(devotional from OurPrayer.org)

The Bible is filled with verses that promise you God’s help in times of trouble. But it’s up to you to activate these promises. Here’s how:

1.    Don’t be afraid to ask. It’s what God wants you to do! “Call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver you” (Psalm 50:15). “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you” (John 15:7). Like Jesus himself, pray (always!) for God’s will: “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us” (1 John 5:14).

2.    Do what God leads you to do. Prayer and faith must never be substitutes for action. The Savior who spent so much time praying also devoted himself to teaching and ministering to people’s needs. James 2:17 reminds us: “Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.”

3.    Remember: You cannot harvest unless you first plant seeds. The Message translates Galatians 6:7-8 to read: “Don’t be mislead. No one makes a fool of God. The person who plants foolishness, ignoring the needs of other—ignoring God!—harvests a crop of weeds…But the one who plants in response to God, letting God’s Spirit do the growth work in him, harvests a crop of real life, eternal life.” What seeds of goodness can you plant today?

4.    Speak God’s promises and blessings into life. Human words have immense power. “The tongue has the power of life and death” (Proverbs 18:21). Our words can bless or destroy. Claim God’s promises as your own (even inserting your name!) and speak them aloud. Here are a few to get you started:

•    “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13).
•    “God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19).
•    It is God who “forgives all your sin and heals all your diseases” (Psalm 103:3).

(devotional written by Dr. Norman Vincent Peale from OurPrayer.org)

1. AFFIRM
Believe that God is good and wants to help you, affirm that you are now in the process of receiving His goodness. The flow of blessing is constant and is happening to you now. Affirmation is a powerful factor in effective prayer.

2. LISTEN
Arrange for selected moments when you can become quiet mentally, relaxed physically, and receptive spiritually. Practice deep listening, reaching for contact with God. This form of prayer requires no words; simply listen until you hear inwardly.

3. FRACTIONAL
When you pray in little snatches, you are praying fractional prayers. In the form of brief prayer while waiting for a bus, or for the outcome of a conversation about to take place, fractional prayers add up to an enhanced prayer attitude.

4. NATURAL
Talk to the Lord using everyday language. The simpler your words, the easier it will be for you to express your thoughts. Talk to God sincerely in your own natural language. He understands.

5. SURROUND
Deeply believe that you can send out a spiritual force that will surround your loved ones with protective and positive influences. Prayer is the transmitting carrier of affirmative faith.

6. BLOCKADE
The number one blockade of spiritual power is resentment. To overcome it, pray for people you do not like or have mistreated you. Love always dissolves resentment.

7. LIST
Have a definite number of people for whom you pray daily. Pray by name for everyone on your prayer list. You will help them by your prayers, and the by-product will be additional blessings for you.

8. SURRENDER
Practice surrendering everything into God’s hands, believing that He will help and guide you. Prayerfully try to do your best about things and then, confidently, leave the results to God.

9. RELATIONSHIP
Conceive of prayer as a personal relationship with the Father. Not asking for anything, but simply wanting to be with Him in a loving relationship, is perhaps the ultimate value in prayerfulness. It is the establishment of an in-depth relationship between the individual and God.

10. MIND
Prayer may be defined as a methodology by which we may contact the Divine mind. Then the knowledge and wisdom of God can flow unhindered into our human mind. Thus, we are on an operational level with the power, wisdom, and goodness of the Heavenly Father.

“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer.”
Psalm 19:14

“Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, so that it will give grace to those who hear.”
Ephesians 4:29

“The one who guards his mouth preserves his life; the one who opens wide his lips comes to ruin.”
Proverbs 13:3

“Like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior.”
1 Peter 1:15

“He who restrains his words has knowledge, and he who has a cool spirit is a man of understanding. Even a fool, when he keeps silent, is considered wise; when he closes his lips, he is considered prudent.”
Proverbs 17:27

“The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart.”
Luke 6:45

“The tongue of the wise makes knowledge acceptable, but the mouth of fools spouts folly.”
Proverbs 15:2

“A man has joy in an apt answer, and how delightful is a timely word!”
Proverbs 15:23

“The tongue is a small part of the body, and yet it boasts of great things. See how great a forest is set aflame by such a small fire! And the tongue is a fire, the very world of iniquity; the tongue is set among our members as that which defiles the entire body, and sets on fire the course of our life, and is set on fire by hell.

“For every species of beasts and birds, of reptiles and creatures of the sea, is tamed and has been tamed by the human race. But no one can tame the tongue; it is a restless evil and full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in the likeness of God; from the same mouth come both blessing and cursing.”
James 3:5-10

“Do not be a witness against your neighbor without cause, and do not deceive with your lips.”
Proverbs 24:28

“A fool’s mouth is his ruin, and his lips are the snare of his soul.”
Proverbs 18:7

“The one who desires life, to love and see good days, must keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit.”
1 Peter 3:10

“The words of a man’s mouth are deep waters; the fountain of wisdom is a bubbling brook.”
Proverbs 18:4

(by David Yount from Christianity.com)

Do you want to talk to God but can’t figure out how? Or when you do talk to Him it doesn’t seem effective? Learning some simple techniques can make your prayer time with the Father exciting, inviting, and rewarding.

Praying is focused attention on God. It is quality time with the Father – not the ramblings of your random thoughts and complaints.

For prayer that makes sense:

1. Resist bothering God when you are only bored with yourself. Prayer is not an activity for times when you have nothing better to do. Prayer is the better thing to do.
2. Beware of employing prayer for wish fulfillment. Prayer is not magic. It is worth thanking God when your car starts in cold weather, but don’t expect God to get it started for you when your battery is weak and you’ve neglected to get a tune-up.
3. Make friends with God through prayer. This is the whole point of prayer.
4. Listen to God as you pray. Prayer is not an adventure in God-seeking since He is already there and it is Him who found you. The adventure is in hearing during the supposed “silence.”
5. Do not hold God responsible for adversity. Although you pray legitimately for God’s protection, acknowledge that the evil that befalls you is not His fault. God’s goodness does not depend upon His making everything right.
6. Conclude every prayer: “Not as I will, but as you will.” This is the way Jesus himself prayed. Ironically, you owe your redemption to the fact that God’s contrary will was that Jesus persist to the end, which He did – on the cross!
7. Resist the temptation to remake God in your own image. God does not have to be patronized to be accessible. Do not yield to the temptation to diminish God, shrinking Him to human size, as you make Him your buddy, copilot, or comrade. Instead, grow in Him and you will be a bigger person.
8. Use few words, but choose them carefully. The world is full of noisy chatter. God has already anticipated everything you have to say to Him. The point of prayer is to focus on God, reaffirming your dependence on Him and your need for forgiveness, expressing your sorrow, your gratitude, and your aspiration to learn to love. The less you say, the more room you give to God to answer your prayers.
9. Don’t expect inspiration. Prayer is neither an investment in gratification nor an exercise in sentimentality. “Dry patches” in your prayer life are normal. It often seems to be a lonely exercise, but even in deafening silence God is listening.
10. Pray for others.The two great commandments are that we love God and that we love our fellow men and women. The more you concentrate on other’s needs in prayer, the more God strengthens you in love and service.

From Breaking Through God’s Silence by David Yount. Copyright (c) 1996 by David Yount.

David Yount, D.D., is an award-winning newspaper editor, editorial writer, college dean, foundation executive, and author. He completed graduate studies in theology at Saint Paul’s College in Washington and the Institut Catholique in Paris, and was awarded an honorary doctorate by the American Biblical Institute. He was chairman of the College of Preachers in Washington, D.C., a member of the executive committee of Washington National Cathedral, and president of the National Press Foundation in Washington, the leading organization serving the professional development of the nation’s journalists. He is married with three children, and lives in Montclair, Va.

2 Corinthians 1:20 (NIV)

²⁰For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God.

By nature, God is a promiser. He’s made a ton of them to His children. A promise is the assurance that God gives to His people so they can walk by faith while they wait for Him to work.

You don’t realize how much you need God’s promises until your smooth and easy life suddenly turns sideways. This is the time to dig into God’s Word and get something to wrap your faith around.

Now the Christian life would be easy if the space in time is small between when you claim God’s promises and when you receive what He promised. Read it one day and get it the next. Wow – wouldn’t that be great!?

But life’s not like that.

The hard part is in the waiting between the promise and the answer; and even harder, when the waiting comes with uncertainties.

Where’s this going? Where am I going to end up? What’s my future look like?

The reality is, we just don’t know and it’s this not-knowing that crushes us. We doubt because we don’t know. We worry and despair because we don’t know. We falter and sometimes fail – all because we don’t know. If only we knew how this trial was going to play out, we would be OK. But we don’t.

I can take a bad day. I can take a bad month. I can even take a bad year or bad decade, if I have to, as long as I know how it will end up. For some of you it’s a health crisis. For another, it’s a question about your marriage or an uncertainty with a child. For someone else, it’s a restlessness in your soul. We all have areas of uncertainty where we need to hold on to what God has said. His promises are what we cling to while we wait for Him to work. Our faith is in God. He knows what He has promised, He can’t lie, and He can’t forget. He will deliver on time, all the time. Who else can make promises like that?

Now I wish I could tell you that it always figures out perfectly in our lifetimes, but I would be lying to you. You cannot make sense of the promises of God with this life only. You must factor the reality of eternity into the equation. Eternity brings it all together. The promises of eternal life and the assurance of hope in heaven are what make God’s promises exceedingly great and precious.
–James MacDonald

“God, forgive us for thinking that everything must make sense today in the economy of our human satisfaction. Give us faith to believe that we’re here for a purpose that is greater than ourselves, greater than our personal enjoyment, even greater than our participation in building Your kingdom. Our lives are about a legacy-Your glory. Amen.”

• Name a promise that God has made to You in His Word that You need to remember today.
• What promise do you cling to that will only make sense in eternity?

(devotional from Christianity.com)