individuals - and that's the way He wants it - we pray as individuals. Even when we pray corporately with others, we are all still individuals; we simply join our hearts with others as one voice. During these corporate prayer times, I believe that God wants our hearts to be in unity much more than He wants our methods to be the same. When we say, "Lord, teach me to pray," we are asking Him to teach us to pray in a distinctly personal way and to enable our prayers to be easy, natural expressions of who we are. We are not supposed to check our individuality at the door of the prayer closet. We need to go before God just the way we are and give Him the pleasure of enjoying the company of the "original" He has made each one of us to be. We need to approach God with our own strengths, weaknesses, uniqueness, and everything else that so wonderfully distinguishes us from everyone else in the world. God enjoys meeting us where we are, developing a personal relationship with us and helping us grow to become everything He wants us to be.

Because God has fashioned our hearts individually, our prayers need to flow naturally out of our hearts and be consistent with the way He has designed us.

Psalm 33:15 says, "He fashions their hearts individually; He considers all their works" (NKJV). Because God has fashioned our hearts individually, our prayers need to flow naturally out of our hearts and be consistent with the way He has designed us. As we develop our individual styles of communication with God, we can learn from people who may be more experienced than we are, but we need to be careful not to make them our standard. I hope to be an example to many, but I want Jesus to be their standard. There is nothing at all wrong with incorporating something someone else is doing into your own prayer life if you truly feel led by God's Spirit to do so. But, it is wrong to force yourself to do what others do if you are not comfortable with that in your spirit. Do not try to keep up with others or copy their prayer styles - and do not feel compelled to work every prayer principle you have ever learned every time you pray.

Most people are afraid not to be like everyone else. Many people are more comfortable following specified rules than daring to follow the leading of God's Spirit. When we follow man-made rules, we please people, but when we step out in faith and follow God's Spirit, we please Him. We do not need to feel pressured to pray a certain way or for a certain length of time or to focus on specific things because other people are doing so. Instead, we need to be free to express our uniqueness as we pray the way God is teaching us as individuals.

Somehow we feel safe when we are doing what everyone else is doing, but the sad thing is that we will feel unfulfilled until we learn to "untie the boat from the dock," so to speak, and let the ocean of God's Spirit take us wherever He wills. When we are in control, we know what will happen next, but when we let God's Spirit take the lead, we are in for a lot of surprises in life. We need to be determined to be ourselves and refuse to spend our lives feeling guilty because we are not like someone else.

My husband, Dave, has a passion to pray for the United States of America and he does so on a regular basis. I have a passion to see God's children mature. I also have a great passion for the poor and oppressed, so I spend much of my prayer time praying about these situations. I know some people who focus intensely on the abortion issue when they pray and others who focus on missions with the same type of fervor. My point is that God places different things on each of our hearts and, in that way, everything is covered. No one can pray about everything that needs to be prayed about every day, but God's Spirit leads each of us if we allow Him.

I suffered for a long time before I learned what I am sharing with you and I don't want you to suffer as I did. Let my pain be your gain! Start right now asking Jesus to teach you as an individual how to apply to your life all of the principles of prayer you have ever been taught in His own unique way for you. I believe variety is the key to enjoying everything, including prayer, so let God's Spirit lead you to use various principles as they are needed in your personal situations.

© 2007 by Joyce Meyer

About the Author

JOYCE MEYER has been teaching the Word of God since 1976 and in full-time ministry since 1980. She is the bestselling author of more than fifty inspirational books, including How to Hear from God, Knowing God Intimately, and Battlefield of the Mind. She has also released thousands of teaching cassettes and a complete video library. Joyce's Enjoying Everyday Life radio and television programs are broadcast around the world, and she travels extensively conducting conferences.