When Should We Pray? What Are the Different Types of Prayer?

In today's episode, I will be going over prayer. I have made several episodes on this podcast about prayer. As followers of Jesus Christ, prayer is or should be the most crucial part of our lives. So, today I want to go into the definition of prayer, but I specifically want to dive more into when we should pray. I will pair this with scripture, and then I'm also going to briefly list eight different types of prayers.

First, I want to say a quick prayer: "LORD, I pray that you lift up every single person reading this right now. Please open up our eyes to see the truth of your words. Please help me to remove myself from this message today and give me the words to speak. Thank you, heavenly Father, for every single thing that you've done. Open up our ears, our hearts and our minds to you, LORD. I pray that every person that is listening to this episode will know the importance of prayer and how crucial it is in our daily lives. I love You with every ounce of my being. In Jesus' name, Amen."

What is prayer?

According to Google, prayer is: "A form of communication with a sacred or higher power found in all religions and practiced either privately or with a group."

Now what is prayer As a follower of Jesus Christ? It is fellowship with God. It is our communication with our Heavenly Father, and it is our lifeline to God. It is our way to communicate with God.

Now let's get into some scripture:

"pray constantly," -1 Thessalonians 5:17

I have another scripture that I want to get into, but first I just want to give credit where credit is due. So if you've been keeping up with my podcast, then you know that I have been going to the School of Missions where it prepares us for any type of ministry. In that school we've been learning a lot of different subjects. One of the subjects we've been learning about is on prayer. Back a few weeks ago we had an amazing speaker come in and she went over a lot of the things that I'm going to be going over with you guys over the next few weeks about prayer. Her name is Angela Keeton. She's an author, a teacher, and she is just an incredible woman of God. So I just wanted to mention that before I get too deep into this episode, because a lot of this stuff that we're going to be going over are things that she actually taught us in class.

"Remain in me, and I in you. Just as a branch is unable to produce fruit by itself unless it remains on the vine, neither can you unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in me and I in him produces much fruit, because you can do nothing without me." -John 15:4-5

So in these verses that I just read, you can see that we have to pray constantly and we have to remain in Jesus. Jesus was speaking to his disciples in these verses in the Book of John. Whenever we are praying, we are praying to the Father in the name of Jesus Christ. When we're keeping in constant prayer and constant communication that is allowing us to remain in Jesus. It also allows us to abide by the Holy Spirit and be led by the Holy Spirit, which is a big part of prayer. Whenever you are praying, it is so important to be led by the Holy Spirit, and ask the Holy Spirit to consume you and move you to do the will of God the Father.

So when should we pray?

Our life should be one big prayer. So we shouldn't just be praying when we wake up in the morning or at meals or before bed at night, but all throughout the day we can say little prayers. It's just conversations with God. Throughout these next eight weeks, I'm going to go more into the different types of prayers. Through that you'll be able to see that you may actually be praying a lot more than you think that you are. Prayer should not just be a designated 5-10 minutes, or maybe an hour or two hours out of your day. Our lives should be prayers. So we should be constantly communicating with the Lord throughout every part of our day.

So what does that look like? When you're driving to work in the morning or driving to take your kids to school, or anytime you have a moment alone, you can use that time. Or maybe you're not even alone. Maybe you don't have any moments alone. Maybe you're a single parent or whatever the case is. Anytime that you can, you should be praying. Now, this is a muscle that needs to be exercised. So if you're not used to talking to God all day every day, then it's something that you're going to have to get used to. After a while, it'll just become normal to do it all the time. Like when I'm brushing my teeth, I'm saying a prayer to God.

Whenever people come up in your mind, when you think of someone that maybe you haven't seen in years or haven't thought about in a long time, pray for that person. The Holy Spirit is putting that person on your mind for you to pray for them. Before you go somewhere, say a prayer for protection over you and your family. Throughout the whole day, whatever you're doing, just having those little conversations with God. Starting off your prayers with gratitude and thanksgiving is so important, because God is so good, so gracious, mighty, compassionate, and He is so wonderful. He's our creator. He put breath in us. He gave us the breath of life.

Maybe you're not used to praying and so you're like, "I don't even know what to pray." Just start off thanking God for all that He's done. Just have conversations with Him throughout the day, little small conversations. Ask the Holy Spirit to speak to you, to give you the words, to prompt you with what to pray for, and to consume you. The more you're being led by the Holy Spirit, the more those prayers are just going to flow. Thoughts will come up in your head for people that you need to pray for or things that you need to pray for. It will become more natural to you the more that you do it.

So over the next eight weeks, we're going to be going over different types of prayer. These are the different types of prayer that we learned in our studies from Angela Keeton when she came to the Global Venture School of Missions. So each week for the next eight weeks, I'm going to be going over a different type of prayer. I will be be pairing it with some scripture, my own stories, and kind of make it my own. But the foundation of what we're going to be learning over the next eight weeks is things that we learned from Angela Keeton in Global Venture School of Missions. So I'm just going to quickly list the eight different types of prayers that we're going to be getting into over the next eight weeks.

Here are the 8 different types of prayer that we will be going over:

1. The prayer of faith

2. The prayer of consecration

3. The prayer of agreement

4. The prayer of binding and loosing

5. The prayer of casting cares

6. The prayer of praise and worship

7. The prayer of intercession

8. The prayer of travail

So those are the eight different types of prayers that we're going to be going over during the next eight weeks. Make sure you stay tuned each week for each different type of prayer that we're going to go over. I want you guys to start today, if you haven't been making your life a prayer and just constantly praying to the Lord throughout your day. Start today by expressing gratitude to Him, thanking Him for the things that He's done, and ask the Holy Spirit to speak to you, to show you what to pray for, to move you to do the will of God the Father, and just sit and listen to the Lord and listen to the prompts of the Holy Spirit. So that is it for today's episode, come back next week for our episode on The Prayer of Faith.

I love you guys so much.

Never forget to choose faith over fear.

-Lorena Camille (Faith Fuels My Fire)

p.s. If you'd rather listen to Faith-based, spiritual growth, mindset, and mental health tips, then check out my podcast. There I will share my personal experiences, stories I've never told before, and bring you along with this hot mess life of mine. New episodes every week.

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Scripture taken from The Christian Standard Bible. Copyright © 2017 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. Christian Standard Bible®, and CSB® are federally registered trademarks of Holman Bible Publishers, all rights reserved.