“You can do more than pray after you have prayed, but you cannot do more than pray until you have prayed." S.D. Gordon 

Prayer is the straw from which we suck His honey Presence from the Rock. (Dt. 32:13)  Prayer is daily gathering the honey grace grahams of manna: “give us this day our daily (not day old) bread.” (McGill 2005)  Prayer is persistently asking, seeking, and knocking for the all-that-He-has-is-ours-feast before His face with great expectation that He will give us bread not stones, fish not snakes, and eggs not scorpions. (Mt. 7:7-12 & Lk. 11:9-13)  Prayer is aggressive faith in action that resists the devil, buffeting all his fiery darts, refusing to believe anything other than God is for us and will grant us justice from our adversaries. (Lk. 18:1-8)  Prayer is a tenacious coram Deo bulldog that lays hold of our blood-bought inheritance until “His kingdom will in heaven is done here and now on earth.”  Prayer is the timely application of the blood of Jesus to every doorpost of our lives to drive out destroyers from our midst: “deliver us from the evil one.”  Prayer is keeping loving fellowship with God and man freshly transparent: “forgive us our debts as we forgive others.”  And prayer is abiding on the Vine of fruitfulness so that Christ’s love and power to demonstrate that love can flow through us. Everything is based on Presence of Jesus.  

Romans 8:26 says, “We do not know how to pray worthily as children of God.” (Phillips) The full verse says, “In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.” While we are responsible to take up the rod of prayer, the Holy Spirit picks up the rest of the burden.  He “helps” us, which literally means “to take hold of together with.”  The famous verse that comes right after this passage is “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God.”  The word “and” in this context clearly shows that all things working together for good is conditional upon our praying with the partnership of the Spirit.  It cannot be stressed enough that the good purposes of God are achieved only through the prayer relationship.

Adapted from the Coram Deo Secret
http://www.marisarickerson.com/coram-deo.html

“My house will be called a house of prayer.” Mt. 21:13

Jesus wants His house—our bodies—to be a 24-7 house of prayer. Therefore, a solid understanding of praying the way Jesus prayed is an essential cornerstone in living Coram Deo. Much of living coram Deo entails communicating with and keeping in step with Christ’s Spirit.  This means we are not just sitting before His face; we are moving!  We are carriers of Christ!  As His body, we are sent ones carrying Him into situations, doing what He would do if He were here in the flesh.  We are His voice, hands, and feet.  He says to us, “As the Father sent me, so I send you.” (Jn 20:21)  
In our marriage with Christ, our vows are mutual; “Wherever you go, I will go.”  Where He leads, we go.  But the negative of that is true, too: where we will not go, He cannot go.  Therefore, the Spirit’s abiding Presence rests on those who are willing to go where the Jesus of the Bible went: to pray for the sick, lonely, lost, and oppressed. 
Terry Teykl says in his book Praying Grace, “When we pray, we are grace dispensers.  We are compassionate love conduits for God to flow through us.  We say, ‘I think your situation can change, God does miracles.’” (Teykl 2002)  Compassionate prayer is embracing their problem as if it is our problem.  He goes on to say the Holy Spirit inspires within us the abilities of Jesus, so we can be his branches.  We don't have to produce anything or make anything happen, we just usher people straight into the Father's Presence in prayer and let the author of life touch their needs.  The pressure is off us, because He's the one who provides.  We are not the source of power, we are just the conducting agents through which that power flows. We are conduits of grace connected strategically to both God and the need:  

“Jesus did not come to let us taste the wonders of heaven, only to lock them away forever when he left.  No!  He came that we might have life abundant right now. He prayed to the Father, ‘Your kingdom come and be established on this earth just like it is in heaven.’  And then he showed us that our job in the process is to pray, inviting God to move and work in our lives and the lives of those around us. We are called to be branches of this same Jesus, bearing [the same] fruit in His name.” (Teykl 2002)
Adapted from the Coram Deo Secret
http://www.marisarickerson.com/coram-deo.html

“God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.  Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that He may lift you up in due time.” (1 Pe. 5:5-7)  

In seeking grace before God’s face, humility is to be desired above all things, because God only gives grace to the humble.  God either resists us or boosts us.  The choice really is ours.  We need to replace the false humility of a martyr with the true humility of a child of God who grasps how much we have at our disposal because all that we have is His.  

The Lord placed this parable on my heart to describe the kind of humility He is looking for.  What if my husband and I were to go to another country into the mission field where we didn’t need to keep our house, cars, etc.  Assuming everything was paid for, what if we decided to bless the socks off of another family and give it all away to them.  Of course it would be a fantastic time of rejoicing for all of us; for us, because it is so great to be in a position to bless, and for them, because it is great to be blessed!  However, what if after several years we returned to find this couple living as if they were where they were because of their own effort and expertise?  What if they had forgotten that all they had was purely due to our blessing and grace?  If we had had  foresight, we would not have exalted them in the first place!  Well, Jesus has that foresight, and He sees perfectly into the heart of man.  He will not, cannot, exalt those who fail to remember the source of their well-being!  He will not lose one of us to pride; therefore, He cannot pour out His gracious blessing until we remain grounded in true humility.   

We see this message in the life of Joseph.  God showed Joseph how He purposed to bestow unheard of, undeserved merit upon him so that Joseph could be an instrument of blessing and salvation to God’s people.  It was as if Joseph could not help but be puffed up with “look at me” self-importance.  He then went through several waves of prosperity and pits until God trusted he would not take credit for the abundant provision and wisdom that Joseph could now wield.  The same applies to us.  Until we take our eyes off the multi-colored cloak of self-importance and fix them on Him, (coram Deo!) we can’t be trusted to wear the royal robe of authority and privileged blessing as the King can set us over His Kingdom.  All that He has is ours!  

Adapted from the Coram Deo Secret
http://www.marisarickerson.com/coram-deo.html