Travailing In Prayer

Galatians 4:19

19 My little children, for whom I labor in birth again until Christ is formed in you,

I want to teach yall today about a way of praying that really gets not only God’s attention, but gets answers. Travailing prayer brings breakthrough. So let’s talk about travailing.

What is Travailing in Prayer?

Spiritual Travail is defined as “Intense Intercession given by the Holy Spirit whereby an individual or group is gripped by something that grips God’s Heart. The individual or group labors with Him for an opening to be created so that the new life can come forth.

Daniel travailed.

Daniel 9:3-7

3 Then I set my face toward the Lord God to make request by prayer and supplications, with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes.

4 And I prayed to the Lord my God, and made confession, and said, “O Lord, great and awesome God, who keeps His covenant and mercy with those who love Him, and with those who keep His commandments,

5 we have sinned and committed iniquity, we have done wickedly and rebelled, even by departing from Your precepts and Your judgments.

6 Neither have we heeded Your servants the prophets, who spoke in Your name to our kings and our princes, to our fathers and all the people of the land.

7 O Lord, righteousness belongs to You, but to us shame of face, as it is this day—to the men of Judah, to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and all Israel, those near and those far off in all the countries to which You have driven them, because of the unfaithfulness which they have committed against You.

Nicole and I were talking a week or so ago about travailing and I was talking about the podcasts I’m working on when she said she had never heard anyone teach on travailing. And her dad is a pastor – she’s been in church her whole life. Then I realized I never had either so I decided to do one. Travailing used to be commonplace in the church.

The saints back in my Grandmother’s day and my Mom’s day knew how to get God’s attention. I think today we wonder where the power is, we wonder why the body of Christ is sick and the church seems so powerless, and we wonder why there is no real move of God. I think we may blame pastors or maybe we blame the Lord, but the fact of the matter is we have no one to blame but ourselves. We wonder why kids today are on drugs and getting into trouble, why all the young people are in the clubs and bars and seem so aimless in life. Why they dress so immodestly.

But you know what? We are talking about a generation that’s never seen a true move of God! If all of us who are older who HAVE seen God move travailed for God to move and if you could get them all together and then God showed up, they would choose Him over all that careless living. They are doing those things because they don’t have Jesus, yall. I spent some time in the clubs in my younger days and I can tell you 110% if I had then what I have now in my relationship with the Lord, the clubs would have held NO interest for me! You lose all taste for the world once you know Him.

Everyone is in such a hurry today. Things moved a lot slower before all the modern technology we enjoy now. In pioneer days, it took 10 days to get a letter to someone by Pony Express. Now we send emails and get them in 1 second. I love modern technology and how it saves us so much time, don’t get me wrong, but I think we can get so much done in so little time today that that becomes our focus. Prayer, our communication with the Lord, is not quick and efficient like that. Maintaining any relationship requires time and careful attention. We can’t just email God our requests.

And prayer, if we are not careful to monitor our prayer life, can become just a list of things we want from Him. We meet with God once a day, give Him a quick rundown of our requests and expectations and go on about our day. We’re busy, after all.

But He is GOD, yall! He’s not going to be relegated to being another item on our To Do List and let us think that is enough. Not for long anyway. And what happens is until we show Him the reverence He deserves, until we make HIM our priority as we should, we just won’t get answers. Now answer honestly…where is your prayer life right now? Are your prayers almost always answered? Never answered. Answered a few times a year? Could this be the reason???