Over the previous summer, I had worked at Many Glacier Hotel in Montana, which afforded me some opportunities to pray while hiking alone on some shorter hikes of say about 5 miles. Some of the hikes were particulary awesome. Usually the longer hikes were with people. Generally I preferred hiking with people, especially on the longer hikes rather than alone where the idea of a bear just jumping out seemed more prominent or pronounced in my thinking. With people it does seem to deflect that thought process as the company is a distraction to the whole idea of the dangers of the wilds. I had been looking for a prayer tip or two, and I talked with a couple of people on a Red Bus tour to the Canadian section of the park, both of whom were ministers. I asked for some thoughts on prayer within the conversation, and she mentioned that thanksgiving is one of the keys to prayer, and to get into thanksgiving at some point while prayer, whether at the beginning, middle or end of the prayer. And then she said try thanking God for one thing a day, and see how I felt in a month. That evening, I went hiking, being just about the last hiker of the day on the famous Iceberg lake trail, big bear territory in the evening hours. I thought, I’ll thank God that I still have a decent hair of head, that I’m not bald as I was walking alone as the last person back on this exciting trail but with the possibilities of bears as my company. That evening, I had a conversation with Chris back at the Many Glacier Hotel lobby by the fireplace, Chris is a former MIT grad who was working at the front desk during the summer and then going on to be a minister rather than an engineer. He said, what I am specifically thanking God for, should only be secondary to what are the qualities I am thanking God for in his actions towards me. And ironically he used the example of hair, saying that someone might thank God for their hair and subsequently go bald, that this is a changeable thing and that the better thing to do is thank God for being generous to me now, the trait he is showing, in giving me a decent head of hair, and only secondarily thank God for the actual quality of having this head of hair. I thought, it is a coincidence, but I was just thanking God for my hair. Right away, I got the point, how this tip gives someone a more insightful way towards thanking God and developing a more nuanced and greater view as to what God is actually doing. If God is being generous, graceful, showing his design, caring, and being helpful, kind, specific, and so on, about this, then I can look for those same traits down the road from God in other situations that might arise. I can also deepen the relationship to include an expression of thanksgiving that does incorporate what I believe are demonstrated traits of God in giving me things. Ironically, I just looked at a prayer essay that I had written, where I said that we can thank God also for his qualities and characteristics that he shows us, but it took a conversation and or two to actually get the idea to click in a practical way for myself. An example of this might be in receiving a gift from a friend. If I a friend gives you a car for Christmas, you might say or write a note to the effect as, thank for giving me the car for my birthday or thanks for giving me a car. But you could also say, thanks for thinking of me in giving me this car, thanks for knowing I needed a car, or thanks for being generous towards me in giving me this car. It might be that I could say thanks for giving me this car as a confirmation that you want me to drive to the beach and meet you there for a surf in the sun. You are relating not only to your friend giving you this car, but also why the friend gave you this car, what your friend thinks you like, and what this tells you about how someone else sees you. When someone gives us something, we can also speculate as to the why of this, rather than just saying thanks. I want to thank someone for giving me something, but I don’t know 100 percent the why of this. The relationship with God in prayer is hopefully ongoing. If I thank God now, hopefully I am thanking him at some point later. It implies a seeing relationship. If I thank God that I now have a new boat, it implies that I believe that God sees that I do have a new boat. Psalms 25 verse 10 says " All the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness, for those who keep his convenants and decrees" There could be any number of paths for me as an individual or for any number of individuals. What to look for as a sign that you are on a God centered path is the presence of His steadfast love guiding you along on this path. If for example I do call upon and thank God for his help or generosity, more than likely I will be relying upon that help and generosity as being continuous, and the Psalms refers to God's constant love. In my prayer then, I can thank God not only for his help now and in the past, but his continous help as it will extend into the future. I can specifically pray, thank you God for your continuous help and generosity towards me in this area. I might want more communication with God, instead of just asking for communication, I can ask and thank God for His beautiful communication, adding on one of the qualities I have already seen in His past communications to me therefore I can also hope and ask for not only communication but beautiful communication now. It is interesting to observe peoples behavior in relation to tithing. If I throw a larger bill in the collection, I will get that back a hundredfold. But this thought process implies that God is looking close enough to see that this is a crisp 100 dollar bill, so he’ll give the greater reward than if I had thrown in a dollar. If they really do believe in a watchful God, then they also need to watch for the way this will be answered. I might say to God, give me millions so I can help others. Secretly I want to keep a few million in my pocket for myself. But you don't have to have millions in your pocket to go ahead and help someone else by praying for them. At the same time, I could temper my own prayer requests by adding an alturistic portion to the request. This way you could maybe see how something you are asking for that is for yourself might actually involve helping others. For instance, I could ask God for great insights on this matter so I can not only help myself but share these insights with others. You could ask for the same. You may not get it but for example you could ask for the same wisdom Solomon got for a given situation your in, you could ask for the same help Daniel got in the lions den. You could ask for the same quality of communication that one of your famous Biblical characters got from God. Don't be afraid to ask for more. Not necessarily in the sense of more in quantity as in I want 5 cars, two boats and 7 estates. It could be something more specific, specialized and pertinent. Something much more imaginative, much more visionary, much more remote then what you think and feel could ever be possible. Something more relaxing, more peaceful, more pleasant and breezy. So for example, I could ask for more insight, rather than more money. I had seen the movie Gladiator 3 times in the theatres, enjoying the depictions of how the buildings in ancient Rome might have been, and each time I brought my focus to a different part of the big screen. In the movie there was a character named Maximus. One thing we can ask for from God is the maximum on a situation. I can ask for the maximun job, the maximum help, the maximum healing and so on. One of the beautiful images from the New Testament is from the story of the Prodigal son. As he was coming back, it says," He saw him in the distance." This imagery, of God seeing an individual coming back in the distance, is indicative of the personal call of the individual to come back via the means we have to come back, whether it be coming back to God by going to a church service within the community of faith or turning to God in prayer, repentance and thanksgiving. It wasn't a large group of people he saw coming in the distance such as the crowds that did follow Jesus in his days, it was one individual coming back representing that one individual whoever it might be. You could imagine different settings, maybe by some pristine lake in the mountains, maybe by some favorite beachfront, or coming out of the morning mist, where God is seeing you coming back in the distance. Even if you seem lost in the distance, if you are trying to come back, God is seeing you in that distance. The prodigal son might have still felt lost as he was approaching in the distance, but the Father in the parable, representing God, still was able to see him approaching. I might still feel as lost as I ever was when I make that turn back, but it isn't always a matter of what I feel but also believing the truth that God see's me making that turn and coming in the distance. I'm still in the distance of what I have lost and did lose, but the beauty is that I am seen as that person who is coming back. One of the things we are taught to pray for is God's will, which is in the Lord's prayer. It might be helpful also pray about something as being within God's will rather than just saying God's will. This way, for example, I could speculatively thank God, saying, thank you God that it is within your will that I go hiking today, rather asking for the specific trails of the hike. This type of prayer can help me in the more general fashion of getting a feel as to whether I am within God's will or not in choosing a particular endeavor or path, rather than getting bogged down in the more specific nuances and permutations of that choice as to whether that is also God's will. People sometimes are so concerned about finding God's will that the might ask whether they should order a hamburger at McDonald's. I could more broadly say that it is within God's will that I have a meal somewhere today and maybe feel a little less stressed out as to whether it should be a hamburger at McDonald's or pizza down the block. I might say, thank you God that I am swimming in the waters of your will that I am an athletic person, I am an artistic person and so on. This is just a metaphor and there would be others, but the idea is to link God's will some imagery that might be telling the truth. This imagery is useful to me as a swimmer.I do believe that God's will is more than just a static concept that we find out about but it is also something that we find ourselves in, whether we like it or not. We are immersed in God's will in some ways and that is the way it really is. Just relying on decent air in the atmosphere is a current that we have to follow. We are swimming in the waters of Gods will in many ways. God's will is also a way of being, a state. Just for example the idea of prosperity. This concept is not just a matter of having a lot of money on hand, and calling it prosperity but something that involves a state of motion, something that would really be an immersion in prosperity if it truly was prosperity. Try and think of some ways of thinking about God's will that better describes what it is or might be so you can come to a more enlightened understanding of how it might operate in your life so that you can better follow it's currents. There is the issue of finding out God's will but also there is the issue of developing personal confidence in God's will. One thing my be to first isolate on some of the traits, qualities or things God has given us and only then look at the applicability of these gifts and how they might resonate in our lives. For example the attractive girl gets rejected at the high school dance. She could say her prayers later that night and say, God thank you that I am attractive, irrespective of me getting rejected at the dance. This way she can hone in on what is apparently God's will, and not so much link it with a given circumstance but rather more the instrinsic gift God gave her of attractiveness that is in fact God's apparent will for her. Then from there she can begin to sort out what this gift might mean and how she can handle it. Some intelligent person get's fired from a job for making a bad call. They could say, God, irregardless of me getting fired, thank you that it is your will that I have the gift of intelligence. Then this person can be more confident that it is God's will that they are working with a good amount of intelligence, and despite the negative feedback of getting fired for a bad call on business strategies, this intelligence, which is God's apparent will, can have much more broad and far reaching implications than this one isolated event. People might not believe that God is watching them so closely for another wanted blessing or help. Maybe in some areas I don’t quite believe that God is watching over me. As natural doubting Thomas’s, we are trying to trying to grab at some ideas as to what God is trying to do with us. I might feel like I am grabbing at straws with any number of things, including the prayer of thanksgiving. How many people believe God loves them, or even likes them? Psalm 5 verse number 3 says" Oh Lord in the morning you hear my voice in the morning I plead my case for you, and watch." If pleading was the wrong thing to do, then I wouldn't be bothered watching for what it is going to do. Pleading is not just a statement, but going a little further in prayer. i don't think we want to be overly humble in this type of prayer, although we always need to have a degree of humility in God's presence and about prayer, pleading would mean going a bit further, and these could involve going a bit more glossy in what we are saying to God. For example, I might say to God, this is and was awesome, it's like seeing you part Red Sea just for me, now can I cross it? Here we are telling God that something we can already identify as just awesome and we are asking for help to follow it. In our pleadings, we more want to talk about how great God is and how great we can be for Him with his help. Another example in this might be a guy who spots and talks to what might be the love of his life. He pleads with God, let me have this beautiful blond girl as my companion. His motives might rather mixed on this, and then he says, I'll bring her to prayer meetings and we'll be a team for you if I she can be the companion. He might then analyze the prayer, think it over and realize that he has often gone to prayer meetings alone without the benefit of a helping companion and more than likely it could be true that he would do as he says. Or he thinks over the prayer and realizes he has only gone to a handful of prayer meetings in the last few years, and maybe his pleadings aren't as valid and then he can just amend his prayer after this review. But either way, the prayer is taking things a bit further, stretching things out and pleading a case, and then searching to go over the prayer for possible amending afterwards. Without extending the prayer initially, he might not have discovered what might have been true, that God might indeed be also interested in this situation as a forming prayer team or in even having discovered that he had this additional postive aspect to bring forward into the proposed situation. Pleading involves bringing some expanded thinking into the situation, in this case into the prayer in the morning. Look at a court case itself on TV for example. A lot of what happens in the courtroom involves speculation and often calls upon being imaginative as to what had or could happen. Someone might make a statement to the judge or go a bit further and be giving the chance to plead his or her case to the judge. In the prayer of intercession, we don't know sometimes what people are going through unless they identify themselves as such. For example the lonely, how would you know someone is lonely unless they identified themselves as lonely, or even the poor could be driving around in the best car in the neigborhood and thereby escape the identification of being poor. So I can ask God to help the lonely or poor, not knowing who they always are, in realizing that unless this group comes forward and identifies itself as such, I really just often don't know who they are. Prayer itself is seen as contextual to the relationship with God. We see in James Chapter 4 that Elijah is referred to as a righteous man, who when praying for specific weather patterns, gets answers that are rather direct. When he ask for rain it rains, when he asks that it stops, it stops. The context is that he was a righteous man within the prayer relationship. I'm sure that these are not the only prayers that Elijah said and got direct answers too, these are just given as examples of some of his prayers, there were probably many and he must have prayed about many things, the weather being just one example. There was probably so much more, just as there can be so much more for you as you continue to prayer upon many things. His prayers might even be affecting what is happening today, in that people can pray for the far future. And this is also an example for us to be a little more direct in our prayers, rain is a very specific type of weather and Elijah was quite direct in asking for it. Maybe I won the lottery and God must like me then, but I slipped and sprained my ankle, so God doesn’t like me after all. There might be any number of prayers I have or requests for God. In prayer, we believe we are called to intercessory prayer, which would necessitate any number of prayer requests. There could be an innumerable number of things I could pray for, and number of people, of issues, of concerns worldwide could be broached as part of the call to intercessory prayer. Yet sometimes within a personal request in applying the idea of intercessory prayer, I might be persistently praying for one thing, thinking , God, if you only give me this, I’ll stop begging you, and everything will be all right. After all, I don’t want to be selfish, and ask for too much. There are several dynamics to this problem. One is, that is I get so stuck on a single prayer request, something I have to have, I might both neglect praying for others in manifold fashion, and forget to pray also for any number of personal concerns, all of which might come more into the forefront if I can get past this problem. I feel like I am using up, a limited number of prayer answers that I could possibly get, and I am trying to squeeze the last answer or two out of God that I can get, then I’ll leave Him alone. Also, there might be just a plain lack of honesty with a more single minded approach to prayer. Someone might say to God, if you would just head my way this once and heal my aching back, I’ll leave you alone and I’ll just pray for others. Actually, you could get the healing and hurt your back again. As it turns out, I really wanted a condo on the beach, a light working schedule with a lot of money, and a trip to Australia in the near future. And I end up withholding those requests because I have this one thing out there that I so need to have answered. So much else in all honesty does relate to my prayer request. Why not be honest at the beginning and bring in all the related matters to the intitial prayer request. In intercessory prayer, if I am praying for my Uncle Charlie to be healed of this, why not additionally pray for everyone in the world who needs also needs healing of this as a related request? I can think of all of this as a grid. The grid can be broken down into two parts, intercessory prayer and prayer for myself, and also where that might overlap. I might be praying for Fred, but I also want Fred to get me in on this one great business deal so that if he is successful, I’ll will get a share. I am praying for the safety of the city, but I also live in or near the city, so I have a personal interest in it being safe. I am praying for the stock market to go through the roof, but I also have several stocks in my portfolio, so the intercessory prayer qualifies in some ways as a personal prayer request as well in some cases. To start with, for the purposes of discussion, we can break the grid into intercessory and personal prayer. I would further break the grid down to answered and unanswered prayer in both categories. In the category of intercessory prayer, am I ever going to know for sure, that a prayer I say is answered, especially as I pray for more distant concerns. I might pray for every person with who is suffering from a diabetic condition in India, but I don’t know anybody in India and I have never been there. There is nothing stopping me from saying this prayer, which is getting to be a big prayer, and there is nothing in the Bible saying I can’t pray bigger prayers others or other situations. Maybe if I pray for a friend to do well on a job interview and they don’t do well, I could partially put my intercessory prayer into the unanswered grid. Yet, I have still done my duty, and tried to spread the wealth of my prayers even further in my intercessory prayer pattern, by praying for my friend, and maybe the prayer did help my friend in some other way that I can’t be sure of. Really, my job was and is to say the prayer, and whether or not it seems to be answered, is often not directly affecting me personally. Unanswered prayer in the intercessory grid, is often though not always, not going to affect me. In a sense really, intercessory prayer is a no lose situation. I get to participate by praying for other people and issues, sometimes in a big way, there is no limits in the prayer, and there is mostly no direct pressure on me as to whether the prayer is answered or not, as to how my personal life is going. It is better however, to take a more sunnier view, that yes, my prayer for Africa is life affirming and may be helping, and it is great that I can be of help this way, by the relatively simple act of praying. Now going to the grid of personal prayer for my personal concerns, there seems to be more potential for gridlock. Answered prayer is great, seemingly unanswered prayer can pose a big problem in that it can have a direct affect or consequence on so many things. If I am asking for a financial blessing and losing money at every turn, then I might be hindered to any number of things I did want to do, that involved paying my way. Or I take the idea of persistent prayer, which is at least allowed according to the common understanding of the Bible, to also mean an exclusive focus on a specific prayer and that if I am not praying every spare second about this, then I’m not being persistent. I can think about how my specific prayer request does relate to any number of other things and if it honestly does why not bring those other related things into the prayer as well. For example, if I am praying for a healing for a sprained ankle, I really want this healing as related to my hopes of running or jogging in the sun along the beach or waterway, so I can bring the related idea of jogging without a sprained ankle in my prayer for healing for the sprained ankle. Talk to God about not only what you want but what you want to do with what you want if and when you get it. Let the umbrella down and open up the request more fully. You can give God any number of reasons why you want this. I’m taking a word or concept and not defining it properly. A truly prospered Christian, needs room to prosper. I am praying for prosperity, but I am spending so much time praying for prosperity, that I have no time for anything else towards this wanted prosperity. Take for example, the adage, work hard, and you’ll make it. Well, I could work hard in setting up my lemonade stand in Alaska in the middle of the winter, and stay at that stand for half the winter, but not many people are going to come by to purchase the lemonade. I've got to set up my lemonade stand nearer to what I want to do and what I want to happen. Any concept can be meditated on as well. And I could even ask God, how persistent do you want me to be with this prayer, when and how is this prayer going to move, in the sense of moving the mountains type of results, or do you want me to let go on this prayer? How then is God relating to the prayer and what related concerns and approaches does God want me to bring into this prayer? Even though we have the Biblical concept of persistence in prayer, we may need to petition God as to whether at this time we should put on the breaks or temper this prayer in some way. Other concepts might relate to this prayer, being patient, being watchful for the answer, being specific, being thankful in advance, visualizing the results and so on. I could be overdoing it in trying to form an overall balanced prayer grid by just focusing on this one prayer too much. The good asset of being a hard working person can be well applied to prayer. That hard work might need to be spread out the table a bit on my personal prayer grid as well. In my personal prayer grid, I really feel I just want this one big prayer answered. What God might want, is a lot of personal prayers from me in particular on any number of things on an ongoing basis. The prayer of omission, the prayer not said, is more likely with a narrowly focused prayer approach. Just the idea that God did give us intelligence, and intelligence tells me that any number of things could relate to this particular prayer request I am making to God. A more intelligent approach to prayer might be to think about and bring in what might be related to my big time prayer request. I am praying for a more luxurious head of hair but this really does relate to wanted to look better when I look in the mirror, for that big meeting at work, or for walking on the beach in the summer. The imagery of God from Pslams" operating on many waters" is an important one. As it says in Paul's letters, for now we only see dimly. But that doesn't mean that we don't see at all. If I do pray for all the poor people in Africa, I can begin to increase my awareness and begin to see, just how important that prayer might be. We are called to have faith but in all intances and in all ways it is not just blind faith. I can comtemplate and begin to see in some small ways on how important this prayer might be and how it relates to God's kingdom on the earth. I can begin to shift my waterways on prayer and operate on many waters, especially in my intercessory concerns but also in my personal concerns as I begin to increase my awareness on my own prayers and the various ways my hoped for answers relate to what I really do want, often in not just one but several ways in the many waters of my own personal life. For example, the ability to read is a gift that relates to so many things. Not only can I read on whatever I want for both enjoyment and to inform myself, but it might be important just in finding my way around, in a foreign country for example, in being able to read a map or directions. In prayer I might also be praying for directions, for finding my way around. I might be in that foreign country, lost and just ask in prayer for the appearance of someone who can give me directions in the moment. I might be stuck in a strong current while swimming in the ocean, and I’m trying to get back to the beach from a mile out. I say, God, all I want is to get to the shore. In that moment, maybe it is true. The immediacy and the danger of the situation, of getting caught way out there in riptides, obscures that I do want to get back on the beach, have it remain a nice and sunny day, and I hope I still have the scenery of lots of girls of the beachfront. It wouldn’t be wrong to say to God, I want to get out of this to enjoy the rest of the day this way. However, I don’t say this, and God answers my prayer regardless and now I am finding my way out of the riptide and getting closer to the shore, and I’m seeing everyone having fun on the beach, and now my attention turns to that. Maybe I can say a status post prayer, thanking God that he got me out this by calming the surf, and that I am also thankful for the good time on the beach as well which I am subsequently enjoying because I did not get swept totally out to sea never to be found. Really, the key is to that I also want to continue to spread out my personal prayer grid, putting in any number of prayers, prayers that might emerge even more as a priority if I can get past a few obstacles but for the moment I at least want to give them a light brush in my prayers. With intercessory prayer, I often do not need to get past too many obstacles, to get going with that. I can pray for so many things on a worldwide basis, and I really just need some knowledge or know how rather than some more unobtainable means. That is why Paul writes in the Epistle to Timothy, that he wished prayer for Kings and all men. Some of the people he was writing too probably had no means comparable to a king in those days, yet they were being admonished to pray even for kings and others in intercessory fashion, and it doesn’t say anything about having your personal prayers being answered first before doing this. Jesus wanted Peter to believe him for walking on water. Now, what is so good about walking on water anyway? Is it that much fun? Maybe it would be more the message that Jesus wants his followers to believe for different things, exciting and far fetched things, maybe things that seem unusual and quite extraordinary to my usual experience. This was almost like Jesus was taking Peter into an amusement park experience. I’m sure that when Jesus spoke to the apostles about prayer, he didn’t just want them to pray for a better catch of fish or in Peter’s case to walk on water. There is a verse in Psalms about God operating on many waters. We see in David’s writings in the Psalms that many different things are mentioned as a matter of prayer, What I want to do then, is think about Peter walking on water, the apostles asking for a better catch of fish, and realize the diversity of situations that can equate to a prayer response and the need for prayer, and see that these could go from the practical to the more unconventional and that Jesus might be the initiator in taking us to a new range of prayer, symbolized by him asking Peter to walk on water with him. It was a joint project discusses between them. It is interesting as well in that he didn’t try to remake the apostles, most of whom where fisherman, before he gave them the call, which was that he would make them fishers of men. He was talking about the call, rather than changing their basic personalities, their status in society as it was then, their educational levels, having some personality training or anything like that. Similarly, in Paul writing in Timothy 1, in verse 8 and other verses in that chapter are all referring to the call to intercessory prayer and this call doesn’t seem to require situational changes or specific situation requirments other than believing before it is implemented. What I want to do then, is see that, even if it involves going against the grain for me, to expand my personal grid in prayer. Maybe things are going so well for me, that I feel I am almost insulting God by asking for more things, since I have been receiving so much. I better keep quiet, before God finds out how much I have, and tries to get me to be a little bit more humble, and takes some of it away. If one of your friends says, I’m good for a bike ride, a hike or a swim today, there is more than one thing your friend will go along with this day Then the truth is, if I get a million dollars and get over that hill, I still want to get any number of things after this. Even when I have the million dollars in my hand as the answer to my request for one million dollars, there might be so many things that relate to having this million dollars that I might also want to pray about now. The Bible itself can be seen as a teacher of this as well. I ask God for a special verse from the Bible and He gives me the one verse among thousands, but is this really going to be the only verse God is ever going to want to give me? There could be other related verses to the issue or problem I am dealing with, but how interesting it is that the verse God gives me so relates. I could be dealing with any number of problems, issues or even sins, but that shouldn’t make me feel like I should constrict my prayers accordingly. Guilt might be following me, I might be a former substance abuser, steroids, alcohol, etc, and if I feel that I could ever get past these problems I could only ask God for small things, either in substance or in number, after all I haven’t been to good for a long time. I still want to construct a personal prayer grid where I am considering a larger number of things, bringing any number of things into the prayer relationship, and follow through on forming and maintaining a more comprehensive grid, a grid that could include asking for things or about things that are rather far fetched, too just to keeping your prayer grid more in tune with the idea of expansion, both in the personal and intercessory sides. And never forget to bring in thanksgiving at earlier points and at intermittent points in the answer you are receiving. Thank your way through the situation. For example, I was searching for a good book and now I find I am reading a great 1,000 page book. Stop and thank God after every 100 pages of the book, don't wait until you finish it. Don't thank God at the end of the year for a great year, keep thanking him all through that great year as its happening. In intercessory prayers, you are sharing in some of the qualities God is demonstrating to you as you mention these qualities in the prayer of thanksgiving. You are being generous, thoughtful, considerate, interested, concerning, watching and caring, and all those good things that God has been for you as you pray for others in matters of intercession. Maybe in praying for say the European contigent and thereby interceding for these people, I am also being generous, and I am sharing in the same trait God is showing me that I had recognized to God in the prayer of thanksgiving. So I am relating to those same qualities of God within my own intercessions. If I pray for a sunny day so I can go to the beach, this prayer also might affect other people that also want to go to the beach, some of whom may not believe in prayer but my belief is working for them even though they do not know this. The answer to my prayer, although I may have never really been thinking of them, might also help others in a rather unintended fashion. Prayer itself can do much more than the thinking I can put into it. If I do prayer for numerous people in a foreign country, I can't possibly hold in my thoughts just what is happening to all the given individuals in this country, yet without this exceptional thinking, my prayer can reach into deeply to each individual there. This is an example of God taking a relatively narrowly focused prayer intention, and expanding it for others. If someone has the gift of healing and prayers for a sick person, they can't possibly think into all the medical aspects of the case, even if they had the full medical knowledge, even that is limited based on how much we are advancing presently in medical knowledge. Even with exceptional gifts of the Spirit, I can't possibly think into a situation to the extent that God can work it. In Paul's letters it says, " He will give you abundantly above what you could ask or even think." Here this verse from Paul's letters is talking about asking and even the thinking involved within the asking. This thinking, although good and necessary, is going to be limited and God goes way and abundantly above our thinking process that goes into our asking. So there is no absolute need to have all our thoughts down pat before we ask God about something. No matter how much thinking we put into our prayers, God is going to give far above what our thinking on the matter is and we can't match into that by thinking more. So the Nike credo in part applies to prayer, Just Do It. Here is an example of an overlap in the prayer grids of intercessory and personal prayer for myself. Zechariah 10.1 " Ask rain from the Lord, in the season of the spring rain, from the Lord who makes the clouds, who gives showers of rain to you, the vegetation of the fields to everyone." I might say then to God, prosper the whole city or country, so that I can have prosperity. I ask for my friend to win the lottery, so I can have 10,000 of this as per our prior agreement. In any event, there is some overlap. The prosperity of the city or country, can relate to my own prosperity and at times affect me directly. Nationwide prices of 5 dollars a gallon for petrol, will affect me personally if I am driving a car as well. Yes, I can be a prayer specialist, but I can still can and will bring my prayers into any number of arenas. You have a chance to pray for so many things. It costs a dollar for a lottery ticket but I can have just about an unlimited amount of prayer tickets for free. One example where you see this is some of the sports, where in the finals or the big game, the World Series or the college football championship games, you see people's hands folded in prayer. Is this really that important that it is worth praying about to the non sports fan? But then again, when the local team wins, it seems to lift the spirits of the whole town. One personal example that was interesting was several years ago when the Mets tied the Pittsburgh Pirates and had a one game playoff to make the playoffs. I drove down Northern Blvd to Shea Stadium and it was a sunny early afternoon and somebody yells to me from a car, are you going to the Met game. I was glad to just get a ticket, I ended up in the upper deck, behind the foul pole in left field. About the fifth inning, I was looking at the foul pole as Ricky Henderson got up, and by then he was somewhat in the twighlight of his career, and I said a prayer that he would hit a home run and it would hit the foul pole right in front of me, and I knew hitting the pole counted as a home run. The crowd of course was very partisan and was a bit wild, which added to the momentin that early afternoon sun. He got a hit but didn’t hit the foul pole. The Mets won the one game playoff and made the playoffs, The next game was against the Cincy Reds in the playoffs, and I was watching it on TV when Henderson hit a home run hitting that very foul pole in the spot I was looking at when I said the prayer, I felt it was almost as if God was saying hello as the odds of hitting a foul pole home run are low and while it does happen, it isn't to often. So, my far fetched prayer was answered a couple of at bats latter in the next game. Realistically then, I am never going to be able to dock my boat and say, I’m finished with all or most of my prayers, The call is to perennial prayer in both the personal and intercessory prayer efforts and I should be making efforts in both directions with my prayers. With intercessory prayer, I can even pray into the far reaches of the future, for future years, future generations. The mystical power of intercessory prayer is alive for the future. God as the God of variety is ready to handle any variety of prayers. I can extend the logic of how intercessory prayer is so expansive in that look at so many things, people and issues that are out there that lend itself to intercession, and relate it to my own prayers for myself, and that I shouldn’t just stop at persistence but include and combine persistence with a degree of expansion in what is possible within my own lifes view. With thanksgiving, I can reflect on the very qualities God has demonstrated to me in the past, qualities that I can believe I’ll see from God for right now in the present and again and again into the future. I can look for the answered prayer and see how it now relates, both to the practical aspects of my life that might involve this, and the fresh evidence of God’s qualities found in the answer. I am not only relating to God's answer alone but I am also relating to the qualities He is demostrating to me in the specifics of his answer.
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