a) Prayer should be specific

Specific prayer will receive specific answers. In Jesus parable of the midnight friend Luke 11:5-8 he asks for three loaves of bread. His request was specific. Our prayer is very general. We pray for all churches, all mission organizations, and all sick people. We don’t pray specifically for people and their problems because it is a time consuming spiritual exercise. Specific prayer will increase our faith in a prayer answering God. In my case whenever a person requests for prayer I jot down that in my prayer diary. George Muller was a mighty man of prayer .He used to put the date against the prayer matter he begins to pray and put the date when God answers that prayer. In the end he testified that God answered all his Prayers.

b) Prayer should be organized

We cannot pray for all the prayer items in our list on a particular day. It means we need to spread these prayer requests over a week or a month. In order to pray for mission organizations we need to go to their prayer calendar given in their bulletin.

c) Our prayers should be complete

In Eph 6:10-20 Paul explains the importance of prayer in spiritual warfare. V18 says ‘And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests with this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints’ please note ‘all kinds of prayers’. We may major in one kind of prayer e.g. supplication or petition in which we make our needs known to the Lord. But prayer is more than that.

Dick Eastman in his book “Change the World School of Prayer” identifies twelve kinds of prayers:

• Waiting
  
  Suppose we sit for prayer after a day s hard work our mind is disturbed by what ever has happened on that day in our workplace. So there is a need to quieten our hearts, minds and spirits in God’s presence. In Ps - 46:10 “Be still and know that I am the Lord”. It means that we have to bring our whole being to a point of stillness. For example we throw a stone in a pond the whole water is disturbed creating ripples all over. But when we let it go for a while the water becomes still and the image of trees around the pond will be clearly reflected in the water. So it is when we still our hearts and quieten our minds the reflection of Gods glory becomes clear in the mirror of our souls. Isn’t it wonderful? Therefore let us not hurry into Gods presence. Before we take time to pray let us quieten our minds and hearts. We call this waiting.
   
• Adoration (Worship)
  
  “Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise” Ps: 100:4. Worship is “worth ship”. Recognizing God’s worth what we offer to God is called worship. Praise or worship is that we offer for WHAT or WHO HE IS. Bring to our mind His various attributes. He is Holy, Just, Redeemer, Sustainer, Creator, Unchanging, Sovereign, King of kings, Lord of Lords, Elshadai, Jehovah Shammah etc etc.Psalmist says God is One who inhabits the praises of Israel. Psalmist encourages us to lift our hearts in praise and worship.
   
• Thanksgiving
  
  We give thanks to the Lord for what he has done. Many Christians use praise and thanksgiving without realising its difference. He has bestowed upon us so many blessings. A chorus says “count your blessings name them one by one and it will surprise you what the Lord has done”. How can I repay the Lord for all this goodness to me? “I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord” Ps.116-12, 13. We should cultivate a grateful heart. When ten lepers were healed, only one person came back to thank the lord. Then Jesus was asking him where were the others who were healed of their leprosy . Give thanks to the Lord for the gift of life, sight, hearing, speech, health etc.
   
• Word Praying
  
  Because God is faithful to keep His promise we appropriate these promises in prayer. Nehemiah‘s prayer is one example “Remember the instructions you gave your servant Moses. If you are unfaithful I will scatter you, but if you return to me and obey my commandments, then even if you exiled people are at the farthest horizon. I will gather them from there and bring them back to the place I have chosen you as a dwelling place for my name”. There are innumerable promises in the Bible for His children. We can claim these promises and claim them by faith. It is like encashing our cheques in the bank. This will make our prayers more powerful and effective. Col- 3:16 say “Let the word of Christ dwell in our hearts richly in all wisdom”. We need to store them in our hearts and pick them up when the need arises.
   
• Confession
  
  In prayer there is confession of sins .In John – 1:8, 9 “ If we claim to be without sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins He is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness”. Children of God do not continue in sin .But if anybody does sin then we have one who speaks to the Father in our defence - Jesus Christ the righteous one He is the atoning sacrifice for us.1 John -2:1,2 ; Ps - 66 :14. “If I have regarded iniquity in my heart the Lord would not have heard me”. Isaiah - 59:1, 2 “your sins (iniquities) have separated you from God”. Watch out unconfessed sin in our life for it will block our prayer.
   
• Watching
  
  “Watch and pray” this is what Jesus said whenever He asked us to pray. We need to be alert when we pray. Many a time our prayer becomes mechanical. Paul says I pray with my mind. 1 Cori- 14:15, In Eph 6:18 there is a phrase “watching there unto” we keep on praying till the petition that we bring before the lord in His will is granted.
   
• Petition
  
  Bible says “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and PETITION with thanksgiving, present your requests to God”. It is our privilege to ask our heavenly father in Mt.7:7 “Ask and it shall be given”. Asking is the principle of Gods kingdom but James used a word of caution “you don’t have because you don’t ask. When you ask you don’t receive because you ask with wrong motives”. James. 4: 2, 3. “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 asks we know that we have what we ask of Him”. 1 John 5: 14, 15.What a wonderful promise, our God is a prayer answering God.
   
• Intercession
  
  The word comes from two Latin words ‘Inter’ and ‘Cedere’. Inter means ‘between’ or ‘among’, Cedere means ‘go’. When we combine these two words it will mean ‘go between’. We go to God interceding for our fellowmen. We see so many examples in the Bible people interceding for others. Abraham, Moses and Daniel etc. In Ezek- 22:30 God says “I looked for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have destroyed it but I found none”. ‘The fate of this world lies in the hands of unknown praying saints’ someone said.
   
• Meditation
  
  Prayer and meditation of the word go hand in hand. When we are in prayer we are reminded of a promise or a command so we resort to searching for the same and meditate on it. On the other hand when we meditate the word we are confronted with the need of making confession of a particular sin or short coming which God has reminded us in His word. We turn immediately to God confessing our sin or short coming.
   
• Singing
  
  In Eph- 5:19 “speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs sing and MAKE MELODY IN YOUR HEARTS to the Lord”. Always giving thanks to God the father for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is not singing a hymn from our songbook. It refers to singing in the spirit.
   
• Listening
  
  We should take time to listen to God while in prayer. Eccl 5:1,2 says “Guard your steps when you go to the house of God ,go near to LISTEN rather than to offer the sacrifices of fools who don’t know that they do wrong. Do not be quick with your mouth, do not be hasty in your heart to utter anything before God, God is in heaven and you are on earth. So LET YOUR WORDS BE FEW”. Listening to God is an important part of prayer.
  When Samuel as a boy was ministering to the Lord in temple one day God called Him. Thinking that it was Eli the priest Samuel went to him. Finally Eli advised him to say like this when God called him next time, “SPEAK Lord for thy servant is LISTENING”. In the course of our prayer God may want to communicate His will to us and we miss many blessings because we fail to listen to Gods still small voice.
  Habakkuk after airing his complaints before the Lord in Ch 1, went to the watch tower waiting upon God to listen to what God had to tell him. God did communicate to him some profound truths. (Hab – Ch 2)
   
• Magnify
  
  We began our prayer by worshipping the Lord and now we come to the last and concluding part i.e. magnifying the Lord .In His model prayer Jesus says “For thine is the kingdom the power and the glory forever and ever Amen”. We take time to magnify the Lord and we bring our prayer to conclusion. What a beautiful way to conclude our prayers.
   

How to use this?

If we give five minutes to each kind of prayer it will take 60 minutes to complete our prayer. This is what Dick East man calls “The hour that changes the world”. In the garden of Gethsemane Jesus is asking His disciples to watch with Him in prayer for an hour. But they slept off. Does this mean that Jesus is looking for one hour watchers even today? In the beginning of a day or a month we may take more time for thanksgiving, sometimes we may need more time for intercession. What I mean to say is that it gives a sense of direction in our prayer. Moreover it is flexible. This makes prayer more relevant and meaningful. Bible says where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. So we don’t need to follow this blindly .I have found this useful and practical in my prayer life. If you feel that this programme is more cumbersome and complex you may use the following pattern to begin with. To simplify. We can put it one word ‘ACTS’ in acronym.

A - Adoration-worship/praise
C - Confession of sins
T - Thanksgiving
S - Supplication and Intercession

Let us continue in prayer until we see God intervening in our situations miraculously bringing glory to His name. Let us devote the rest of our lives for a life of prayer. When somebody asked Billy Graham what will be his priority if he is granted one more time to live in this world. He made a very thought provoking statement that he would devote more time for prayer. Remember this is a statement made by a person whom God used as a mighty instrument to win millions of people for the Lord in his generation.

God Bless You.