"Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth" Colossians 3:2(NKJV).
Where your mind goes, your life goes and your prayer too. Your prayer can either be of things above or earthly bound – all according to the frame of your mind. Things that make your prayer earthly bound i.e. not moving heaven, includes the following - fear, doubt and religion.
Fear is the wrong kind motivation in which your words in prayer are saying one thing and your body language another. You cannot seek one thing from God and still wonder if the opposite will happen.
Whereby fear is emotional, doubt is a thought pattern. Doubt comes with the attitude of maybe. It is the language of someone still seeking alternatives to God and what he can do, still wandering if God is as all powerful as he claims to be.
Religion!-nothing smells more hideously to Christ than this. This is prayer focused on making an impression on men, for prestige or for the sake of achieving a reputation. The reward for the prayer cannot therefore come from the Most High who is only drawn to sincerity of devotion to himself.
The three things above distracts the energy of prayer from hitting its mark and achieving its aim of causing a change on the earth with the lightening fire from heaven (Elijah’s experience being a case in point). Part two discusses the things in heaven that are meant for effective praying.
Read Matthew 6:5, James 1:5-8 and 1John 4:16-18 also.
Read more articles by Kayode Crown or search for articles on the same topic or others.
