1. Pray the Word! I hate to say so but most people’s prayers are really just whining with their eyes closed! The way they talk to God you’d think he existed to serve them instead of the other way around. When you learn to pray the Word you learn to pray God’s will instead of yours. You learn to lay claim to the promises of God. You learn to stand confidently on your covenant with God. When you pray the Word your prayers take on a whole new level of boldness and authority – the kind of prayers that make devils shake in their boots! I can’t recommend strongly enough that you buy, read, and memorize this book!

2. Pray in faith! Our emotional state makes little difference in prayer. The way some people carry on is pitiful! The Bible tells us over and over that it is faith that moves God. And faith is not a feeling that comes and goes or that some have and others don’t. Faith is you making a choice to believe God’s word instead of your feelings, your friends, or your circumstances. When you pray you must believe in God’s willingness to respond or else why bother praying? Believe the Word. Speak the Word. Visualize your prayer being answered. Praise God for the answer before it comes. And then get up and go act like it’s done!

3. Pray persistently! When Jesus taught on prayer he said we need to be like the friend at midnight. According to Jesus, this guy will get what he wants – not because the other man was his friend – but because of his “importunity.” That means his dogged, unrelenting, annoying, persistence! He got what he needed because he wasn’t about to quit until he did. We need a ‘won’t-take-no-for-an-answer’ attitude in prayer. Listen, when you pray the Word you can pray in complete faith because you know you’re praying the will and the heart of God. So get after it like you own it and don’t stop until you can walk away with full confidence that it’s done – it’s birthed – and all you have to do is be thankful till it comes!