Summary: Have you ever stopped to wonder where you actually learned how to pray? For many Christians, prayer has simply been something we’ve picked up along the way—by listening to pastors, parents, or other believers. But what if there’s more to prayer than you’ve been shown? What if God desires something far deeper than occasional requests or routine conversations?
In this episode, Jennifer shares how her understanding of prayer completely changed after decades of following Jesus. She explores why so many believers struggle to hear God’s voice, why your prayer life can become stagnant over time, and how spiritual maturity invites believers into a richer, more intimate relationship with the Lord.
IJennifer also introduces the seven principles that have transformed her own prayer life and inspired her new digital course, Teach Us to Pray. Whether you’ve been walking with God for years or you’re simply longing for greater depth, this conversation will encourage you to move beyond the familiar and discover a more powerful, effective prayer life.
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Jen (00:00)
You probably think that you already know how to pray, but I am gonna push back on that a little bit today. What if there’s actually more to prayer than what you’ve been taught? The sad reality that I’ve seen is that there are a lot of Christians who have no idea how to hear from God, let alone talk to him in a way that prompts an immediate answer. When was the last time that you had a back and forth conversation with God? Or did you even
know that was possible.
I know a lot of you like me, you got saved as a child, you grew up in church, but it wasn’t until I was actually halfway through my 30s that I realized it is possible to hear God speak almost every day. At this stage of my life, God talks to me several times a week, and it’s because I have really learned how to cultivate a deep prayer life. That’s what I want to discuss today. So come with me. Let’s talk about how to speak with God in a way that leads to
to real results. Here we go.
Welcome back to the show. This is where we go below the surface, and today we’re talking about prayer. If you are a believer, I want to know. I’m curious, where did you learn how to pray? How were you shown how to do this? Did somebody pull you aside and say, hey, did did you maybe take a class or a course?
Pretty much what I’ve heard is that that’s a no. Most of us as followers of Jesus didn’t have somebody come alongside us and teach us what it means to pray and what that looks like. I know a few believers might have a person that comes to mind and they say, yeah, that person, they modeled it. I got to witness how they did it and I learned how to do it from them. That was the case for me. My mom prayed a lot. and of course, you hear pastors and teachers in church do it. So it is
modeled it’s not like we are never shown but I’m talking about like intentional teaching was that something that you were able to get I was not
majority of believers don’t get any kind of formal training. And so why am I bringing this up? Surprisingly, I have noticed that a lot of followers of Jesus actually don’t think they need teaching around the topic of prayer. They think they have it all figured out. It’s just simply talking to God, right? That I mean, yeah, it can be that simple for sure. and that is certainly a perspective that I had for a few decades. Like this really isn’t too big of a deal.
I didn’t think there was a whole lot to it. And I ended up realizing over time that I was totally wrong. And after being a Christian for 30 years, it I was finally able to admit that I actually really didn’t know what I was doing. And there were some things I could do a little bit differently to make a bigger impact. So what do I mean?
What I have discovered over the past several years as I’ve studied the topic of prayer is that most churches don’t have an actual intentional structured program around teaching new believers or or any of their followers how to pray.
Nobody’s talking to them about why prayer is important or how to develop this aspect in their life. Nobody is teaching them how to practice hearing God’s voice. And I’m not bad-mouthing churches, so hear me out. I’m just saying there’s a gap here. Like we’re missing something, okay? I’m just sharing the reality of where we’re at, and it really bothers me. And I want to do something about it. That’s why.
I’m here. So, in my own personal journey, I have come to realize there are actually a lot of aspects of prayer that you cannot figure out in just an hour of teaching. It’s something that you actually have to practice and keep practicing and continue to learn. So, personally, I have read 25 books on prayer, and yeah, it’s because I’m passionate about it. I’m an intercessor. I want to learn more. but I also think it’s wise just in general, as a believer, to refresh.
An area of your walk, your faith walk, right? And prayer is one of those. It can become really commonplace. It can become sort of rote and routine. And nobody means to slip into a lukewarm lifestyle. Nobody does that on purpose, right? It’s a slow drift. It’s not intentional. But it happens and we need to be aware of it.
So I just want to use this episode to encourage you to refresh your prayer life, but I want to go even deeper because I believe prayer is both simple and complex. Why do I say that? At first, especially as a new believer, when you are learning to talk with God, it’s just as if he’s your friend, he’s right next to you, right? and it can be a real simple conversation with childlike language, as long as we’re using proper reverence, right?
We can have that familiar type of conversation. But as you grow in your faith, your prayer life needs to shift a little bit. Because think about it, when you’re in kindergarten and you’re just learning the alphabet, right? You’re learning how to talk and write differently. That the expectation by the time you’re in high school or by the time you get to college, right, is very, very different. You’re expected to be at a higher level and be able to do things at a little bit more detailed and thorough way, right? And so
So if you want a stronger prayer life, you’ve got to learn how things work in the spirit realm. You’ve got to get more comfortable with the supernatural. You’ve got to tune your ear to hear God’s voice. You’re gonna have to lean into some things, and it’s gonna take a little bit of work on your part, right?
many believers are missing out on a deep connection with the Lord through prayer. You cannot just toss out a few requests every now and then and expect God to move in your life. there are some actual principles that come into play. So as you grow and mature in your faith and in your walk with the Lord, God is going to ask you to step up your game a little bit when it comes to your prayer life.
So that begs the question, right? Where do we learn these principles? So I’m excited to share with you. I just created my very first digital course, and this is gonna help you freshen your prayer life, okay? My approach is actually really different. It’s not just giving you a bunch of facts, it’s not just giving you a bunch of information with a step-by-step how-to. And let me just say, there’s a place for that. I am definitely a step-by-step person, that’s how I prefer to learn. But my approach is a little different. My goal is gonna be to challenge you to look at prayer differently.
This is an eight video series. It’s titled Teach Us to Pray Seven Keys to Transform Your Prayer Life. All right. And I want to point out that it’s not about praying wrong or right. Okay. It’s about seeing more results. It’s about becoming more powerful, more effective in your prayers. There is a Bible verse, James 5, verse 16. Let me read it to you. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. So my question Are you a righteous person? Would you say
That your prayers are powerful. Would you say that your prayers are effective? Just something to ponder. I’ve actually spent hours and hours crafting these messages in these eight videos and really defining these seven keys because I’m super passionate about believers having some guidance around the topic of prayer. And since there are actually quite a few churches or Christian organizations that don’t intentionally strategically teach their congregations how to hear God speak and how to help them pray.
Practice tuning their ears, I am just stepping in to fill in the gap. growing up, I never had anybody say to me, Let’s go ask God. No one ever modeled that for me. Nobody ever asked that question and came back with an immediate answer. So, because of that, I actually never knew that that could even be possible.
Let me be clear, all right? If you make room for God to speak in your life, He’s gonna talk. He’s gonna talk. It is so cool. You will be so blown away with some of the things he says to you and shows you, but that’s a whole feather conversation. I’m just saying that hearing God’s voice does take practice, and you’re never gonna learn if you don’t actually give him space. So you’ve got to listen. So my hope and my desire with this course is really just to bring awareness. You may not actually know as much about prayer as you think you know. And I want to make sure.
That this resource is actually affordable and available to ordinary people like you and me who want to learn and want to grow spiritually. Industry research and business leaders say that a course like this should be priced at hundreds of dollars, and I just cannot go that high. I just don’t like that. And to be clear, this course isn’t about just my personal experiences, it’s got a lot of biblical teaching, and it’s a lot of things that God has shown me over the years. So I want to give you a little taste of these seven keys.
to pray with more power and more effectiveness, here are the seven keys that I talk about in this digital course. The first one, key number one, focuses on your relationship with God. It’s gotta be personal. Think about this. Who are you most likely to help? A stranger who comes up to you randomly or
One of your close friends.
It’s not that you wouldn’t help the stranger, right? Most of us would probably step up and help. But the thing is, you’re gonna go above and beyond for somebody who really loves you, right? And so it’s a similar concept with the Lord. When you develop that relationship, when you put effort into that connection with him, he’s gonna start showing up in ways that are gonna blow your mind, that are really gonna shock you and surprise you in a great way, right? You’re you’re gonna be pleasantly surprised. So the next key relationship.
focuses on the idea that sometimes it’s not so much what you say that makes or breaks the conversation, it’s the way you approach it, right?
there is actually a general formula that we see in the Bible, in the New Testament, that shows us how God likes to be talked to. God actually shows us how he wants us to approach him when we have a conversation. And so that’s one of the things that I go into in these seven keys. Another one is that God actually wants to talk with you. He loves you so, so much, We get that in our head, but we have to actually understand who we are when we come to him. Do you?
You like it when people approach you with a whiny voice, or they’re kind of like their their words are sort of like a begging way of talking. Maybe they have their eyes cast to the ground or off to the side, so they’re not actually looking at you. Like your body language has a lot to say about how you see yourself, and it’s gonna affect every conversation that you have,
If you don’t like yourself and you keep talking badly about yourself, your prayers are going to be wimpy and weak.
You’ve got to learn how to see yourself as worthy and welcome and good enough when you approach the Lord in conversation. If you don’t understand the truth of who God made you to be and you don’t embrace your full purpose, your for full calling, you’re gonna pray pitiful, powerless prayers. And nobody wants that, right? Okay. And then of course, the Holy Bible is a major power source in your prayers. All right. Scripture packs a punch because it was God’s words first, right? He gave them to us.
He had them written down and handed to us so that we could use them as a reference. So we’ve got to learn how to incorporate Bible verses. We’ve got to study, we’ve got to memorize, right? It’s important that we know our Bibles and that we utilize that tool in our prayers. So what else? Another thing that I cover in this series is the idea of freedom, And how personal growth actually matters and how our baggage can get in the way of our prayers. Because when you come to God,
From a broken lens and a skewed perspective on life, you are not gonna pray well. Okay? What do I mean by that? You’re gonna focus on praying your problems. You’re gonna rehash it. You’re gonna fixate on your view of the situation instead of pulling back and trying to get God’s perspective. You’ve got to learn how to recognize your junk. You’ve got to deal regularly with things like bitterness, limiting beliefs, negative thinking, heart wounds, loss, and sorrow, right? You’ve got to get some healing.
Gotta get whole because those things actually give the enemy access to torment us and they can cause us to think wrongly and have an incorrect view of the world and an incorrect view of God Himself. So you’ve got to recognize freedom and you’ve got to seek personal growth. Another area that I discuss is that you’ve got some clout when you pray, Because you are a child of the most high God.
The creator of the universe. I mean, that is so amazing. You have to understand who you are in Christ and stand firm in your identity as a child of God. A lot of people pray from a place of helplessness or victimhood instead of confidence and boldness You are a co-heir with Christ, right? You have an inheritance. You’ve got some, you’ve got the backing of the most powerful being.
in the universe, right? God Himself. remember too, the same power that raised Jesus from the grave actually lives in you. You are already powerful. You just have to learn how to use it. You just have to understand your authority and your power. All right. And then the last key focuses on doubt and unbelief because doubt and unbelief get in your way in your prayers. You have to grow your faith. So how do you intentionally grow your faith, right? And that’s what I focus on in the last video. The Bible says that without faith,
It is impossible to please God. But here’s the good news, and I love this. Everybody, this is what the Bible says in Romans, everybody has been given from God a measure of faith. And you don’t actually need much because the Bible talks about faith the size of a mustard seed. Here’s the thing: you’ve already got faith, you just got to start learning how to use it. Okay. And you got to learn how to shut down the doubt and unbelief. And I covered that in the last video. So the seven keys are this, okay? Number
Number one, know your God. Number two, know the format. Number three, know yourself. Number four, know your Bible. Number five, know freedom. Number six, know your authority. And number seven, know great faith. So go over to the show notes. I’ve got the link in there. You can grab it and click on that digital course. You’re gonna be pleasantly surprised at the concepts that I present. And it’s really gonna help you think differently, and it’s really gonna help you.
Have a stronger, deeper prayer life. So I know you’re gonna enjoy it. Thank you so much for supporting me and helping me out. I’m super excited to continue to move forward in this journey that God has given me. all right, as you go about this week, let’s explore the depths of this final thought. Okay, where have you gotten a little bit complacent or a little bit too self focused in your prayer life? Hmm. This is not condemnation. I just
want you to think about this right these are reflection questions where do you need a little nudge to freshen up your conversations with God bless you friends I hope you have an amazing week we’ll see you next time