Lauren Gaskill

“Oh! There was something I wanted to share with you … hold on, it’s in my prayer closet … let me go get it!”

And right there, in the middle of our podcast interview, my dear friend and fellow writer, Barb Roose got up to pull a notecard our of her prayer closet.

It was the first time I’d heard about a prayer closet, and it was the first time I gave thought to dedicating a space in my home for prayer.

After we finished recording the interview, I sat down and thought to myself … we have rooms for cooking, eating, sleeping, working, bathing and relaxing, so why don’t we have a room for praying? 

For months, I’d longed to go deeper in my prayer life, and I wondered if creating a space for prayer in my home could help me do just that. Today, my “war room” is the spare room in our home. One corner is for entertainment, one corner is for exercising, and the other corner is for praying.

Some days I simply sit in that corner and wait upon the Lord. Some days I pray the Scriptures. Some days I journal. Some days I press my face to the floor and pour my soul out to God. But whatever the day brings, dear friend I cannot even begin to tell how this practice has made a difference in my prayer life.

Prayer is just as if not more important than all of the other things we do, and it deserves a sacred space in our homes.Read More

As believers, we are called to pray. But what happens when it feels like our prayers have fallen on deaf ears? What does it mean if we don’t hear from God? And how should we respond?

In high school, I experienced my first battle with anxiety attacks. I didn’t understand what was happening or why it was happening — all I knew was that I was not in control and I desperately needed God’s help.

So I began to pray, no, beg, for deliverance. I remember staring at the floor of our church sanctuary as I cried out to my Savior on my knees: God I need you. I give my life to you. Please answer me. Please take all of this away.

Nothing.

Days turned into weeks. Weeks turned into months. Months turned into a full year. And still, nothing but silence.

I felt like a shipwrecked soul, sinking in a sea of confusion, sadness, anger and bitterness.

And that’s when I found Psalm 13.

As one of David’s shorter psalms, you might miss it if you were flipping through your Bible, but in those days, and even still today, I can’t take my eyes from it. David writes:

¹ How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
² How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?
³ Look on me and answer, Lord my God.
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,
⁴ and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”
and my foes will rejoice when I fall.
⁵ But I trust in your unfailing love;
my heart rejoices in your salvation.
⁶ I will sing the Lord’s praise,
for he has been good to me.

Never has a passage of Scripture comforted and convicted me more than Psalm 13. I was comforted, because I knew I was not alone in my despair. My cries of desperation mirrored every single word in verses 1-4. On the other hand, my heart was deeply convicted. Because in the silence that followed my desperate pleas, unlike David, I had failed to trust God.

Prayer is a conversation, and like most conversations in today’s day and age, responses are appreciated. Think about the last time you asked your girlfriend if she wanted to go to lunch. Did she wait five months to get back to you? Probably not!

Whether it’s a text, email, or Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Voxer message, we live in a culture that expects an answer — and fast.

But when we look at the Bible, we see that God’s answers often don’t come quickly at all. Instead, prayers and dreams are first met with silence.

Please join me at iBelieve.com to read the rest of this post!

Prayer is a sacred, beautiful and powerful thing. But a deep prayer life doesn’t just happen overnight. It requires great work, practice and dedication.

As we continue to walk with Jesus and navigate the journey He has placed before us, our prayer lives will be full of hills and valleys, just like every other area of our lives. There will be seasons prayer comes naturally and abundantly. But there will also be seasons where we feel like our prayers aren’t getting us anywhere.

In week three of this blog series, we talked about learning how to pray when we don’t know what to say. But what happens when we know what to say but feel stuck in our prayers? How can we breathe new life into our prayer life when things grow stagnant?

Today, I’m sharing seven resources that have helped jumpstart my prayer life over the years. I’d love to know what resources have helped you in the comments below!

Seven Resources to Revive Your Prayer Life

The Bible
Y’all. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: There is no substitute for the living and breathing Word of God! God’s Word is full of inspiration for our prayer life. Not only does Jesus model prayer for us in the New Testament, but the Psalms are full of sample prayers that we can personalize and bring before God. My favorite Bible right now is actually one that was designed with teen girls in mind — the NIV Faithgirlz Backpack Bible (pictured above) — but who says an adult can’t enjoy a kids Bible? God’s Word is God’s Word! It’s beautiful, compact, soft and brings a smile to my face before I even open it up! (If you have a teen girl in your life, or if you’re like me and just appreciate pretty things, this Bible is sure to bring joy to anyone that picks it up.)

“Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy With God” Book
This book by Tim Keller offers readers way to make prayers more personal and powerful. In addition to offering biblical guidance, Keller talks about how to pray for specific situations, such as dealing with grief, loss, love, and forgiveness. If book reading is your thing, Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God will be very valuable to you in helping keep your prayer life strong.Read More

In week three of the Discovering the Power of Prayer Blog Series, my dear friend and fellow blogger Jennifer Watson shows us how to pray even when don’t feel like it or we can’t find the right words to say.

There are times in our life where we wrestle with words and find it difficult to know what to pray, or even how to pray. When our hearts are in despair, our expectations of what God can do lower. Even though we know that our feelings are not facts, our feelings can still minimize who we know God to be and give us spiritual amnesia concerning all of the ways God has met us in our time of need and answered prayer. And so, our prayers become small and safe.

Are we praying small and safe prayers?

There’s a story of a man in Acts 3 who was carried to the gate of the temple daily who had been lame from birth. This had always been his condition-dependent on others to put something in his hand that could sustain him. He was dependent on the people who carried him to a place where he could be seen and, hopefully, leave that day with money and food to make it through the day. The next day he would be in the same place asking for the same things. But, God had a plan far greater than the temporary:

3 Now Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour.[a] 2 And a man lame from birth was being carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple that is called the Beautiful Gate to ask alms of those entering the temple. 3 Seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple, he asked to receive alms. 4 And Peter directed his gaze at him, as did John, and said, “Look at us.” 5 And he fixed his attention on them, expecting to receive something from them. 6 But Peter said, “I have no silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!” 7 And he took him by the right hand and raised him up, and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong. 8 And leaping up, he stood and began to walk, and entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God. 9 And all the people saw him walking and praising God, 10 and recognized him as the one who sat at the Beautiful Gate of the temple, asking for alms. And they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him.

This man looked at the disciples expecting to receive something from them but, his expectations were too low.

As I read this passage, I felt like God was saying to me, “You are asking for something so small, but I am wanting to give you far more.” In my prayers I was expecting something, but I was settling for small and temporary instead of life altering and lasting. The thought that my expectations and my prayer life had become too calculated, safe, and small wrecked me. This is when I started to become familiar with praying scriptures, a practice that drastically changed my prayer life. 

Here’s a thought: Why look for a handout when we can have the wholeness in Christ that we need?

Maybe you feel like the people that have hurt you have simply been carrying you to a beggars spot and you feel stuck. You don’t have to beg for the blessings of God. What you need is a breakthrough where you move beyond enemy lines to take hold of the promises of God by praying His Word over your life.

How we recover from low expectations and a stuck prayer life is by focusing on our God who is stronger than any doubts or challenges we face.Read More