Developing a Plan
Problem solving takes five steps: (1) general orientation; (2) problem definition; (3) generation of alternatives; (4) decision making; (5) verification.
D'Zurilla and Goldfried1
THE STEPS OF PRAYER
First, decide what you really want.
Second, decide whether the thing you
want is a Christian thing.
Third, write it down.
Fourth, still the mind.
Fifth, talk with God about it.
Sixth, promise God what you will do to
make this prayer come true.
Seventh, do everything loving that comes
to your mind about it.
Eighth, thank God for answering in his
own way.
Ninth, release the whole prayer from
your conscious thinking.
E. Stanley Jones
I am not gifted, but I can plod.
William Carey
Writer Derek Price reports that in the 1920s, practically every piece of research equipment in British physics laboratories was stuck together with red Bank of England sealing wax. The wax was the best cement then available for holding a vacuum. Researchers depended on the wax for almost all their experiments. In a sense, progress in physics depended on a substance developed for businessmen's correspondence not scientific experimentation; this red gooey wax determined what the finest minds in the golden age of physics could discover about their science.2
Prayer benefits from technique in a similar manner. The postures, memory aids, spurs, and other tools we use, like the red Bank of England sealing wax, can make the difference between what is possible in prayer and what is not. They can lead to a greatly enriched and deepened prayer life, even though they themselves are peripheral to it.
Unfortunately, each person's prayer life is so unique that no set of techniques works for everyone. Warren Wiersbe, Bible teacher with Back to the Bible radio broadcasts, said, ...
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