A Journey to Victorious Praying: Finding Discipline and Delight in Your Prayer Life
By Bill Thrasher and Erwin W. Lutzer
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About this ebook
Why is it so hard to pray?
It’s something many Christians can relate to: the desire to pray but the failure to execute. A Journey to Victorious Praying will tell readers why this is—and how to move past it.
Addressing common misconceptions about prayer, then offering biblical truths and practices instead, Bill Thrasher teaches readers how to:
- Honestly share their desires with God
- Turn temptations into victorious prayers
- Experience the Spirit’s motivation in prayer
- Get help when they don’t know how to pray
- Implement fasting into their prayer life
- Move from anxiety to peace
And more
Filled with practical insight and pastoral warmth, this book will give readers renewed enthusiasm for embarking on the essential journey of prayer. And its brief chapters, organized around various themes, make it perfect for quick reference, as does the appendix with tips for stimulating prayer.
Read more from Bill Thrasher
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Reviews for A Journey to Victorious Praying
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A Journey to Victorious Praying - Bill Thrasher
Praise for A Journey to Victorious Praying
Dr. Bill Thrasher’s book should be placed in the hands of every new Christian. This is a splendid invitation to much more than a spiritual discipline, it is a call to an exciting way of life with our personal and loving Lord.
LYLE W. DORSETT
Professor of Evangelism and Spiritual Formation
Wheaton College
Bill Thrasher is ‘a man after my own heart’—one who lives and walks in prayer and fasting as a normal lifestyle, not dry religious duty. This very solid and balanced book studies how God is always desiring to orchestrate prayer-filled eruptions and expressions from the conditions of our daily life and calling—some which might appear difficult and challenging, but which often bring the most precious and delightful spiritual returns. One of the most truly refreshing studies on prayer to appear in years.
GARY P. BERGEL
President, Intercessors for America/Youth Interceding for America
Bill Thrasher’s new book is a solid read for anyone who struggles to succeed in making prayer a serious and strategic part of daily life. I think you’ll find A Journey to Victorious Praying a welcome companion on your path to prevailing prayer.
PHIL MIGLIORATTI
National Pastors Prayer Network
This is a valuable guidebook for the serious believer who wants to move ahead in the exciting miracle of prayer. I trust it will be read widely and be used of God to bring to our churches the prayer revival we desperately need.
WARREN W. WIERSBE
Author and conference speaker
Today more than ever we need to sharpen our prayer life, not to make it more professional, but to make it more effective. In this book, Bill Thrasher helps us understand how. Where we expect to read about courage and strength in prayer, he draws aside the curtain on our weakness and unworthiness. Where we expect to quicken our prayer pace, he counsels waiting. And where we expect to intensify our petition, he speaks of praise. You’ll be glad you spent time with this excellent book.
V. GILBERT BEERS
President, Scripture Press Ministries
My good friend Bill Thrasher in his book A Journey to Victorious Praying takes us by the hand on this journey to effectual fervent prayer with well researched biblical instruction, personal affirmations, and powerful demonstrations of the disciplines and delights of prayer. It is my personal heart-cry that God will mightily use this handbook to develop the prayer life of every one of us. Nothing is more needed in the church today.
STEPHEN F. OLFORD
Founder of the Stephen Olford Center for Biblical Preaching
© 2003 by BILL THRASHER
Preface © 2017 by BILL THRASHER
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. (www.Lockman.org)
A Study Guide is available for A Journey to Victorious Praying
978-0-8024-1811-1
Edited by Cheryl Dunlop
Interior and Cover design: Erik M. Peterson
Cover image of person praying copyright © 2017 by PeteWill/Getty Images (182442453). All rights reserved.
Cover image of forest courtesy of Frances Gunn/Unsplash (57423).
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Thrasher, Bill, 1952-
A journey to victorious praying: finding discipline and delight in your prayer life/Bill Thrasher.
p.cm.
ISBN 978-0-8024-3698-6
1. Prayer—Christianity. I. Title.
BV210.3.T47 2003
248.3´2—dc21
ISBN: 978-0-8024-1563-9
We hope you enjoy this book from Moody Publishers. Our goal is to provide high-quality, thought-provoking books and products that connect truth to your real needs and challenges. For more information on other books and products written and produced from a biblical perspective, go to www.moodypublishers.com or write to:
Moody Publishers
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Printed in the United States of America
Dedicated to the Lord, who delights in the prayers of His people (Proverbs 15:8) and to my wife, Penny, who lovingly prays with me each day; to my three sons, and each member of their growing families, who we view as a gift of God’s grace to us; to my parents, Reynolds and Caroline Thrasher, and my parents-in-law, Bill and Marybelle Bauer, who have lovingly interceded for my life in ministry.
About the Author
BILL THRASHER is a professor of Bible and Theology at the Moody Theological Seminary of the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. He is a frequent speaker for churches and retreats across the country, and the author of Living the Life God Has Planned: A Guide to Know God’s Will, Believing God for His Best: How to Marry Contentment and Singleness, Putting God Back into the Holidays: How to Encourage your Family and Friends to Believe God, and God as He Wants You to Know Him published by Moody Publishers. Bill and his wife, Penny, have three sons.
Contents
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Preface
Introduction
SECTION ONE
The Help of Your Weakness
1. Transforming Fear into Faith
2. Praying with Confidence When You Feel Unworthy
3. Sharing Your True Desires with God
4. Turning Your Temptations into Victorious Prayer
SECTION TWO
The Help of the Holy Spirit
5. Experiencing the Spirit’s Motivation in Prayer
6. Receiving Strength to Believe God
7. Being Guided in Prayer
8. Receiving Help When You Don’t Know How to Pray
SECTION THREE
The Help of Companionship
9. Receiving Help in Prayer from Others
10. Achieving Victories You Never Thought Were Possible
SECTION FOUR
The Help of Scripture
11. Learning George Mueller’s Secret
12. Experiencing True Prosperity
13. Learning How to Pray for Christlike Growth
14. Learning to Pray Scripture
SECTION FIVE
The Discipline of Prayer
15. Realizing the Struggle of Prayer
16. Understanding Jesus’ Patterns of Prayer
SECTION SIX
The Importance of Prayer
17. Gaining Strength Through Prayer
18. Realizing God’s Desire to Bless You
19. Understanding How God Works
SECTION SEVEN
The Help of Fasting
20. Learning When to Fast
21. Experiencing the Benefits of Fasting
22. Getting Started
SECTION EIGHT
The Waiting of Prayer
23. Experiencing the Joy of Waiting
24. Discovering God’s Purposes While You Wait
25. Transforming Your Anxiety into Peace
26. Knowing When to Keep Praying
SECTION NINE
The Power of Praise
27. Experiencing the Goodness of Praise
28. Understanding the Meaning of True Worship
29. Abiding in the Lord
30. Cultivating a Lifestyle of Worship
Personal Journal
Appendix 1: Selected Prayers from Scripture
Appendix 2: Ideas to Stimulate Prayer
Notes
More Resources on Prayer
Friend,
Thank you for choosing to read this Moody Publishers title. It is our hope and prayer that this book will help you to know Jesus Christ more personally and love Him more deeply.
The proceeds from your purchase help pay the tuition of students attending Moody Bible Institute. These students come from around the globe and graduate better equipped to impact our world for Christ.
Other Moody Ministries that may be of interest to you include Moody Radio and Moody Distance Learning. To learn more visit www.moodyradio.org and www.moody.edu/distance-learning.
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The Moody Publishers Team
Foreword
SELDOM HAVE I MET a Christian who is satisfied with his or her prayer life. After years of walking with God, many of us still struggle with failures in the midst of our successes. We all have read stories of the great men and women of the Christian faith who have diligently sought God and achieved great results. We wish that we could be like them, but alas, we fall short.
This book is worthy of your consideration because of its simplicity and practicality. Here we learn not so much the theology of prayer as the practice of it; we are given examples of how to pray and what to do when our prayer life becomes routine, unsatisfying, and sometimes non-existent. The author gives us help despite our broken resolutions and our failed attempts to join the ranks of the mighty. There is help here for the struggling believer as well as the one who has been on the prayer journey for many years.
Best of all, this book is written by someone who practices what he preaches. Bill Thrasher believes in prayer and knows both the joys of receiving an answer and the disappointment that comes when God says no. Read these pages and you will sense his heart; he will take you by the hand and say, Come with me and I will show you what I have learned in my own walk with the Savior.
In the end, it is not knowing about prayer that will change our lives, but rather actually doing it. My suggestion is that you read a chapter of this book every day and then apply what you have read. Your faith will grow and your confidence in God will encourage you to pray even more. If it is true that more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of,
this book will help you dream new dreams and see God at work.
Enjoy these pages. Read them with one question in mind: How can I progress to the next level of intimate prayer with my heavenly Father?
This book will help you in your journey.
And now, before you read, pray and ask God to help you to grasp and apply the lessons that are even now in your hands. Your life will be different because you took the time to receive help from a fellow traveler.
ERWIN LUTZER
Pastor Emeritus, The Moody Church
Chicago
Acknowledgments
IT IS A PLEASURE TO acknowledge my debt to the Lord Jesus Christ who has graciously met me in my weakness and freed me from many misconceptions about prayer in order to teach me His refreshing truths. I am indebted to the loving and intimate prayer of my dear wife, Penny, and the companionship of my three sons, Will, Michael, and David.
I am grateful to Greg Thornton for his support in this project and for the capable team of Moody Publishers that made the idea of this book a reality. I would also acknowledge the capable editorial assistance of Cheryl Dunlop and Kevin Emmert, and thank Ee-Boon Tan who so carefully typed the manuscript.
I am also grateful to the wonderful colleagues and so many precious students at the Moody Bible Institute who have enriched my life. Special thanks to former and present graduate school deans—B. Wayne Hopkins, Joe Henriques, and John Jelinek—who have allowed me to teach a course on prayer at the Moody Theological Seminary for many years.
Preface
IT HAS BEEN MY privilege to pray for the Lord’s blessings on the readers of this book each day. I have been so grateful to the many who have taken time out of their busy lives to communicate how they have been touched by our compassionate God as they have read this book.
Like never before, I am convinced that nothing is more important than crying out to God, asking for Him to manifest His presence in our lives, families, churches, communities, governments, businesses, and schools. Please join me as God leads you to pray.
Please do not look at your prayer life as a mere human activity. In the following pages, you will read how God can use you in your greatest weakness and work through you in the most vulnerable areas and times of your life. You will read how God transformed and resurrected my own dead
prayer life. Even though I was frequently involved in the activity of prayer, I desperately needed our Lord to teach me to pray.
I pray that you will experience a revival in your own prayer life that will result in true life-changing prayer. May reading this book lead to God-ordained fruitfulness in and through your life that will far surpass your greatest imaginations (see Eph. 3:20–21).
Please know that I will continue to pray for you as your read this book, and I also humbly ask for your prayers over my life and family as God would lead you. I want you to join with me in praying for God’s blessing. I have outlined below a possible way to do it as God would lead you.
• Bless us spiritually: May we know and love You as our heavenly Father in such a way that we develop sensitivity to Your Holy Spirit and that we hunger and thirst to conform to Your Word. Create in us a purifying fear of You that gives us a holy joy in abiding in You.
• Bless us emotionally: May we know You as the one who can heal our hurts and remove any ground for bondage (such as rejection, failure, resentment, jealousy, and shame). Give us the grace to accept Your forgiveness and to be a channel of it to others. Give us an assurance that You will never fail us and a strong hope to believe You for Your promises in a way that answers all our fears.
• Bless us mentally: Guide us to know Your truth and to receive Your wisdom. Deliver us from deception and give us godly discernment.
• Bless us personally: Give us a sense of our value in Christ and favor with You and men. Place in us a vision of Your calling.
• Bless our relationships with our authorities: Teach us godly submission to authorities and direct us to right loyalties, godly soul ties, and wise friendships that encourage us in our walk with You.
• Bless us financially: Give us wisdom to acknowledge You as our Source and Provider. Grant us Your provision and the grace to be good stewards of it.
With love, your brother in Christ
BILL THRASHER
Introduction
DURING A VACATION our family gathered together one morning to have a time of worship together. After reading some Scripture, I instructed the family, Let’s all go down to the Lake Michigan beach and take a thirty-minute walk. During this time I would like each of you to observe God’s creation and come back with one thing for which you would like to bless and praise God. Also ask God to give you an encouraging word for each member of the family that you can share with them after the walk. Now I would like there to be no talking during this thirty-minute walk. It will be a time of silence.
Everyone seemed to clearly understand and agree to my instructions.
I was the last one to walk down from the cottage to the beach, arriving about five minutes after everyone else. What I saw disturbed me. Everyone was talking loudly and feverishly scurrying about on the beach. As I was about to speak I learned that my son’s retainer had fallen out of his mouth into Lake Michigan. When I thought about having to spend five hundred dollars on a replacement, I began to encourage the talking and the frantic activity.
Every inch of the location where the retainer dropped was diligently searched to no avail. I called the family together on the beach for a time of prayer. We cried out to the Lord to do the impossible, Lord, help us locate this retainer that is somewhere in Lake Michigan.
My father-in-law offered up his prayer affirming that we could in no way find this needle in a haystack
on this extremely windy day without the intervention of the Lord.
Every member of the family—seven of us—began to look along the beach to see where the retainer had possibly drifted. We walked up and down the beach and diligently searched for about a half-mile radius all to no avail. Noticing that the wind was clearly blowing one way, we decided to take a two-mile walk to continue looking. At that moment one of my sons shouted We found it!
My mother-in-law had located it on the beach. We all gathered together and thanked