Below is an article found and shared by our Prayer Team.
After numerous times of confessing to the Lord my sin of apathy toward praying faithfully, I recognized that the solution was not merely acknowledging my weakness, but my need to ask for His help. Sure enough, He answered my prayer by pointing me to the “cry” of the psalmist in the Bible who prayed with deep sincerity: “As the deer pants for the water brooks, so pants my soul for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God” (Ps. 42:1-2)? In faith, I began to pray that the Lord would give me that same kind of passion for the Father; to actually hunger and thirst for time (in prayer) with Him. Slowly but surely I experienced a definite “spiritual transplant” in my heart; so that my prayer time became something I began to eagerly anticipate. With that transformation came a much greater sense of “connecting” with the Lord and fulfillment in seeing many more of my prayers—for myself and others—answered! Once that happened, the habit of being still became a natural part of my daily prayer life; I don’t even consider a day to be complete without my prayer time with the Lord. In fact, I literally feel “incomplete” (an uneasy, uncomfortable feeling) if my day has not included a special time “in prayer” with the Lord!
Holy God, I confess the weakness of my prayer life and my lack of faithfulness to pursue You! Please give me that heart of passion that King David had – a heart that hungered and thirsted to know You in all of Your fullness. Give me a spiritual transplant so that I will long to be in Your courts more than any other place! My heart’s desire is to be continually aware of Your presence living in me!
--Adapted from Giving Ourselves to Prayer: An Acts 6:4 Primer for Ministry (Chapter 26, Habits of Effective Pray-ers by Dennis Connor). This book is available at Prayershop.org.
Prayer Points
Praise the name of God (Mt. 6:9).
Thank God for revealing his name to you through his Word and Spirit (Ex. 3:15).
Confess times when you have misused the name of God in word or deed.
Commit yourself to living in a way which hallows God’s name.
Ask God to glorify his majestic name in all the earth (Ps. 8:1).
Pray for Christians working in public service. Ask that they will have the courage to hallow the name of God without compromise in their daily work.
Prayer Points taken from Patterns for Prayer by Alvin VanderGriend. This book is available at prayershop.org.