Certainly, all who believe in God and pray would like his or her prayers to effective. But sometimes it is hard to know what to pray. James, the brother of Jesus wrote: “If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking.” (James 1:5 NLT) If we apply that to prayer, one would be wise to find out what God wants them to pray. Effective prayer might be defined like this: Prayer is finding God’s heartbeat, so a believer can pray the prayers God most wants them to pray.
One mistake that is easy to make is to see everything from a limited, human point of view. Consider the following illustration as to how many of us see life from a limited point of view on a daily basis:
Our speech betrays us. When first observing the sun in the morning as it paints a kaleidoscope on the horizon, we drink it it’s beauty and say things like “isn’t that a beautiful sunrise?” Then, when the sun seems to sink in the sky and again refracts through the atmosphere at the end of the day, we enjoy how it colors our world with crimson reds and vibrant oranges, and we refer to it as a “sunset”. But, technically, the sun neither rises nor sets. Those terms are scientifically incorrect… deceptive… man-centered. While the sun is moving in its own orbit, it is not rising and setting in relation to the earth.
The sun is a star burning at 27 million degrees Fahrenheit. It is 93 million miles from the earth. Because our earth rotates, someone standing on the equator is traveling from west to east at the rate of about a thousand miles per hour. As they race toward the sun it makes the sun appear to rise. As they race away from the sun it makes it appear to be setting. So, sunrise and sunset are egocentric terms. We are describing the effects of the rotation of our world as if everything revolves around us. And we tend to pray that way too.
King David is probably one of the most famous kings of all times. The story of him killing Goliath is known even in secular circles. Throughout his eventful life David wrote many Psalms and a good number of them were prayers. Psalm 139 is one of those “prayer Psalms.” In it, David struggles with God’s intense knowledge of him, he marvels at how God intricately formed him in his mother’s womb, and then prays a prayer of surrender to God’s searching, knowing, probing, and refining. This Psalm is a great example of how someone might pray if they are trying to find God’s heartbeat and align their lives with Him. Read it. Let it inspire you to pray and effective prayer.