How to have a powerful prayer time.

Having a regular powerful prayer time in your life is a game changer. I’m not talking about a little religious “quiet time”. I’m talking about prayer that shifts the atmosphere over your life and supercharges you with heavens power. Prayer times that smash off the assault of the enemy and break any oppressive atmosphere around you and leave you with a sense of victory. Prayer times where you encounter God and walk out feeling strong and ready to take on life!

I’m not sure if you have ever had a prayer time like this but I want to encourage you that you can and that you should make it your expectation. Every time you go to your place of prayer you should expect a powerful time of prayer with God. If you were to have these regularly, it truly would transform your spiritual life.

I want to share with you some simple key elements that will help you have powerful prayer times:

1. Find a solitary place.

Mark 1:35 “Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.”

Jesus often went to solitary places to pray. A solitary place is somewhere you can get alone with God and with little distractions. It’s also a place you can make some noise if you have to. I prefer my room rather than outdoors. And I don’t care who hears me. Often my family is home but I’ve gotten used to that and in some ways I’m glad my kids get to hear how I pray. I used to hear my father praying in his room and it actually helped me learn how to pray myself. Sometimes I would wake up in the morning to him praying in tongues in the room next to mine. I’d get up, have breakfast, go out for an hour or two, then come home and find he was still in his room praying in tongues. That had a big impact on me!

2. Find a time that works for you.

For Jesus it was, “Very early in the morning, while it was still dark…” (Mark 1:35).

Early in the morning is before your day has started and prepares you for the day. It’s like sharpening your axe before you start chopping. I find the morning is the best time to pray. Often if I decide to pray in the afternoon I never do. There’s usually too many distractions and I just don’t feel like praying by the afternoon. I have to decide the night before that I’m getting up to pray in the morning. It usually always requires some discipline but the more it becomes a routine the easier it gets. You may find that another time is much better for you. Just do whatever works best for you.

3. Start with worship.

Worship is an act of surrender. It literally means to come towards, bow before and kiss the hand. Worship is coming under the kingship of Christ. It’s bending the knee and confessing His lordship. As we do this we come under His dominion, authority and power.

• I always start my times of prayer declaring the lordship of Christ and telling Jesus I love Him and surrender everything to Him: my heart, my will, my plans, my possessions – all that I am and everything I have.
• I then invite Jesus, the king and His kingdom to come into the room and reign.
• I then spend time singing worship songs. This includes songs I know as well as free worship, where I just sing from my heart. I can play a few chords on the guitar that I taught myself. Enough to sing a few worship songs. My kids always tell me that I play the same chords over and over again and ask me if I know any other chords, to which I always tell them I probably should learn a few more. But those chords do me just fine and are enough to have a great time of worship. And when I sing I don’t hold back, I let my inner rockstar out cause he loves to sing loud and passionate! But I also flow, sometimes I’m loud, sometimes soft, sometimes it’s all free worship from the heart, other times it’s known songs that I sense are good to sing at that point. One thing I find to be very important and powerful is not to sing about Jesus but to sing to Jesus. It’s more intimate and interactive and brings you face to face with Him.
• The whole time I’m worshipping I’m also inviting the Holy Spirit to come and welcoming the presence of God – His anointing, His glory, the atmosphere of heaven, the Kingdom and dominion of God.
• And I’m always pressing in deeper and seeking to go further into God’s presence. One thing I have found is that the Holy Spirit loves language of our desire and dependence on God. “Jesus I love you, I’m desperate for more of you, I must feel your presence, I must hear your voice, I need you, I can’t live without you.” The Holy Spirit is so attracted to this and always responds.

It’s amazing how this kind of worship and surrender takes us deeper into God’s presence and causes our prayers to be much more effective. Look at this amazing scripture about Jesus’ prayers while he was on earth:

Hebrews 5:7 “During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.”

4. Praise Him.

My worship time also involves praise where I declare the greatness of God. Praise shifts the atmosphere and lifts your faith. So many people focus on their problems and difficulties while trying to have a prayer time. This gets the focus off God and onto yourself. Don’t do that! Rather lift God up, exalt Him, declare His greatness over all things.

There is an old Bible word that tells us to “magnify” God. This is to see how infinitely big and superior in power God is to all other things. I like to spend time magnifying God and boasting about how great He is.

Psalm 34:2-4 “My soul makes its boast in the Lord; let the humble hear and be glad. Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together! I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears.”

Psalm 69:30 “I will praise the name of God with a song; I will magnify him with thanksgiving.”

When we see God in His awesomeness and how much greater His is than our problems or our enemies, our faith becomes explosive and the atmosphere around us shifts.

5. Pray in tongues.

When I feel that my praise and worship has lifted the atmosphere I will usually go into a time of praying in tongues.

Praying in tongues is a very important and powerful part of my prayer time.

It does a number of things:

• It builds us up on the inside to become spiritually strong.
• It bypasses our understanding/mind and connects us with God’s consciousness.
• It helps us become more in tune with the Holy Spirit.
• It connects our prayers with the Holy Spirit.
• It helps us to hear God’s voice, feel His presence and sense what He is doing.

1 Corinthians 14:4 “Anyone who speaks in a tongue edifies themselves…”

1 Corinthians 14:14-15 “For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful. So what shall I do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my understanding; I will sing with my spirit, but I will also sing with my understanding.”

As you continue to pray in tongues for a period of time you will start to go deeper and begin to break into higher levels in the Spirit. I’ll often just keep going and find a natural escalation and intensity in my tongues. This is in correspondence to what is happening in the Spirit realm through my connection with the Holy Spirit in intercession. If you’ve never done this, don’t over analyze what I just said or be critical of it, just try it! It’s actually hard to explain it, it’s just a matter of experiencing it. Once you have, you’ll want to do it all the time because of the powerful effect it has.

6. Declare truth about your identity.

This will take you out of a posture of defeat and weakness and into a stance of victory and boldness and even give you a righteous aggression in the Spirit, which quite frankly more believers need to have! This is all about declaring who you are in Christ. When we know how righteous we are in Christ and how much authority we have in Him, our prayers will become powerful and effective. And this is the context of:

James 5:16 “The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.”

The truth about our identity is that we are the righteous of God in Christ Jesus so we don’t ever need to prayer condemned, tentative or begarly prayers! We pray confident faith-filled prayers knowing that we are children of God and he hears us!

7. Warfare.

Sometimes you have to do spiritual warfare. Either for ourselves or on behalf of others. There are times we need to stand against and break a demonic assault, dark atmosphere, intimidation, accusations or lies that are coming against us or against someone else.

Sometimes our warfare requires praying with our understanding where we take authority over the enemy, resist, stand against, rebuke, break and command to go. Other times it requires intercession tongues where our spirit connects with the Holy Spirit and He prays through us pinpointing the things in the Spirit realm that need to be addressed.

Romans 8:26-27 “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”

I find warfare praying can usually get quite aggressive and requires that we press through until we get some breakthroughs in the spirit. You’ll discern when you get the breakthrough because you’ll feel the release in your spirit.

Ephesians 6:12 “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”

2 Corinthians 10:2-4 “For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds.”

8. Supplication prayer.

I usually never start my prayer time with supplication prayers (asking God for things). This is simply because at the start I’m usually very much in the flesh, earthly focused, low in faith, with no heavenly atmosphere or power flowing. Prayers in that atmosphere are usually pretty ineffective simply because we’re not praying them from a place of faith, authority and power. I do my supplication praying usually after I’ve done all the previous things I’ve talked about because then the atmosphere is supercharged. In this atmosphere you don’t have to pray long prayers or beg and plead. You just pray short powerful prayers and you can sense they are much more effective. This is when I’ll pray for myself, family, other people and situations.

Acts 4:24 & 31 “When they heard this, they raised their voices together in prayer to God… After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.”

9. Soak in God’s presence and hear his voice.

Sometimes God actually wants us to be still and quiet and just soak in His presence. It’s great to have some soaking music ready for this kind of thing. This is when God wants to fill you, give you revelation, speak to you, empower you, activate gifts or simply take you deeper into encounters with Him.

There’s only ever a few times where I’ve started my prayer time with soaking and it’s always been very Spirit led. Most of the time if you try to go straight into a soaking time at the beginning of your prayers you’ll find you just vague out or fall asleep. This is because the atmosphere is not ready for soaking or you’re not ready for it. You need to go through the other stages to prepare yourself and the atmosphere. Sometimes while doing the others stages I’ll suddenly reach a point where the glory of God comes and I know I can do nothing else except lie down and soak in God’s glorious presence.

So why don’t you make a time this week to have a powerful prayer time with God. Find a solitary place, get up early one morning, start out with worship and surrender, then praise and magnify God, spend time praying in tongues, then declare your identity in Christ, deal with any demonic stuff through warfare and once the atmosphere is charged and clear then pray for some needs and requests or perhaps simply finish off soaking in God’s presence.

I’m really praying and believing that you are going to start having some powerful prayer times with God!

God bless, 

Ryan Rufus.

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