Episode 1: Strengthening our Prayer Muscles

Hey, Hey friend, welcome to the first official episode of my podcast, Bless It or Block It. My name is Cami and to say, I am pumped is a complete understatement. I have been waiting for this day for so long. I’ve been wanting to start a podcast to talk more about Jesus, because let’s be real. I love Jesus and He is absolutely worth talking about every second of every day. Am I right? I’m so excited that you are here and on this journey with me. I’m not going to lie; It’s kind of intimidating putting my voice out there and jumping into this part of the internet… talk about imposter syndrome. I can’t be the only one who has felt that it is scary to dive into an unknown territory.

00:01:01 However, in 2 Timothy 1:7, Paul tells us, For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power love, and self-discipline.” Therefore we are going to jump right in, feet first, into this first podcast episode of Bless It or Block It and I pray God will encourage and uplift our spirits as we spend time together today.

00:01:44 In today’s episode, we are going to be talking about the power of Prayer and also how we can exercise our Prayer Muscles and how to strengthen them. If you listen to my intro, you heard me say that prayer is one of the most valuable tools we Christians have. Amen. Prayer. It has such a wonderful gift. The fact that we can constantly communicate with God is one of the greatest gifts from Him, in my opinion, for the past year or so. I have used the gift of prayer in a more impactful way for me to communicate with God and to feel his presence more in my life.

00:02:25 Little did I know he would do way more than that. Once I started spending more alone time with the Lord each day through prayer and scripture, I began to learn how to have more efficient Prayer and even learn extraordinary Prayer. If I’m being totally honest, I’ve struggled having the most impactful time with God and with Prayer, lets ask this question. Why is prayer important? If God knows what I need? Why should I pray? We’ve already stated that prayer is, but let’s think about it this way. When we read the Bible, God is speaking to us.

00:03:06 When we pray, we are speaking to him. Isn’t that something we long to hear. God’s voice the God of the universe. The God of all creation, invites us into his presence to speak to him and share all that is on our hearts, man. Our God is so, so good. How would y’all? Here’s the thing? Prayer. They should never be something to be dismissed or to disregard. We can easily think if God knows everything, including my every thought and knows what I need then why do I need to pray?

00:03:47 Why should I tell him about what’s on my heart? If I trust that he is good and cares for me, these are actually very reasonable questions. So why do we pray? We pray for two reasons, both biblically and personally in the Bible. The first mention of Prayer is in Genesis four, verse 26. Seth also had a son and he named him in a week. Hm. So at that time, people began to call on the name of the Lord to give some context. Seth was a son of Adam and Eve born after Cain had killed Abel.

00:04:29 Eve had cried out that Seth was born to replace Abel. Since Cain had killed him. From that moment, man started crying out to the Lord and found it necessary to seek God. Sin had entered the world and they knew they couldn’t live by their own accord. They needed to call upon his name to guide them on their path as they did in Genesis. We also must call upon the Lord to discern his will for our lives. Prayer is an absolute necessary part of communication with God. It’s an act of faith.

00:05:10 Not only that we are invited to pray. Jeremiah 29 12 says, then you will call on me and come and pray to me. And I will listen to you. We are also commanded to pray Matthew five 44 reads, but I tell you love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. Mark 1333, be on guard, be alert. You do not know when that time will come Luke 18 one. Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up Ephesians six, 18 through 20 and pray in the spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests with this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all of the Lord’s people.

00:06:09 Pray also for me that whenever I speak words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly as I should. Romans 12, 12, be joyful and hope patient in affliction, faithful In Prayer because we are invited and commanded to pray. We respond to God’s invitation. He desires to have a Prayer relationship with us, responding to God and prayer is being obedient and showing him honor showing God the one who created the entire universe and loves us so much.

00:07:00 honor the one who are gave his son to die. Our painful death. We also know that Jesus prayed. Let’s look at scripture, reflecting Jesus praying Matthew 1423, okay. After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray later that night he was there alone Mark one 35 very early in the morning while it was still dark. Jesus got up left the house and went off to a solitary place where he prayed Luke five 16, but Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed Luke six, 12, one of those days, Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray and spent the night praying to God.

00:07:55 Whoa, that’s some good stuff right there. Y’all let’s do a quick, quick recap. Why do we pray? We are, are invited and commanded by God. And also we see that Jesus was fervent in prayer. First, John five 14 through 15 says, this is the confidence we have in approaching God that if we ask anything, according to his, will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have what we asked of him. John, the evangelist encourages us that our prayers are heard and that the Lord is faithful to hear them. Amen. So how do we Exercising Our Prayer Muscles and get comfortable communicating with God first things first, we have to kind of just give it a try and start as uncomfortable as that might be growing up.

00:08:48 When I asked my dad how to pray, I specifically remember him saying to repeat the pastor’s prayer in my head, after him. So I developed this routine and continually repeated the pastor’s prayer in my head, along with any other members of the church. Basically when anyone said a prayer, I would repeat it in my head word for word. I never knew how to really pray on my own until later, even then, I didn’t know the exact words to say, to convey my feelings or emotions. I said the same thing every night before I went to bed. I am not even kidding you guys. This was the Prayer. It will forever be ingrained into my brain.

00:09:28 Dear God, thank you. He for everyone and everything, I want to pray for what’s happening. What’s going to happen. And what’s good for you already happened. Amen. This was my bedtime Prayer for years. I figured that covered everything. And I didn’t have to go into much detail because God knew that I was talking to them and I knew that he was always listening to the point is I have to start and develop a ground to stand on for me to get my Prayer muscles moving. And that’s what we must do. We have to just get started so that we can find ground to stand on.

00:10:08 And then we begin strengthening. Second. We need to get more specific with our prayers. Okay? Although my Prayer that covered everything is great. It did not touch on anything specific for God to work on within me or my life. Well, let me be clear on this. I do not want to discourage you if your current prayer or prayers are similar. I don’t want to discourage you. If you are saying this same exact prayer every night or every day, what is so important is opening up that communication line with God so that we can walk closer to him and form a more intimate relationship with him. So we need to be praying, whatever that looks like. Like I know a few people who are quote crows at praying and by the way, there are no pros at praying.

00:10:57 If you happened to hear a prayer that is biblically sound with a mature diction and just one of those prayers that touches your soul, that person has been exercising and strengthening their Prayer and Muscles. And now God is using them to speak to you. How cool is that? Yeah. Can we start getting specific at our prayers? Real change can start to happen. Is there a quality or addiction that you’re trying to do that it could be a social media addiction. Yeah. Where you are choosing to be on social media more than you are spending alone time with God or in his word, or maybe speaking harshly when someone doesn’t agree with something you say, but if we look at scripture in Exodus 20 verse three, one of God’s 10 commandments, he says, you shall have no other gods before me idols, gods.

00:12:02 None are to be exalted higher than Our almighty God. I, no. This is difficult to hear. And I am just as guilty. Social media can truly be in addiction. I would actually love to touch on this on another episode. But for this episode sake, an earnest Prayer geared toward breaking social media addiction would be asking God to intervene and seek him first before social media. Now hear me on this. I’m not saying that you listener have a social media addiction. I’m merely using this as an example of getting specific with Prayer.

00:12:42 Same thing with speaking harshly or with anger to someone, where is that really coming from asking God to dissect our hearts and bring the issues to the front while help us in prayer for whatever the subject may be that we are trying to change. That was the second action. Third is this. I know this may seem silly and you may think really Cammy set a timer on whatever device you have for your prayer time. I’m dead serious. We have very busy days and we get caught up in whatever it may be. We just get caught up in our lives by setting timers on your phone or watch or whatever you use to be intentional with Prayer.

00:13:31 You are disciplining yourself and just do what works best for you. If you don’t know where to start, maybe add Prayer to your morning, alarm clog, you know, just type it in or set a timer for midday type in Prayer, set a timer for lunch, whatever it is that works best for you or before bed. And also offer to say the prayer out loud before a meal offer to pray over a family member or friend, start saying your prayers out loud and in front of others. My dude, this is not for performance. Rather experience and strengthening these muscles by doing this were saying to God, Hey, I am serious about my prayer life.

00:14:21 I love these verses in Romans eight in the same way, the spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for them, but the spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans and he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the spirit because the spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God. Those were verses 26 through 27, Romans eight. So when we are truly stumped and don’t know what to pray for in that moment, the Holy spirit reads our heart and goes to God on our behalf. Wow. Thank you Lord. And thank you. Holy spirit.

00:15:02 What gifts we are so blessed. Okay. Let’s recap. The three actions we can take to strengthen our Prayer Muscles. The first one is to start, no matter what your Prayer, it looks like opened up the dialog with our loving Lord. He is waiting for you to communicate with him. That Bible verse reference is first John five 14 through 15 second. Get specific with your prayers. Be intentional with what you are truly seeking change in are examples where a social media addiction or possibly speaking harshly in response to something and third at practice out loud offer to say the prayer at dinner, praying over another, saying your prayers out loud and setting a timer on your phone so that you can get disciplined with spending time with God.

00:15:58 He is the only one who can bring upon that sort of peace. When we pray, God is always at work and he works on his own time, not ours, which can be a difficult concept to grasp considering our desire for instant gratification these days. Am I right? However, the faith of knowing he’s always at work is so incredibly soothing and something that we must rely on that is faith. His timing is also impeccable. We may not know why he lines up in our lives the way he does, but he’s doing it in our favor.

00:16:41 The war is not against flesh and blood, but of Satan. And he will strike when we least expect it during a fast that I’ve done. I’ve experienced this firsthand. Actually Satan has made me feel insecure, tried to make me feel insecure, weak, second, guessing myself and convincing myself. I’m not good enough. And that I should just give up. No, we shouldn’t give up in Matthew six, verse 25. Jesus teaches us not to worry about temporary things in terms of how they estimate our value.

00:17:26 Don’t worry about what you wear, what you eat, where you live, but seek the eternal depth of life and walk a path that is more about who you are than what you have seek. First, the kingdom of God, wow. God’s kingdom can be reached in a single moment. Y’all, it’s something that we search out for the entirety of our lives. Perhaps even eternity, we must stand firm and know that he is who he says he is. Amen. We need to trust in his unfailing love amen ask.

00:18:10 And it will be given to you seek and you will find knock and it will be open to you. That’s Matthew seven, verse seven. I believe through one-on-one prayer and quality time with the Lord. We can begin to feel his hands being placed upon our hearts and start working in our lives. I pray today that God will enter our hearts and bring to the forefront, the pieces that are dark and the pieces that need his light, that he will come in and he will capture those places and he will fill them with his hope in his peace.

00:19:01That surpasses all understanding. All right, y’all first episode is in the books. I cannot believe it. I hope you were encouraged by this. I know I’m feeling so incredibly blessed. Talk about our amazing Lord and savior with you. If you liked this episode, make sure to screenshot it and tag me on the gram at Bless It or Block It podcasts or a Southern frame of mine. And I want to end with this first Ephesians two eight says for it is by grace. You have been saved through faith and this is not from yourselves. It is the gift of God.