DAILY PRAYER TOPICS

Your prayers should be like sweet-smelling incense to God. To capture its full body of richness and flavour, incense must be beaten and ground into a very fine powder. Likewise, your prayers should be “finely ground”—specific and highly detailed. They should “smell good” to God. But if you are not careful, they could smell like something else.

Prayers that consist of the “gimmes,” or that start out with self-righteous attitudes, are a foul stench to God’s nostrils, like sulfur dioxide—rotten egg gas—or burned rubber. Read the inset “Expandable Prayer List” featured with this article. It will help you to present “finely ground incense” before God. It will also assist you in praying for others.

Always thank God: Paul wrote, “In everything give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you” (I Thes. 5:18). You should always give thanks to God in your prayers. If you do not, you will miss a vital key to having your prayers answered.

Pray from the heart: When most pray, they mumble a few words and hope for the best. Or, like the Pharisees 2,000 years ago, they give long, monotonous prayers that go no higher than the ceiling (Luke 18:10-12). Either way, they are not putting their hearts into their requests.