prayer Archives - Mike Signorelli

Do you struggle to pray?  The most simplistic definition of prayer is “talking to God.”  Every relationship is built through communication.  Without communication, relationships weaken and fade.   In Matthew 6:5, Jesus starts a sentence with, “When you pray…” This indicates that prayer is an expected part of a believer’s walk with God.  He doesn’t say, “If you pray…”  Prayer is a given for each believer.  

If it is difficult for you to talk to God each day, here are five reasons that may be happening, and solutions for overcoming your lack of communication with God.

1. You’re mad at God for not answering previous prayers.  

Maybe you’ve been praying and praying, asking, pleading, and the thing you wanted so badly never happened, so that has caused you to hold offense at God.  

How do I solve it?  In Psalm 10:1, the psalmist cries out to God saying, “Hey, why are you standing far off?  Why are you hiding in times of trouble?” (my paraphrase).  

Not all prayers have to be pretty.  If you’re holding back from praying to God because you have an offense that he hasn’t done what you wanted him to when you wanted him to, get vulnerable with Him.  Ask the questions that have been on your heart:

God, why does it feel like you’re so far away?

Why does it feel like you’re ignoring me?

If you will ask him questions through the Holy Spirit, He will answer!  

2. You’re distracted by demonic activity.

I have to continually remind Christians, they are not alone in this world.  There are angelic beings and demonic beings in the atmospheres of our lives, in our homes, and our workplaces. They’re present, but are you aware of them? 

James 4:7 says, “Submit yourself to God, then resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” This verse indicates that demonic distraction is real and it happens to every Christian.  It’s so common that James 4:7 was directed toward all of us.

If you want proof that you’re distracted by demonic activity, here it is: you can scroll through your phone all night long, and you don’t feel tired at all.  But when you begin to read your Bible or pray, you immediately want to go to sleep.  There may be a demonic activity connected to your inability to pray.

I’ve heard it said that demons will give people supernatural abilities to do sinful things.  In Mark chapter five, a demonized man can break chains.  So sometimes demons enable supernatural abilities.

3. Original sin. 

Adam was placed in the garden of Eden, which was a perfect environment.  But he fell because he had a human will.  As a result, he and Eve sinned.  All of us have a physical body and we must learn to crucify the flesh.  Your flesh is not going to want to pray.  Your flesh is going to want to do the things that it desires.  It wants to procreate and have sexual activity.  It wants to eat.  It wants to feed addictions to nicotine and alcohol.  It wants to escape through drug experiences.  It craves dopamine and serotonin.  

We are all going to struggle in our bodies until we die and our spirit is released from our physical body. So it’s not realistic to expect that your body is ever going to want to pray.   You are gonna have to crucify the flesh and beat it into submission.  One of my favorite phrases is “Suffer well.”   It’s going to hurt.  Jesus hurt when the crown of thorns was pressed into his head.  But on the other side of that suffering was freedom and peace for your mind. And so sometimes you’re going to have to suffer through subjecting that flesh to the will of God.  But on the other side of that suffering is great freedom.

4. Failing to plan is planning to fail.

Christians don’t pray because they don’t plan to pray.  We have planners to schedule our entire day.  We think about the commute to work, when we’ll shower when we’ll shave when we’ll buy clothes, and when we will pay bills.  But we never plan to pray.  So failing to plan is planning to fail. You must plan your prayer (check out my blog about morning prayer for information on the benefits of rising early to pray). 

5.  You don’t know how to pray.  

Many Christians don’t pray because they don’t know how to pray.  If this describes you, here’s a simple acronym that is a template for prayer. This is called the ACTS method.  So use the ACTS method.  

A – Adoration

Adoration is worship.  It’s when you come before the Lord and focus on Him and His attributes.  Psalm 100:4 says, “Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise!” We welcome God into our prayer time through worship and adoration. When you begin to worship and praise God at the beginning of your prayer, you will see the atmosphere instantly change as the Spirit of God is welcomed.   Some ideas of things you can say are:

• God, I worship you.

• I magnify you.

• I lift you up, God.

• God, I honor you today.

• Lord, your beauty is unmatched.

• God, the focus is on you today.

• Lord, you’re so amazing.  
• You’re so lovely.

C – Confession

Confession means coming out of hiding.  When Adam sinned, he hid. God knew where he was, but Adam hid anyway.  Don’t hide from God when you sin.  Make confession a part of your prayer every day.  This builds a relationship with God instead of hiding from Him. 

Here’s an example of what that might sound like in prayer:

God, I fell back into this sin, and I don’t know why I’m doing it.  I don’t know why I drank the way I just drank.  God, I don’t know why I went back to lust.  I’m confessing my sin, but I’m asking not just that you forgive me, but that you would heal me from the root.

T – Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is an act of faith.  We not only thank God for what he has done and then thank him for what is He about to do.  That might sound like this: 

God, I thank you for today.  Thank you for waking me up.  Thank you for giving me a job even if I don’t always like it.  Thank you, God, for my family, even if they get on my nerves.  Thank you, God, for my healing that’s on the way.

Thanksgiving is not only thanking Him for the past and present but thanking Him for the future.  

S- Supplication

Supplication is a powerful concept.  It means going back repeatedly in earnestness.  That might sound like this:

God, I’m not letting go of you. I believe you will do the thing that you said you would do.  I’m reminding you of your promises.  I have this chronic illness but it’s not my identity.  I haven’t seen the healing yet, but it’s coming.  

Hannah was a person in the Bible who prayed with supplication.  She was barren. She went to the temple and was so adamant and earnest about her prayers that Eli, who was over the temple, thought she was drunk.  Her prayers sounded like this:

God, I can’t have a child. I have not been able to conceive.  Something in me is broken.  I need supernatural healing. And I’m going to go before you over and over and over and over again until you give me what You promised.  You promised that you were a healer, and I’m holding you to it.  I’m about to end this prayer but I’ll be back again tomorrow, and the day after, because I’m not giving up.  I still believe that you can show me breakthroughs, healing, and restoration.  

Guess what?  She conceived and had Samuel who eventually became one of the greatest prophets of the nation of Israel.  Her supplication was heard by the Father.  

If you you’re mad at God for not answering previous prayers, if you struggle to discipline your flesh to pray, if you face demonic activity, if you fail to plan to pray, or if you don’t know how to pray, use the resources in this blog to help course-correct so that you can add regular prayer into your day.  As you begin to cultivate your daily communication with God, you’ll see your spiritual life grow and the depth of your love for God increase exponentially.

Morning prayer will change your life! Jesus prayed early in the morning, and if you install this one practice, it will completely change your experience as a Christian.  In this blog, I want to share how you can access higher levels of authority, influence, and power in the Kingdom. Then, I’m going to share four very practical and very easy ways that you can install this discipline in your life.  

Mark 1:35, ESV

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.

Very Early

On record, the disciples only ever asked Jesus how to do one thing: pray. I believe it’s because they would have watched what Jesus was doing as described in Mark 1:35.  They probably saw him going away not just early, but “very early” in the morning.  If you haven’t experienced a breakthrough, this could be why you’re not going to the next level.  

1400 New Neurons

When you wake up in the morning after having a full night’s sleep, you experience something that science calls neurogenesis.  That means that you wake up with 1,400 new neurons every single day.  Scientists first noticed this in the 1960s, but the idea that the adult brain could produce new neurons was so controversial that it wasn’t accepted until decades later.  

Create A New Brain

So what does this have to do with morning prayer?  Lamentations 3:22-23 says, “Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness” (ESV).  You wake up with over a thousand new neurons every single morning. Scripture says that God makes His mercies new every day.  That means it’s a new opportunity for a new mind and a new thought life. It’s an opportunity to create a new brain. 

These 1,400 new neurons have the potential to become anything.  Think of them as 1,400 soldiers you can either train in the army of God, or train to be lustful, perverted, jealous, envious, or full of worry and anxiety.  If you wake up in the morning and the first thing you do is grab your phone and start scrolling, you are training them to be jealous, envious, and/or lustful. God makes His mercies new every single day by giving you new neurons.  You have to choose what you do with them.  

Jesus, who was God but also in a human body, had to take those new neurons and say, “I’m going to get away in the early morning in prayer.  I’m going to submit and surrender these new neurons to the kingdom.  I am going to renew my mind.”

You Are A Morning Person

I am a morning person. People who are not morning people can be annoyed by that.  Well, guess what – you’re a morning person too in someone else’s time zone (ha!).  You can discipline yourself to become a person who prays in the morning.  It’s a matter of choice.  So as you begin to rewire your brain and your biology for this discipline, you will begin to experience some tremendous benefits. I believe that this could lead to the breakthrough that you’ve needed.  

In my own experience, when I wake up, the chaos of the day and the noise of the world around me begin to quickly cause a low level of anxiety and apprehension. When I set aside time to pray first thing in the morning, God speaks to me and gives me prophetic wisdom and insights into situations before I even encounter them.  The Lord will speak and reveal things before they happen, but you have to wake up and pray before they happen. 

Sacrifice The First And Best

It’s a sacrifice to wake up early.  I would love to sleep in longer, but instead, I wake up and make that sacrifice because God always honors sacrifice. I believe that it’s one of the ways I can show Him that I’m putting Him first.  In the Bible, we see that God only accepted sacrifices that represented giving what was first and best.  You are not allowed to give God leftovers.  

John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten son.”  Jesus is referred to as the firstborn of all creation.  So God gave Jesus, which was His first and his best, and then when Jesus was on this Earth he woke up early and gave His first and best to God in prayer. Then from that place, signs, miracles, wonders, healings, and financial provision were all there for Jesus. But Jesus gave His first and his best. 

Three Tips To Implement Early Morning Prayer

Here are three practical tips for installing this discipline in your life that you can implement starting tomorrow morning.  

1. Don’t delay.  

Set your alarm and wake up the first time it goes off.  If you hit the snooze button, you’re programming your brain to delay.  Put your alarm far enough away so that you physically have to get out of your bed to turn it off.  

Maybe you are asking God, “God, why are you delaying answering my prayers?”  Don’t delay meeting with him in the morning and see if your breakthrough comes.    

2.  Find the right spot to pray.  

It’s helpful if you can find a spot with natural sunlight.  As the sun comes up, you’ll be doing what is best for your biological, emotional, and spiritual well-being.  I have a back porch area here in New York City where I can go out and pray year-round, even when it’s cold. It refreshes me, physically and spiritually.  

Sometimes your spot might be somewhere secluded or a private place out of necessity.  I grew up as the oldest of five kids in a noisy, crazy house where everybody was up early to get ready for school.  I would pray in the bathroom, in the shower.  That was my spot, and it worked for me in that season.  

Don’t pick a place that will lull you back to sleep. It needs to be a place that is comfortable, but isn’t so comfortable that it becomes a form of distraction. 

3. Remove all distractions.

It’s very tempting first thing in the morning to grab my phone and see who emailed me, who commented on my latest post, or who subscribed to my YouTube channel since yesterday.  I tend to use my phone for ambient music during my prayer time, so I’ll put on spontaneous worship.  I have my phone there, but I teach myself that the primary usage of my phone during this time is to play worship that I can pray to, not to get caught up in all of those distractions.  So if you’re going to have a phone or other things that could cause distraction around, discipline yourself to use them for another purpose that contributes to your time of prayer.   

Try making morning prayer a priority like Jesus did. Give God the sacrifice of the first and best part of your day.  Don’t delay getting to it by hitting your snooze button, find the right spot, and remove all distractions.  In my early morning prayer, I’ve had visitations by God through the Holy Spirit.  I’ve received prophetic words and even received warnings about things that are going to happen throughout the day. God has been so faithful to meet me in that time.  I believe that Jesus woke up early to pray to model for us how we should live our Christian life.  Don’t forsake early morning prayer.  Let God meet you there and see how your life transforms.