Simple Prayer: The Guide for Ordinary People Seeking the Extraordinary
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About this ebook
Do you desire a more fulfilling prayer life?
Rachel has discovered a simpler way to pray - a way that turns ordinary moments into extraordinary divine encounters.
Having an amazing prayer life is not for the famous Christians. It's for all of us, ordinary people who are seeking the extraordinary.
You will discover:
-How simple and effective prayer can be.
-How you can see God turn up in your normal everyday life.
-How you can pray when life is tough so that you keep going and not give up.
-The steps to create your personal prayer growth plan.
-How prayer journaling can transform your relationship with God.
-How to get from fig tree praying to mountain moving praying!
-The secret of keeping prayer simple - 3 ways of talking with God that will ignite a spark in your Christian walk
God is into taking what is ordinary in life and sprinkling it with extraordinary divine moments through prayer.
Rachel Larkin
Rachel Larkin lives in New Zealand with her husband and their three young adult sons. She writes about growing in faith and developing your potential on her website. Click the link below. She is also a practising Chartered Accountant, home schooler for fourteen years and craves chocolate constantly.
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Simple Prayer - Rachel Larkin
Introduction
Prayer is good for us. We all know this, don’t we? But when it comes down to the moments in our day, do we pray? It seems that over time we have put prayer up on a pedestal and have made it more difficult than it really is. Praying to God is simple. Maintaining a prayer lifestyle is the test. How can you have a fresh and growing relationship with God amid your normal everyday life?
This book will take you on a journey to discover that prayer is not only good, but essential. You will uncover how prayer is foundational to your personal growth and how to develop your own prayer growth plan. We will explore three ways of talking with God, or what I like to call, prayer languages. These three prayer languages will unlock the secret of having a fresh and growing relationship with God whether your relationship is flourishing or failing. I have tested this approach of talking and listening to God in my own life, experiencing a deeper, richer intimacy with God. You can discover this rich relationship starting today.
I am not there yet
Here is my confession: I am not there yet. I don’t know all the answers about prayer. I am always learning and growing. This is a good place to be, a lifelong learner. We are all on this journey of growing in our faith, and it is good to share with each other how God is working in our lives. The older I get the more I learn about praying, talking and listening to God.
I am just an ordinary believer who has a desire to see God turn up in the midst of her real daily life. This desire to see God turn up is what has led me down a path of discovery in prayer. I have read many books on prayer and I have found it easy to become discouraged. It seems that only famous preachers or speakers and former missionaries have written books on prayer. How could I, an ordinary believer relate to their experiences? They don’t have a normal nine to five job like me. They don’t all have the struggles of being a mum to a family of sons.
Many of the books I have read on prayer, focus on warfare and battles. Yes, we are in a battle against spiritual forces, but a solider isn’t in battle constantly. There are times in our lives that will require prayer warfare. Thankfully they are for a certain time period. Otherwise, we would be constantly on a stressful battle front alert. I wanted to learn, from everyday people, how they talk and listen to God. How do they practically grow in prayer in their normal Christian lives?
What you will find in this book
In Part One, you will discover how amazing prayer is. How effective it can be. How God desires it. How you can see God turn up in your normal everyday life. Having an amazing prayer life is not for the famous Christians; it’s for you and me, ordinary people who are seeking the extraordinary. You will be challenged to review your prayer life asking, what role does prayer have in your life? We will explore how you can move from wishy-washy praying to something more intentional and full of power. I will share how you can pray when life is tough so that you keep going and not give up.
In Part Two, you will discover the steps to create your personal prayer growth plan. We will look at how prayer journaling can transform your relationship with God and you will learn how to get from fig tree praying to mountain moving praying!
Part Three is the secret sauce of prayer. You will discover three prayer languages or ways of talking with God. Learning how to pray using these three languages will bring your prayer life alive. You will have a fresh and growing relationship with God in the midst of your normal everyday living.
Who is this book for?
This book is for the ordinary Christian believer who desires to see God turn up in their everyday life. It’s for those who are seeking the extraordinary and long to see God’s fingerprints in your circumstances. Christians who have known the Lord for some time will discover a breath of fresh air in their prayer life, and new Christians who are wanting to discover how to pray will find this guide helpful.
Free Downloads
To help you on your prayer journey, I would like to offer your three free downloads. These are found on my website at rachellarkin.com/simpleprayerbonus
A Personal Prayer Growth Plan worksheet
The 3 Prayer Languages Approach - a handy one page reminder of the three prayer languages that you can print out and place in your journal or on the fridge.
My 12 Most Useful Books on Prayer
List
A short ebook The Untold Story: 7 Steps to Experiencing God in the Midst of your Real Messy Life
Part One: HOW TO DEEPEN YOUR PRAYER LIFE
Seeking the Extraordinary
I want to see God turn up in my day. That is the main reason I pray. I don’t want to be a Sunday Christian. I don’t want to go through life never seeing God’s fingerprints, missing how He is working out everything for good. I want to be amazed every day by God’s provision, love, humor and wisdom. I want a real relationship with God through His indwelling Spirit. I want to know God for real. I don’t want to live a fake Christian life.
I have come across many Christians who believe that God doesn’t speak to them, that God only speaks to special people. This is so wrong. It’s a lie from Satan himself. Satan is not just a liar, but the father of lies. Don’t believe the lie that God doesn’t speak to you for one moment. God desires to have conversations with all His children. He has no favorites. He works with His children in different ways because we are all different, right? His promises are for everyone who believes.
Every day is special and can be filled with God moments. Do you believe that? The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease. Great is His faithfulness; His mercies are new each morning.
(Lamentations 3:22-23 NLT). God wants to fill our days with Himself.
How to Look for God
We see what we focus on. There is an advert by the car manufacturer Skoda going around on YouTube now which illustrates this point. It shows a street with a block of colorful shop fronts and different vehicles out front. In the middle of the street is their latest blue Skoda Fabia. The commentator describes how amazing this car is, that people are so focused on it that they stop in their tracks. He then asks the question: Did you see anything change?
Of course we say no. But as they replay the scene again we noticed that yes, the buildings have changed color, the van had turned into a taxi. While we were focused on the blue Skoda the whole environment was transforming and we didn’t even realize it. Our brains were so focused on the main object, the blue Skoda, that everything else became secondary.
We noticed this phenomenon when we were looking to buy a bigger vehicle to accommodate our growing sons. We started seeing minivans everywhere. Nothing had changed. There were still the same number of minivans as before but the difference was that now my mind was focused on this particular vehicle. It is the same in our lives. You won’t see God turn up in your day if you are not focused on Him.
In chapter 6 of the book of Isaiah, the prophet describes his encounter with God sitting on His throne. An awesome encounter giving a glimpse of heaven we would all love to have. Isaiah noted what the Seraphim were calling out, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord Almighty. The whole earth is full of His glory.
(Isaiah 6:3). The whole earth, which is where we live out our lives, is full of God’s glory. We don’t have to go far to see God’s glory; the earth is full of it. I took this to heart in October 2016 and for that whole month, 31 days, I intentionally searched for God every day and wrote about it on my website. I am now beginning to recognize the eternal, spiritual world behind the temporary and physical.
Where you look is where you go. Where do I want to go in my life? I want to see God turn up in my messy real life. Every. Day. I believe that He is always there. Showing up. But sometimes we don’t tune in. Isaiah 6:3 tells us that God is active on the Earth. He is always at work. Working in people. Working in situations. So if the earth, where we live, is filled with His glory then shouldn’t we see it every day? Shouldn’t I be able to see God’s fingerprints