#1: Make prayer a habit. When you fail, start over, day by day by day, until prayer becomes a habit.
#2: Designate a time and place for prayer where you regularly go to pray.
#3: Make that time and place the most optimum for you. Find the time when your mind is the keenest, your attention strongest.
#4: Take some things with you: your Bible, notebook, pen and devotional materials. It would be unthinkable for me to have a quiet time without a Bible and notebook. I expect God to say something. If He does, I want to write it down. The weakest ink is better than the best memory.
#5: Begin by reading God’s Word. Don’t pray, then read the Bible. Read the Bible, then pray. What God says to you is more important than what you say to God. Your prayer will be enlivened and instructed when you get into the Word of God.
#6: Learn to pray about things all through the day. “Pray without ceasing.”
#7: Keep a record of your requests and answered prayers. I keep a journal where I enter requests. The other day I decided to look back about ten years. I was incredibly blessed to see how many prayers God has answered. A prayer journal will increase your faith.
#8: Put on the whole armor of God. Prayer is warfare. All the artillery of hell will come against you when you pray. The doorbell rings, you get sleepy, your mind wanders. You must put on the whole armor of God.#9: If you’re by yourself, pray out loud. If your mind is like mine, it wants to wander when you pray. There’s something about vocalizing your prayers that keeps your mind from wandering.
#10: If your mind wanders, pray about that thing. Thoughts will come to you like, I must remember that; I need to do this. Here’s a secret that works wonderfully. If the thing drawing your attention away from your prayer is that important, evidently it’s really on your mind, so pray about it. The thing distracting me becomes the focal point of my prayer. Then return to your original prayer.
Prayer is your guided missile. It can be fired from any spot. It travels undetected at the speed of thought. It hits the target every time. And if you don’t see the answer right away, remember it can have delayed detonation. Satan has no defense against your prayers. There is no anti-prayer missile.
God promises, “Call unto Me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not” — things exceedingly abundantly above all that we can ask or think.
Action Step: Having difficulty finding your purpose; spend some time in prayer. Then spend some time listening to Him. I will be praying for you.