But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. Matthew 6:6
A paradigm is our own ingrained idea of how something is, works and should be. In the past we may have thought education could only be done one way – the way we did it growing up in public schools. But there has been a paradigm shift over the last 30 years or so, which has led to the growth of charter schools systems and homeschooling co-ops. Now when parents consider their children’s education they have the luxury of considering more options than our parents did. There has been a paradigm shift regarding our children’s education. I am asking you to consider the same possibility for prayer.
We often think of prayer in terms of how it works in our corporate prayer experience. Typically, the corporate prayer experience happens at church or with a group of Christians. We share our praises and some prayer petitions, and after a short formal prayer we are done. This may be the most efficient format for corporate prayer, but there should be so much more to our personal prayer life. If we are only spending time in prayer trying to keep up with a long list of personal and corporate prayer requests then we may become both overwhelmed and underwhelmed.
While prayer petitions are important, think also about praying over your shortcomings, the people in your circles of influence who need Jesus, your God-given purpose in life and developing discernment for hearing God speak to you about day-to-day obedience. If you can do that, then you will really be able to grasp the strategies for having a powerful prayer life that I am going to be imparting here. With that being said, can you open yourself up to enlarging your prayer closet?
