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Are you tired of praying chance prayers?

And if you are asking yourself what a chance prayer is – it’s the kind of prayer that we pray and our words fill the air, but we don’t really have expectation for God to move…or we don’t believe He can.

We are all guilty of this type of praying.  We have all utters words that sound great, but deep in our heart, we don’t believe what we are praying is even possible.

A chance prayer could sound something like this: “Lord, I know you long to protect me from making bad or careless decisions.  Lord, I am weary.  I am going to be honest with you of how I am being tempted to give into temptations that I clearly know would not be the best for me right now.  I need you to help me in this moment.  Can you speak to me by tomorrow afternoon and tell me what is best for my life because you know all things Lord? How bad would these decisions be for my future.  Are they really that bad since they feel good in this moment? If I don’t hear from you Lord, I will just go through with the open door and believe it is your will for my life.” Amen

That my friend is a praying by chance prayer.  If I was to ask you what you believe is wrong with that prayer, what would you say?

First, I would say, God is not a robot.  He is not programmed to be like Siri.

Second, we can’t give God ultimatums and tell Him to speak when we want Him to speak.

Third, we have to believe that God is able to turn impossibilities into possibilities.

I think of the prayer that’s been ushered for us to get us to this point in our lives.  I dare say that someone was willing to get sweat on their souls for us.  And, today, not too many in the church know what soul travail is.  We are omitting prayer from our daily schedules (which is talking to God), and then we wonder why our lives, or our families are coming unglued.

The day of having a take-it-or-leave-it attitude must be called out in our lives.  We must learn to repent when we feel that tinge of pain in our hearts that the world applauds.

The prayers that we offer must cost us something – no more throwing caution to the wind and allowing our unrighteous strongholds to call the shots.

I am reading a book by Leonard Ravenhill on revival, and I want to share this quote from him:

“Who will deny himself good food, or good company or good rest that hell may gaze upon him wrestling, embarrassing demons, liberating captives, depopulating hell, and leaving in answer to his travail, a stream of blood-washed souls?”

Let’s get out of our own way and stop praying boring prayers that don’t capture the attention of heaven.  Let’s give our prayer time a jolt – let’s pray like we meant it – and let’s expect God to answer because He wants to answer more than you can imagine.