Praying spontaneously

There are written prayers which are used mainly in formal worship services at church and home. These are good in themselves if you do them in faith and without any legalism. Traditionally written prayers were used when there has been increase in heresies that come against the church and a carefully discerned morally right prayer is needed to be followed by all. There are fixed formulas which still persist even in free praying churches especially when it comes to marriages and funerals which are usually not changed due to the need to keep uniformity. Then we have spontaneous prayers.

Debates have persisted for centuries about the benefits of written formal prayers versus spontaneous prayers. I’m however for both of these because at the end of the day as long as we pray them to the same Lord Jesus Christ without any guile or pretense its valid.

Praying spontaneously is an essential prayer technique. Sometimes you may have memorized a lot of prayers, however you realized that none of them cover the new issue that you are praying about. You might re-check all prayers that you know and find that they don’t even mention the specific thing you want to pray about. This is where praying spontaneously helps.

Sometimes you want to express your emotions to the Lord Jesus about a situation. However, you feel that reading a prayer off a book is not letting you express your thoughts.  It could also be that you want to express your emotions of happiness or grief but then your usual book of prayers (if you actually have one) is not with you. Don’t worry, simply speak naturally in prayer.

You may have never prayed like this before but it doesn’t matter. You need to simply have faith in Christ. Just before you start a spontaneous prayer, say something like this, ‘Lord Jesus I come before at this special time of need. I don’t know what words to use but I ask that you lead me into all righteousness and the will of God in whatever I say through the Holy Spirit’. You need to ask Jesus to put the right words in your mouth by the Holy Spirit who is ever near to all those who call on the name of Jesus.

A few things to make a note of and put into practice when praying spontaneously:

1. Keep God’s will first. You may say, God your will be done.
2. No need to invent long prayers. If you are in trouble even a simple ‘Help me Jesus right now’ will do.
3. Keep the prayer consistent with what the Bible teaches.
4. Say your prayers trusting in the mercy of God.
5. Exalt God and not people in prayer.
6. Be honest about asking for what you need. If you need healing say you want healing, don’t just say you want to feel better.
7. Ask everything in the name of Jesus.
8. Be thankful every time.
9. Express your emotions but ask for self-control too.
10. Do not fear, never ever.