(by Marcia Ford from OurPrayer.org)

Prayer is sometimes like a journey through a construction zone. Potholes jar your body as your car bounces through. A flag-waving construction worker cuts you off. Orange barrels narrow the road, and large wooden signs announce a detour. You wish you could turn your car into a helicopter to fly over it all or just go back to bed and forget the entire trip. What detours—or derails—your prayers?

“I Am Busy”
No matter how busy you are, you always have time for one thing—a crisis. Crises come when you least expect them. They storm into your life, laying waste to your schedule. Crises bring crystal clear clarity to the essentials and priorities of life. You have no choice but to fit a crisis into your life. What if you treated prayer with the same respect as a crisis.  Anyway you cut it, a key ingredient in authentic Christianity is time. Not leftover time, not throwaway time, but quality time. Time for contemplation, meditation, and reflection. Unhurried, uninterrupted time.”

So how do you cut a swath across your schedule to accommodate prayer? The high school and college campus organization Fellowship of Christian Athletes uses a sports metaphor. Leaders encourage the student-athletes to go “first and ten” with God. Spend ten minutes in prayer each morning as the first part of your routine. This technique isn’t for “the entire game” but just to get you started. You will seek to increase the minutes once you feel the benefits of committed time to pray.

“I Am Distracted”
Those who have many distractions have many things to pray for. There are two major types of distractions: internal and external. Internal distractions are thoughts and feelings that captivate your mind. When you quiet yourself for prayer, these gremlins turn up the volume to get your attention. To combat these internal distractions, create a list of all your concerns. Use that list as your guide until you experience a time of prayer not marred by random thoughts. External distractions include ringing telephones and interrupting children. Electronic devices are easy to disable or unplug. Moms in particular struggle when their children disrupt their times of prayer. They’ve overcome the barrier of being too busy, but as soon as they take a deep breath, a child needs help. Children require care and attention. Many moms report that they need to wake up before their children do or put the to-do list on hold during nap-time in order to pray for just a few minutes without distraction.

“I Am Sleepy”
If bowing your head is a better cure for insomnia than counting sheep, perhaps your environment is more conducive to sleep than it is to prayer. Classic paintings and the monastic life have been combined with the solemnity of prayer to create an expectation that prayer is best when on your knees in silence.

That might work for some Christians at times. Silence and solitude are positive elements to your spiritual life. However, prayer can be just as meaningful while out for a morning run or an afternoon walk. If you have a long commute, spend part of your time in prayer. Keep a 3″ x 5″ card full of prayer requests behind your visor. One young businessman likes to pray aloud, so he wears his earphones so that it appears he’s on a telephone call. In essence, he is talking over the communication line that’s never busy.

“I Am Inadequate”
Even those who have prayed for years feel inadequate from time to time. This barrier rears its head when the basics become dusty. If you feel this way, remind yourself that prayer is simply having a conversation with God.

“I Don’t Want to Pray”
The most troublesome barrier to prayer is “I Don’t Want to Pray.” Many are afraid to admit this core thought and choose to voice other barriers that seem more “religiously correct.” When you feel this way, ask yourself how God has disappointed you or frustrated you, and then take your feelings to him. King David, the apostle Paul, and many others complained to God. When they did, God drew them closer to himself.

Excerpted from The Indispensable Guide to Practically Everything: Prayer.

Try these ways to deepen your prayer life:

1. Move beyond just asking. Of course, we should ask the Lord for what we need. He encourages, “Ask and it will be given you” (Matthew 7:7). But suppose you had a friend who never spoke to you unless he was asking you for something. Wouldn’t that be a strange friendship?

2. Learn to listen. When Jesus visited Mary and Martha, Mary did Jesus the honor of simply sitting and listening to his matchless words. And he said Mary had “chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:38-42). Remember: “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10).

3. Let God love you. When you pray, try sitting in silence, thinking only of how good and gracious the Lord is. “One thing have I desired of the Lord,” said David, “… that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord” (Psalm 27:4). “God is love” (1 John 4:8).

4. Practice positive affirmation. Bring your problems to God and leave them there.  Don’t keep mentally going over them. Instead, believe that he will provide the right solution. Picture a good outcome. Pray with David, “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” (Psalm 27:1).

5. Pray without ceasing. In 1 Thessalonians 5:17, Paul exhorts us to pray continually. While it is good to have a regular time and place for prayer, we can pray anywhere, at any time. Realize that God is always with you. Live in the spirit of thankfulness, faith, affirmation and praise, and you may discover that your whole life is one continuous, joyous prayer!

(from OurPrayer.org)

You might be surprised, but God has made you many promises.  But they’re promises that you have to claim in order to receive. Yes, God has in fact made hundreds of promises in His Word to those who profess to be Christians.

But many of these promises are conditional or limited. This means that you and I may have to meet certain conditions or do our part before God can act on our behalf. “If you do this,” God says, “I’ll do this.” Our response determines His actions.

When you read in your Bible and you see the words “gift” or “given,” or the words “then” or “if,” you need to back up. If you see these, you know you may have a promise that you can biblically claim…scripture that you can appropriate for your life.

As Paul tells us in Ephesians 4:7-8:

But to each one of us, grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore it says, ‘When He ascended on high, He led captive a host of captives, and He gave gifts to men.’

A lot of folks don’t know the promises of God and don’t know the blessing and inheritance that is available to them. And if they do, they may misuse a promise.

A good way to navigate the promises of God is to think of a 3-legged stool. You have to know about the promise – that is one leg of the stool. You have to understand the promise – that is another leg of the stool. And then you have to biblically and accurately claim the promise – that’s the third leg of the stool.

A good template to see if you can biblically claim one of God’s promises revolves around four key words: Understand, Ask, Claim, and Act.

1. Understand the context of the verse. Understand what was going on in the verses before and after the verse with a promise. What was the situation, the setting, the timing, what was happening? Ask the basic questions – who, what, when, where why?

2. Ask the critical questions. Ask if the promise is conditional or unconditional? Is the promise limited or unlimited? Is there an “if, then” stated? Is the promise for someone specific in the Bible? Ask the critical questions.

3. Claim the promise. When you claim a promise, you exercise your faith. By faith, stand on the promise of God and believe in Him.

4. Act on the promise. You believe, then you act. You proceed in faith and move ahead.

Understand, Ask, Claim, Act. Remember to use this template to discern when God has made a promise to you and how you are able to receive it.

The great news is that God keeps His word. Throughout the Bible, without exception, God keeps each and every promise ever made. That should give us great confidence to exercise our faith in God’s promises and lead a life of new blessings and transformation.

(from Christianity.com)

“I am comforted by this truth, that when we suffer and die for Christ it only means that we will begin living with Him in heaven. And if we think that our present service for Him is hard, just remember that some day we are going to sit with Him and rule with Him. But if we give up when we suffer, and turn against Christ, then He must turn against us. Even when we are too weak to have any faith left, He remains faithful to us and will help us, for He cannot disown us who are part of Himself, and He will always carry out His promises to us.”

(2 Timothy 2:11-13 – The Living Bible)

God is faithful to His children, and although we may suffer great hardships here, He promises that someday we will live eternally with Him. What will this involve? It means believers will live in Christ’s Kingdom, and that we will share in the administration of that Kingdom. This was Paul’s comfort as he went through suffering and death, and it can be ours, too. Are you facing hardships? Don’t turn away from God – He promises you a wonderful future with Him. For more information about living eternally with God, see Matthew 16:24-27; 19:28-29; Luke 22:28-30; Romans 5:17; 6:8; 8:10, 11, 17; 1 Corinthians 15:42-58; Colossians 3:3-4; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; Revelation 3:21; 21:1-22:21.

Jesus will stay by our side even when we have endured so much that we seem to have no faith left. We may be faithless at times, but Jesus remains faithful to His promise to be with us always, “even to the end of the world” (see Matthew 28:20; Romans 8:38-39).