My past prayer life
I still remember my prayer life in the first 10 years as a Christian in my church and it was quite boring and quite religious as well. This was how we pray in the weekly prayer meeting. We sing some hymn for around 10 minutes and then we listen short talk from the pastor for another 10 minutes. Then we have some formal prayer items from the church sharing for another 10-15 minutes. And we then would form a group of 3 -4 and share some needs about our own life for another 20 minutes. Finally , we will start to pray for a few minutes each individually and actually we only pray for 5 minutes for each person because the other 10-15 minutes , we were actually listened to what other people were praying more than we pray ourselves and it was really boring and so powerless. However, things have changed after something happened in my life and read on for something big is coming up in my life.
One hour turning point
When I attended a conference in Singapore and joined a workshop on prayer. The lady was the leading pastor for the intercessory department of that church. She taught about what effective prayer is needed and it really transformed my prayer life ever since then. She first taught us how to pray for one hour. I first thought it must be boring but I still tried to be humble and listen to what she said. The first 10 minutes we just keep on praising God for His Holy Name and not keep on asking the Lord for anything just like those normal prayer meeting did. We praise God for who He is and how great He is by going through all His names in the Bible.Since God has so many names in the bible , that would take up 10 minutes or more to do that. By the time we finished this part of prayer, we all experienced the power of praying out loud and praise God for who He is together really lift up our faith and get ready to enter into a deeper prayer relationship with the Lord.
Then there comes another 10 minutes, we start to thank the Lord for what He did to us in our life or in our family members for the last week or the last month. It was really a time to count all the good things that God did to us or to our family members one by one for the last week and or last month. By the time we have finished thanking God, our joy and faith just moved to another level to getting closer to God.
Then We started to pray for each members in our own family or for ourselves in details by quoting God's promised in the Bible as well. Then there goes another 10 minutes and by now, half hour is gone. One thing that really motivate us to pray being that we didn't sit on a chair and closed our eyes like those traditional prayer meeting. We all feel free to stand , sit, kneel before the Lord, walk around in the class or lay down if we feel like it. We would also raise up our hand or clap our hands and keep our eyes open while we pray. As long as feel the freedom in pray and don't let the body posture to make us feel like to sleep, then we are all actively praying in the classroom. Nobody will be disturbed by others since we were all focus on our prayer to God and also listen to what God would speak to us sometimes during the prayer time. In fact, prayer should always be a two-way communication with God and not just a one way speak from us. It was an intimate time with God and it was so good.
The rest of the 30 minutes we would divide the time into three other sections : pray for the church from leadership to all the things we concern, pray for our community and church, pray for whatever nation that God has pit into our mind. By the time we finished this one hour prayer meeting. Everyone is joyful and our faith have really uplifted by such an experience and encounter with God. This si the kind of prayer that will impact our life an others and it is just like afire to spread out in this world . No doubt about it, prayer such as this is full of power and really build up our prayer life to another new level as well.
conclusion :
I didn't find prayer boring at all from that time on and I just love to pray after this experience. Later on I have experience with the filling of the Holy Spirit (http://goo.gl/aTwb3H) and it really motivated me to get up so early in the morning and pray for an hour and worship God each day for more than half year right after all these experiences. For sure The Holy Spirit (http://goo.gl/aTwb3H) would always teach me how to pray from that time on . Since God is no respecter and as long as you have the hunger and thirsty to get to know him more and a desire to improve your prayer life, pray for an hour is a good starting point that I would definitely recommend to you. If I could do that , so can you. Are you willing to experience God in a powerful way now ?