A prayer tip

You will want to study the prayers of the Bible. 

In 2 Chronicles 20, three nations joined together to come against the nation of Judah. 

Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, led the people in prayer to ask for God’s help.

Notice how he addresses God (v.6):

O LORD, the God of our fathers, are You not God in the heavens? And are You not ruler over all the kingdoms of the nations?

Rather than print out the whole prayer, let me just give you a short paraphrase of it:

O Lord, you’re God, right?  You’re the one in charge around here, aren’t You?

Didn’t you give us this land a long time ago and then helped us to drive out the people who were living here before?  Wasn’t that your plan?

Now some people who you didn’t allow our ancestors to take out back then are now trying to take this land away from us.

We can’t defend ourselves against them.  We’re hoping that you would.  We don’t know what else to do.

The Bible doesn’t come out and say it like this, but in many of the prayers you will read in the Bible, it’s like the person is making the case before God why God should answer their prayer. 

If the answer requires God’s mercy, they will repeat back to God maybe the times He said He was merciful.

Sometimes they will go back to a promise that God had made.  Or appeal to God’s justice.

 

I call it praying like a lawyer, where you make your case before God why He should answer your prayer. 

I’m not saying that the Bible says you have to pray like this.  I’m just saying that many of the great prayers in the Bible do this.  And I think we should too.