How to Best Make Your Prayers Highly Effective

You may know someone you would describe as a “good pray-er,” someone you know God listens to when they pray. But perhaps your own prayers seem to fall on deaf ears, or the words you say don’t come out quite the way you think they should, or you avoid praying out loud in case anyone hears you and judges you by your prayer.

But what if your prayers too could be highly effective? What if you too could be confident that when you pray, you are doing it right, and God actually hears you?

The key to highly effective prayers

There is something I want you to hear today: The secret to highly effective prayers is actually both doable for and available to each of us.

It’s simply this: pray as you.

You, dear one, are the beloved child of God. When you speak, you move His heart. When you direct your gaze towards Him, it touches Him deeply. His great heart yearns to be known by you and His presence He wraps like a fragrant, soft blanket around you.

This is who you are

When we don’t yet grasp the way that God sees us, calls us beloved, we tend to focus on the doing over the being. We try to clean ourselves up before we approach God, try to do all the things to please Him to increase the chances of Him listening to us. We make promises we don’t expect we’ll have to keep because we don’t believe He is actually listening or that He actually cares.

In contrast, when we rest in the revelation that we don’t earn God’s time, attention, or approval, we are free to simply be as we already are: dear ones of the almighty God. We know He listens because we know that His love is never scare, never withheld, never conditional.

He grants us access to come with confidence before Him (Hebrews 4:16), encourages us to come to Him in prayer about all our everything (Philippians 4:16-17), and both hears and answers us (Psalm 116:1-2).

Galatians 4:4-7 is a powerful verse that reminds us who we are to God. May these words invite you to pause and savor the depth of what God’s love means for you:

You can tell for sure that you are now fully adopted as his own children because God sent the Spirit of his Son into our lives crying out, “Papa! Father!” Doesn’t that privilege of intimate conversation with God make it plain that you are not a slave, but a child? And if you are a child, you’re also an heir, with complete access to the inheritance.

(MSG)

The pull to discount our ability to pray comes from many directions. But God reaches through it all, again and over again, inviting us to come talk to Him, all pretense aside, just simply as the dearly beloved children of His that we are.

This is why it matters

We can pray effectively when we live knowing how we are loved by God because this knowledge dissolves the reasons we stay away. And when we come near, we learn more fully His nature: what moves Him, what stirs His heart, what He thinks about, what aligns with His divine purposes. We are then able to pray according to His heart, joining Him in the direction He is already going.

1 John 5:14-15 in the TPT tells us,

Since we have this confidence, we can also have great boldness before him, for if we ask anything agreeable to his will, he will hear us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we also know that we have obtained the requests we ask of him.

When we pray in accordance with God’s heart, we can lay claim of His promise to hear and answer.

Knowing how loved we are and that we are welcomed always into the presence of God opens the door to an ever increasingly deeper relationship. We come where we know we are valued, understood, safe, and belong. Intrinsically, the more time we spend with God, the more we know Him, and the more effectively we can pray for the things that already tug at His heart.

3 things to do when you don’t know where to start

Shall we get practical here for a minute? We want to know the heart of God. We want to pray highly effective prayers. But perhaps it still feels out of reach. Let’s look at three very practical ways we can bridge the divide.

1 – Create space to listen

When you don’t know how to start praying, first simply come near Him. Lean in to listen with your heart. Prayer is a conversation, and listening is at least as much a part of praying as talking is.

We miss so much when we become talking heads, rattling off our requests without first giving space to learn God’s heart.

So let’s begin by slowing down. Quieting our hearts. Savoring the sweetness of His nearness. Actively engaging in listening to God.

We are each wholly loved by a holy God, and He does not withhold Himself from us. If we don’t know what His will is in order to align our prayers by it, He invites us to pursue Him, to seek His heart, to chase after His wisdom. According to Proverbs 2:6-7 TPT,

Wisdom is a gift from a generous God,
    and every word he speaks is full of revelation
    and becomes a fountain of understanding within you.
For the Lord has a hidden storehouse of wisdom
    made accessible to his godly ones.

Similarly, in Matthew 7:7 TPT, Jesus teaches, “Ask, and the gift is yours. Seek, and you’ll discover. Knock, and the door will be opened for you.”

We are children of God, and as God’s children, we have access to learn His heart, His ways, and His will. Let’s take time to listen so that we might better know what moves Him.

2 – Read His Word

Another way we can learn God’s nature and heart is through reading His Word. God reveals Himself to us as we experience His presence, and through Jesus, He has likewise given us a clear picture of His nature. Reading Scriptural accounts of Jesus’s time here on earth is a powerful way to learn the will of God so we can then pray accordingly.

For example, we know that God desires to save us, free us, redeem us (1 Peter 3:9). Jesus’ words in Luke 19:10 also confirm God’s yearning to rescue each of us: “The Son of Man has come to seek out and to give life to those who are lost” (TPT). We can pray for ourselves and others to be set free of the things that keep us from giving God full access to our hearts and lives—and know that we are praying according to God’s will.

Reading the inspired Word of God is one of the ways we can really get to know who God is and what He is like. We can also pray Scripture itself, leaning on the assurance that what God has already promised, He will be faithful to fulfill (Isaiah 55:1).

3 – Grow in community with others

Yet another very important component of learning the heartbeat of God is through the people around us. I advocate for doing life in community with your neighbors because proximity is a potent recipe for authentic friendships that helps us grow in all areas of life, including our faith. When we let the people nearest us in close enough to witness and hear us share about the things God is working out in us, we help each other grow into spiritual maturity.

The sincerity and humility with which we approach God in prayer we talked about last week applies to our relationships within a community as well. When we choose often to borrow the lens of others and maintain the posture of life-long learners, we find that the people in our lives have much to teach us about the nature of God.

Highly effective prayer is more about surrender than following prescribed steps, the posture of our hearts than the words we say, when we say them, and where we pray them.

We need to be no one but ourselves to pray effective prayers. And the same is true of community. We need to be no one but ourselves—flawed yet growing increasing more Christ-like as we are—to be a vital part of community. And in community with others, we can be encouraged to keep seeking the heart of Father God so that we might know Him more fully.

An invitation to pause and ponder

Leaning in to listen to God speak, getting to know Him through His Word, and growing into spiritual maturity in community with others will all help us pray effective prayers because they posture our hearts to pursue God and rest in His presence. And the more time we spend with God, the deeper the truth that we are already loved and already welcomed sinks deep, heals deep. Here, in His presence, where He makes us whole, is where we are free to simply be His, and pray as ourselves.

As we close, I want to leave you with a few final questions to ponder:

If you believed—really, truly believed—that God leans in to hear your every prayer, would you pray differently? What if you believed that the posture of your heart matters far more than saying the “right things” in the “right way”? What if you held an all-access pass to come into the throne room of the glorious God whenever you wanted? What if you knew that He wants you to come often and linger long? What you were convinced that He never wants you to leave?

Jesus, thank you that even I can pray highly effective prayers. Thank you for calling me beloved, for calling me to Yourself, for listening to every word I speak. Teach me to listen as You speak. Show me how to better learn your ways and your heart through Your Word. Guide my baby steps towards living in community with my neighbors. In Your holy and precious name, Jesus, I pray. Amen.

P.S. Did you know The Uncommon Normal is also a podcast? Tune in on Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, or Spotify.

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