The Prayer Motivator
Introduction
“And He [Jesus Christ] spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint.”
-Luke 18:1
“As is the business of tailors to make clothes and cobblers to make shoes, so it is the business of Christians to pray.”
-Martin Luther
I am convinced that most people do not need to learn how to pray; they need to Just Pray! Prayer is like any other important discipline in the Christian life. If you don’t do it, you won’t reap the benefits and blessings that God wants you to have. If you want to reap the benefits and blessings of prayer, then you need to Just Pray! This is what The Prayer Motivator is all about. Down through the years, nothing has motivated me to pray more than verses on prayer in the Bible and powerful quotes from saints of the past and present regarding their experience with prayer.
“Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.”
-Jesus Christ, Matthew 7:7
The simple but powerful verse above uttered by our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, was what turned me on to prayer when I was a young Christian. Soon after that, someone introduced me to a series of wonderful books on prayer written by E.M. Bounds. I devoured them all, and this started me on my prayer journey with the Lord. Prayer to God has been the center and the highlight of my life ever since the beginning of this exciting journey. In spite of myself, God has been very good to me and to my family in many ways, but the thing that stands out the most to me are the thousands of answers to prayer over the past thirty-five years of full-time ministry and over twenty-six years of marriage with a family of nine.
Below are some benefits that I have received from prayer to God, and that I know you can receive as well. These are not things I THINK God can do through prayer; these are things I KNOW God will do through prayer:
- Prayer to God can bring you the mate that He wants you to have.
- Prayer to God can keep your marriage and family together against the odds with joy and happiness. And let nobody fool you, “the family that prays together, still stays together.” The reason why the divorce rate in the church is equal to the divorce rate in the world today is for no other reason than a lack of prayer.
- Prayer to God can bring healing to the heart, mind, soul, and body.
- Prayer to God can keep your teenagers on track.
- Prayer to God will guide you at the many crossroads of life.
- Prayer to God will give you wisdom, knowledge, understanding, insight, and discernment; and having these wonderful gifts will save you a lot of trouble, money, and time.
- Prayer to God will make money come to you when you need it most.
- Prayer to God will make things happen for you, right in the nick of time.
- Prayer to God will give you a great night of sleep.
- Prayer to God will give you peace and joy even though you don’t deserve it.
- Prayer to God can supply your needs.
- Prayer to God can lift burdens, worries, fears, and cares.
- Prayer to God can cause your ministry to flourish beyond your wildest imaginations.
- Prayer to God will help you to be a better witness for the Lord.
- Prayer to God will help you have good relationships with other people.
- Prayer to God will deliver you from temptation, evil, and sin.
- Prayer to God will protect you from hurt, harm, and danger.
- Prayer to God will deliver you out of bad situations and trouble.
- Prayer to God will do things for you “exceeding abundantly above all that you ask or think.”
The Prayer Motivator will inspire, encourage, and motivate you to pray daily and throughout the day so that you can receive the benefits and blessings of a prayerful life. This is not another devotional book. This is an action book. If you have no interest in actually doing the, sometimes difficult, work of prayer, then this book is not for you. This simple book is designed to motivate you to pray. Because if I can get you to pray, all sorts of wonderful things will begin to happen for you, your family, and whatever God has called you to do. So, very simply, here is how I suggest you use this book:
1. Read as many of the pages as you would like. It can be one page, it can be three pages, it can be ten pages. All of the pages are very short and will only take you a few minutes. Again, this is not a devotional. You don’t have to just stick to one page. Read enough that will motivate you to start praying, especially when you don’t feel like praying.
2. Pray! and look to the Holy Spirit to help you and expect God to work and answer your prayers. Oftentimes, God will give you answers while you are praying. Listen to those answers, write them down, and keep on praying until you finish.
It is as simple as that.
As the Lord allowed me to travel on this journey of prayer (which included preaching in churches across the United States and in over twenty foreign countries), I began to see, to my amazement, how that many Christians struggled to pray. Even more shocking than this, I discovered that not only were many in the pews struggling to pray or not praying at all, but many in the pulpit were struggling to pray as well. After I would preach one of my revival sermons titled “A Praying Time” or “Prayer: The Main Ingredient,” many pastors, in private conversation, would share with me, ‘Bro. Whyte, I hate to admit it, but I don’t pray as I should.’ One dear pastor picked me up from an airport in a European country, where I was to preach a revival in his church, and he frankly told me, ‘I really have not been praying for this revival as I should, and I really don’t know if I want revival.’
I concluded from this discovery that the problem was not that many Christians didn’t know how to pray or that they were never taught how to pray. Rather, the problem was, these people simply didn’t pray, because if they had been praying as they should have, they would know the benefits and blessings of prayer, and that would have motivated them to continue praying no matter how difficult it was.
I noticed five hinderances that stood in the way of these dear Christians praying as they should. God revealed to me that if they could only get over these five hurdles they would then pray more effectively and begin to reap the benefits and blessings of prayer to God. These five hurdles are:
1. Spiritual Inertia
2. The Flesh
3. Satan and his Demons
4. Doubt and Unbelief
5. The “Busy”-ness of life (the World)
The simple purpose of this book is to encourage and motivate you to get off the ball regarding prayer, and take the little faith you may have and Just Pray! Before you pray and even while you are praying, you may often times feel at your lowest—Just Pray! Before you pray and even when you begin to pray, you may feel as though you are the worst sinner in the world—Just Pray! Before you pray and even when you begin to pray, you will be distracted with bad things as well as good things—Just Pray! Before you pray and even while you are praying, your wife, your husband, your children or some other human being may do something to upset you—Just Pray! This book is designed to help you get over spiritual inertia, your sinful flesh, the devil and his demons, doubt and unbelief, your busy life and the world, so that you can hit “pray dirt” and God will do the rest. Just open your mouth and start praying. JUST PRAY! and watch God do things beyond your wildest imaginations.
In this revised edition of The Prayer Motivator, please feel free to take advantage of the new “Prayer Starter Prompts” (PSPs) on each page that are designed to get you to just pray to the God who hears and answers prayer.
—Daniel Whyte III
Dallas, Texas
BCNN1 WP 