The Four Stages of Prayer

6/12/17

 

1 Peter 2:2 (KJV) As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby:

Prayer is a way of talking to God and we have to learn how to talk to God just like we had to learn how to talk. We must all begin with baby steps and progress until we can talk to him in person. Yes, we must progress until we meet him in heaven. I feel there are four main stages of prayer.

We all start in the 'baby' stage where we are learning about how to talk with God, Jesus and the Holy Ghost. No one expects you to say profound prayers when you first get saved so do not feel bad about how you pray. Some people stay in this stage for a short time frame and others stay way too long. The longer you stay in this stage the less work you can do for the Lord. We should all strive to grow out of this stage, to be better witnesses and workers for the Lord.

It is written in 1 Peter 2:2 that we are to be like a baby who desire's the sincere milk of the word that we might grow. We grow by getting into our Bible and learning about how to be a Christian and as we read our Bible, we should talk to God about what we read. That is how to learn, by doing it. As we pray on a daily basis, we grow in our prayer life. Our prayer life is to grow as much as any other part of our life. We are not to spend our life saying prayers like: Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. If this is all we do then we are not growing.

We grow from that stage into one that is mainly made of short, sweet and sometimes halfhearted prayers. Do not get me wrong, they can be good prayers, but we still need to grow. There are times when that is all we have time for. Just be careful that you do not find yourself staying or even falling back into this stage. We live life at a very fast pace and it becomes very easy to fall into the trap of brief prayers. Growth comes from long conversations with the Lord.

While listening to a minister awhile back I heard him describe prayer as having a conversation with God. This is the next step in our prayer life and it is broken down into two different stages. The first is where we do the talking while we expect God to do the listening. If someone treated us with this type of conversation, we would try to interrupt and say something back. As Christians, we need to get past this stage and go on to a true conversation with God. When we can have that two-way talk with God on a daily basis then we can become mature Christians that are workers for Christ.

As children of God the best stage of prayer to have working in your life is the two-way prayer. It is where we tell him something then he tells us something. As we talk to God, Jesus and the Holy Ghost on a daily basis, we learn more from them. They will show us the best way to live our lives to be the best soul winner for God.