How to Keep Your Prayer Life Alive
For many of us, prayer has quietly become something we do event to event: a quick word over a meal, an urgent plea when an illness hits, and then silence until the next crisis comes. If you have ever wondered how to keep your prayer life alive when it feels like a string of emergencies, the life of Elisha points to something better, a relationship with God that runs moment by moment. In 2 Kings 6, almost every other verse shows some kind of interaction between Elisha and God. His communication was not meal to meal or crisis to crisis. It was constant.
What Does It Mean to Pray Moment by Moment?
Praying moment by moment means an ongoing, running relationship with God rather than a set of scheduled appointments. If you read through 2 Kings 6, you see it in verse after verse: verses nine, ten, twelve, sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen all show Elisha interacting with God in real time.
This was not unusual for the Old Testament prophets and priests. Look at the lives of Samuel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel. Their communication with God looked just like this. It was moment by moment.
Why You and I Have the Same Access Elisha Had
Here is the good news for anyone living on this side of the cross. In the New Covenant, because of the blood of Jesus Christ shed for us, all our sins are forgiven and washed away, so that we can have access to God the Father through Jesus the Son, by the power of the Spirit dwelling within us.
Jesus promised this Himself. In John 14, He said, "I will ask the Father, and He will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever, the Spirit of truth. You know Him, for He lives within you, and He will be in you."Ephesians 2:18 says the same thing from another angle: all of us can now come to the Father through the same Spirit because of what Christ has done for us.
There is more still. You and I have the written Word of God at our fingertips, a love letter, a roadmap, divinely inspired, alive and active and sharp (Hebrews 4:12). It helps us affirm and confirm the Holy Spirit's promptings in our lives. Between the Spirit who lives in us and the Word in our hands, our prayers can move from praying only at an event, for this particular illness or that particular fear, to praying moment by moment.
How to Keep Your Prayer Life Alive: Stay in Step With God
If there is one active takeaway here, it is this: learn to stay in step with God. That is how a prayer life stays vital, moving forward, alive, and active.
Staying in step means I do not want to get ahead of Him, and I do not want to lag behind Him. I want to ask Him for what I need and want, and as He reveals and unfolds what is ahead, I want to walk in it.
Consider what happens when you get ahead of God. You start playing His role. You and I do not know what lies ahead; only God can see that. So when we run out in front of what He has revealed, we try to step into the planner's seat, which belongs to Him. It is His plan and His story. But if you get behind God, now you are being disobedient. He has shown you the direction you should go, and you are keeping your distance from actually walking in it. We do not want to be in front of Him playing His part, and we do not want to be behind Him refusing to obey Him fully. We want to stay in step with what He has revealed, and that is the most critical piece of Elisha's example in this whole story.
Prayer Is Collaboration With Revelation
Elisha shows us something else about prayer: it collaborates with what God has already revealed. Look back at that scene in 2 Kings 6:16, where Elisha tells his terrified servant, "Don't be afraid, for there are more on our side than on theirs." Elisha had already seen something. His servant was panicking, but Elisha had seen the angels, the horses, and the flaming chariots. So he prayed in line with what he had seen, asking God to open his servant's eyes and to blind the eyes of the opposing army.
This is where many of us get stuck. How are we supposed to collaborate with the Holy Spirit when we already have a hard enough time hearing what He is trying to reveal? A few ordinary situations show how this works.
What Should I Do When I Discern Something?
Many of you have had moments when you instantly discerned a situation. You knew in an instant the truth behind what was happening, and you thought, "I understand what is really going on here."
In those moments, a lot of us take the wrong step. We say, "I have discerned it, I know what is true, so I am going to expose it." But that discernment was given to you and to me by the power of the Holy Spirit, and what He asks us to do with it is to pray in collaboration with it.
Suppose I discern in a moment that a child is not telling me the truth. I can pull out all the evidence, make them feel crazy and shamed, and expose them. Or I can say, "Lord, would You help reveal the fact that this is not right? I do not want to expose and shame my child, but I also know what is going on here." That is a small example. Sometimes it is larger. Sometimes it is a marriage, and there is a real discernment about what is happening underneath. A couple might be fighting about finances, but there is a bigger thing at play, something in the spiritual realm that God reveals to one of them.
In that moment, you do not need to announce, "I think I am hearing from God, and He told me this." That will get you into all kinds of trouble. Instead you can pray, "God, I sense that this is the truth of the situation. If this is true, by the power of Your Spirit, would You reveal it to him, and reveal it to her as well?" Those revelations are not given to us so we can judge or expose someone. They are given so we can intercede, a big word that simply means to pray for another person on their behalf.
What If It Is Just a Hunch?
Sometimes it is not even discernment. Sometimes it is just a hunch, an inner sense that something is not right. So many of us step straight into that hunch and start acting on it, when God is actually giving it to us so that we will ask.
Say you sense that your spouse has something going on inside. If you are not careful, you can damage the relationship by forcing the door open. You think, "We are married, we should share everything." I know what you mean, but you also know that sometimes there is something in the recesses of the heart that a person is not ready to share with anyone yet. When you are on the other side of that and you sense it, it is time to go to the Lord and pray in collaboration with the revelation. You can pray, "Lord, I sense in my spirit that something is out of whack here. Would You reveal it, restore it, heal it, confirm it, deny it, or remove it?" Whatever the prayer is, let it collaborate with the revelation.
Where This Leaves Us
For those of us who have received Jesus as Savior and Lord, the Spirit keeps whispering. He lives within you. He is a guide, a comforter, and an advocate. Once something is revealed to us, it is time to take it to the Lord, and that is where the Word and prayer come together for us.
In the New Covenant we have the Spirit of God. We hear His voice in conversations, in the things we read and listen to, and in our circumstances. Then we ask God and confirm it with Him in His Word, and He meets us there every time. He promised as much: "If you seek Me with your whole heart, you will find Me, declares the Lord" (Jeremiah 29:13). That is how a prayer life stays alive, moment by moment, in step with the God who is always speaking.
