Here are two important prayer principles:

1) Talk to God when troubles surround you. If you’re like most people, good times can make you trust in yourself instead of God. It’s the troubled times that drive you to your knees – a bad medical report, a child hooked on drugs, a lost job, or a troubled marriage. That’s God’s intention in allowing troubled times! He allows trouble to afflict us – not to make us miserable, but to bring us to Himself. Hosea the prophet said, ‘In their misery they will earnestly seek [God]’ (Hosea 5:15 NIV). God’s fatherly heart wants above all that we abide and confide in Him. And if it takes trouble to do it, He loves us enough to permit it. But when we turn to Him in our troubles, we discover that He is ‘our refuge and strength, always ready to help in times of trouble’ (Psalm 46:1 NLT).

2) Talk to God at all times. In his widely-read classic, The Practice of the Presence of God, Brother Lawrence speaks of prayer as a continual conversation with God – a practice for all times, places, and circumstances. While cooking and washing dishes, he found conversing with God as satisfying as in his allotted prayer times. He counsels us: ‘That we may accustom ourselves to a continual conversation with Him…in simplicity. That we need only to recognise God intimately present with us, and to address ourselves to Him every moment.’ That sounds like Paul’s instructions on the subject: ‘Pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests…always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people’ (Ephesians 6:18 NIV).