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YIELD: The Fourth Step in Effective Prayer 

Psalm 37:4 provides us the “Y” in the acronym P-R-A-Y, the four elements to effective prayer we have been discussing over the last few devotionals.  

Here is what Psalm 37:4 says, 

Delight yourself also in the LORD, and He shall give you the desires of your heart. 

Now the Hebrew word for delight in this verse literally means to become soft or pliable. This means that “delighting” in the Lord is assuming a yielded posture before God.  

So the “Y” in P-R-A-Y stands for yield. The question is: How do you practice yielding to God when you pray? Yielding is when you stop talking, and you wait, listen, and seek to hear from God.  

In my own practice of prayer, I will often bow before God and ask Him, “God, is there anything You want to say to me? Do You have any instructions for me? Is there anything You want me to change?”  

Then I silently wait for Him to speak to me. 

As you assume this posture of being yielded and waiting quietly before Him, you will be surprised at some of the things that come to your attention: “You need to spend more time with your daughter,” “Take your wife out on a date,” “Bake your neighbor a pie and build a bridge over which the gospel can travel,” “Spend more time praising Me,” “Show your gratitude and appreciation for those who have been helping you in your life.”  

You will indeed hear from God if you ask Him to speak into your heart, and wait silently before Him.  

That is the last element of effective prayer: praise, repent, ask, yield. Your prayers can indeed be effective if you commit to these four principles. That is how to P-R-A-Y.

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