There is quite a difference between Old Covenant praying and New Covenant praying. In the Old Covenant your prayer went something like this “God I’ve done my best to obey your laws, I’ve tried to be good, now I plead for your mercy, that you would grant my request” It was a prayer based on your own good efforts.

In the New Covenant however – the foundation for prayer is very different. Our prayer is not based on our efforts to be good or to qualify ourselves. Our prayer is based on faith in Jesus and his performance for us. Under the Old Covenant you were always worried about your effort to appease a God who you thought was angry. Under the New Covenant we know God is not angry with us – but that he loves us and wants to bless us.

Paul understood this truth and so is able to write the following :-

Philippians 4:6-7 Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

If you think God’s angry you have no peace and no confidence to pray. But when you know God loves you – you pray with expectation and thanksgiving. Thanksgiving because we know God is good. Thanksgiving is the language of faith, it is full of expectation because through grace we know He has already provided what we need, even if we haven’t seen it yet. Our faith is exposed during the waiting, and it’s in that waiting period that doubts can manifest and because the answer may not have materialized yet – we wonder if it’s real.

Yet if we hold to the promises of God’s word and base our prayer life around those truths, we will see far more of the supernatural realm become reality. Hoping doesn’t release God’s power, nor does wishful thinking – only faith does. Faith in his word – faith in his goodness – faith in his promises. Prayer does not consist of getting something you don’t have. It is enjoying and engaging with your inheritance until it manifests in the natural. Let me leave you with the following verses as an encouragement.

Romans 8:31-32 If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? – all things are available to us because of grace.

1 Corinthians 2:12 We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us.

2 Peter 1:3 His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness

1 John 5:14-15 This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.