The Bible says, "Ask and it shall be given unto you." In the Bible stories, people ask and get results, but I rarely did. So I asked the question. What are they doing differently than me? The answer was, "A lot of things." David in Psalms 100 says to pray by entering into His gates with thanksgiving and into His courts with praise. This adds power to our prayers because we tend to focus on our problems, not on Jesus. Thanksgiving and praise in prayer teach us to focus on the good things we have. I think if I would do this for even 10 minutes per day habitually, my prayers would gain in strength. Praise and thanksgiving are always great weapons against P. They help us be content. 2. Worship. My dad taught me to pray: Father, You are a great and mighty God. You are the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. I worship you today. When David worshiped Bathsheba, his son was born dead and his kids tried to kill him for decades. When David worshipped God he was empowered to win some of the greatest victories in the history of the world. Today I am committing to try to worship like David did, because when he worshipped, God's power increased. Google has lots of great ideas on how to worship. 3. Next, we should go to war with sin. The Bible says: 1 Peter 3:12 - "For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer." Yesterday satan kept popping sinful thoughts into my head. But I went to war back on him with prayer. 2nd Corinthians 10:5 urges us to take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. We often forget that every sin leads to destruction. It is a great thing to be determined to stop sinning. When we go to war with "All sin," the Bibles promises us an increase in power in our prayers. 4. Praying about and trying to fulfill our purpose. When David was doing what God wanted him to do his prayers were powerful. When he was sitting around looking at the wrong things, (well, we know how that ended). I wrote a lot about purpose in my post, "Why God wants us to quit." 5. Pray the right prayer. We all have x number of things that trigger us to go back to P. Write out your triggers. Write out prayers that will help your go to war with each trigger. Research how to overcome each trigger. Then pray a bunch about what you learned from your research. For example, your life frustrates you (like it does all of us). Pray, "Father, take away this spirit of lust and help me to be content." I have prayed this prayer hundreds of times. In hindsight, I probably should have prayed it a lot more. In the future that is what I will try to do. 6. Lastly, repent. We have opened Pandora's box with our sin. Yes, we say we are sorry for our lust but what is repentance that brings power? Powerful repentance is making a plan and getting to work. How much time should we spend daily researching quitting P information or programs? Whatever amount of time you spend now, "double it" if you keep falling. At some point you will have to skill and the power to quit. I have read the "stop the addictions" free online program many times. STA https://stoptheaddictions.com/home-page/sex-porn-freedom/sex-porn-freedom-in-30-days-day-one/ What programs have helped you? (Please list if it was free or give the cost). Does God want someone who cries loudly in repentance. Or someone who copies and pastes 100 quitting porn articles into a Google doc or Word doc and studies them as if their life depends on it? Lastly, this really works. 10 years ago I was an angry man. I went to war with my anger using these methods and today I have control over it. Obey, plan and review often. This is how you start to increase power in prayer.
And it all ended well for David. His passion and love for God was intense. He struggled a lot and he did a lot and he ended up being a Bible hero.
Today I am struggling. Jesus fought satan with the Word. Today I will be attacking satan with prayers based on the Word every time he attacks me. “Father, help me to turn my eyes away from worthless things; preserve my life according to your word.” Turning our eyes preserves our lives. “Father, Your Word says that I will not be tempted beyond my ability. I will put in the work but please give me the wisdom to escape this temptation.” “Father, help me to flee sexual immorality.” A great goal is to increase this skill daily. “Father, help me to not think about how to gratify the desires of my flesh. Show me what to think about instead.” “Father, help me to remember that lust leads to death.” This prayer is based on James 1:14-15. Something always is dying or dies when we give in to lust.
Deuteronomy 28: NIV. “If you fully obey the LORD your God and carefully follow all his commands I give you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations on earth. You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country.” I try hard to focus on obedience. Then... based on this verse I think a blessing is on the way. But sometimes I need to learn from Job. He focused on obedience and sometimes his blessing was delayed. Sometimes he went through a very rough stretch before the blessing happened. But here is the good news – the blessing did happen. For most of us, we won't have to wait as long a Job did, but we might have to wait. And if we continue to obey and say, “Blessed be the Name of the Lord” instead of complaining and giving up, good things will happen sooner or later. Increase your faith to be like Job by studying the Bible. Buy the Bible on CD and listen to 4 or 5 chapters every day. Start a “Through the Bible in one year program.” Job “knew” that God was with him. If you focus on prayer, Bible study, and obedience, someday you will “know” that God's blessing is with you. And once that happens, you will have a very short list for beating addiction forever.
Today I spent a lot of time praying about the cross. KJV Romans 8 “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” When we watch a movie like “The Passion of the Christ,” or when we pray about the cross, or when we turn aggressively from sin, we are walking after the Spirit. But, this is a forum about bad habits, so the question is – how do we learn habits of walking after the Spirit more often. KJV Philippians 2:12 Therefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” Are you like me. Are you just too hard-headed to obey this verse? But... now that I realize that sin ruins me, I pay a lot more attention to this verse. I made the word work bold. Why? Because when we spend time working to fight against sin habits we are obeying this verse. There is power in memorizing and obeying this verse. Power! There is power in deciding to walk “After the Spirit. Power! Lastly, there is power when you study this site and take some of the suggestions and turn them into new daily habits. Power! Consider praying: “Father, show me how You want me to fight against sin.” When you add to your list of daily habits that you are starting (to replace what you are stopping), you are obeying Philippians 2:12. Learn habits that will help you to “Walk after the Spirit.” These habits will bring power into your life.
The power of our prayer increases when we commit to following God's Word today. The Bible says in 2 Timothy 2:22 Now flee from youthful lusts and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart. A prayer to escape lust that forgets to pursue a Christian trait is a nice prayer. A life dedicated to pursuing traits like these four leads to a prayer life that begins to have power. Consider praying: "Father, help me to flee lust, and give me a zeal for purity." Active Christianity noted: "People who flee youthful lusts and fight for purity in their lives are few and far between. They are extremely precious in the sight of God, and He is able to use them to accomplish His good and perfect will on earth. “Therefore if anyone cleanses himself from the latter, he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified and useful for the Master, prepared for every good work.” 2 Timothy 2:21." A Practical Example I recently saw an ad about a steaming service that promotes a lot of smut. Today that ad popped into my mind. I immediately rejected that thought and started praising God and then prayed the prayer of Jabez: Lord, I pray that you would expand my borders, and bless me indeed. In 2:22 Paul is recommending we run from lust as if a rabid dog is chasing us. But even more importantly, we pick a spiritual thing to set our minds on. These four traits are four of the best ten things we can set our minds on. Pursue Our prayer life becomes a blazing fire when we make a habit of pursuing Godly traits. This century, consider making it a daily habit to pursue. Very few medical students struggle with lust the day before their final exam. They are in full pursuit of becoming a doctor. Consider writing down 4-5 traits that you will pursue (probably one at a time) over the next 4 days. Then keep updating your list often. Obviously, you can pursue things like righteousness and love as a focus for one day out of every week. Now you can study what you are pursuing a bit that day, and now you can pray fanatically with power to acquire what you are pursuing instead of being overcome with lust.
