As you walk with God, you’ve probably figured out that there is a lot of work to be done and things usually don’t get done unless you work. Most people started working early in life and some started working later in life, but almost everyone at some point and time has gotten very tired either of working or fed up with their work. But working is here to stay and if you can’t escape it or need to work to be able to pay your bills you might as well figure out a way to work and be refreshed and then learn how to enjoy it and extract every possible benefit that you can from it because you have to work. Believe it or not, when you get tired of working, praying more will help you make it through the times that you feel like you just can’t go on or just don’t want to go on.

There are many kinds of effective prayer and thousands of books have been written on the subject. We all know that prayer is vital to living the Christian life, but how does one pray effectively you might wonder about their work? Well, there is no guaranteed method of prayer, what works for us may not work for you. But If you don’t know the best way to pray, we will give you some suggestions and insights that will be useful for you as you begin to pray regarding your work. Pick what resonates with you. Claim it, and then do it daily for the best results. For one thing, prayer in the marketplace is functional and many times necessary while you are in action working. Many situations you encounter in the business world demand quick and accurate response. It is not possible for most of us to tell everyone that we will be back in thirty minutes or so every time a key decision comes our way just because we may need to go and pray. But what you can do is pray before you go to work or before you go to important meetings to ensure that God will guide you and give you the best possible solutions for your unique needs! How can you really pray continually in a way that is effective regarding your work you might wonder? Old school dualistic thinking wants you to believe that you need to check in and out of the spiritual realm, but this is not the case.

To pray effectively, you need to understand that God places importance on your work. Otherwise, you won’t be able to pray about proposals being accepted, business deals coming together, the resolution of challenging situations with co-workers and the release of God-ideas, for example. Here are five realities you will experience when praying regarding your work;

1. Divine Perception – Sometimes you  might get so involved in a situation, you begin to lose your ability to see things objectively. This happens all the time, especially with people, processes and projects you have become overly familiar with or worked intensely on. Once you lose the proper perspective, it is difficult to get it back again, often because the loss perspective is not evident to you. This generally happens incrementally over time. However, prayer concerning a matter, can begin to lift you above the circumstance to a higher vantage point, a divine view, and restore a balanced outlook and will give God the opportunity to share with you His viewpoint of your situation.

When God shares with you His viewpoint, oftentimes He will also recommend solutions to you to help you resolve your work problems in easy and magical ways. God will not absolutely direct you concerning every decision you need to make,  Such as should I wear the blue sock or the green socks? Sometimes you need to act on the best wisdom you have. However, once you begin to see a matter the way God sees it, wise, strategic decisions will follow.

2. Answers, Instructions & Resolve (yes this is three for one.)-Once you have prayed regarding a situation, sometimes you sense a direction from God. Resolve follows. Often direction is just the start of the process of progress, knowing which way to head with a decision, person or situation. Recently, when we were facing a major situation involving one of the communities we were helping to develop we prayed about it and sensed a direction from God. It wasn’t going to be easy or popular. In fact, in some ways moving in this direction was a bit awkward and not something we would have been sure about or possibly even thought of had we not prayed. But we did pray and we were reasonably sure, so that created enough resolve to move forward despite inevitable opposition. Had it merely been something we had thought up, we might have faltered during the time of resistance. As usual with divine insight, in the end, this decision is proving significantly beneficial.

3. Healthy Dependence-It is easy to get so busy working that you become effectively in-dependent from God, increasingly self-reliant in your work life. What you have to do when you are tired of working is Consistently lift your working situations up to God. This keeps you from depending on your own efforts and keeps you dependent on God and His efforts. Prayer is in part an act of dependence. Dependence goes hand in hand with humility and humility is precious if you want the wind of God to be at your back and not in your face.

4. Help- There are countless numbers of situations in the marketplace where you need more than a better outlook, an idea, resolve or a direction, you need HELP. Thankfully God delights in helping His children just like a natural parent delights helping one of their children, but more so. If you are like us, sometimes you have messed things up so badly that we can’t possibly figure out what to do. Then being overwhelmed happens next.

We’ve found that once we get overwhelmed, then we too get tired, scared and uncertain as to what is going to happen. That’s usually when God shows up to help us all with an extra supernatural wave of His goodness to help in our situations. Tired of working? Fed up with your work?  Pray faithfully, sincerely and persistently and ask God for His help. We are certain that if you will pray, God will respond and He will help in His own way and in His own timing. God’s help doesn’t always come in  the forms that you might recognize, expect or want, so don’t get discouraged if you pray and don’t see visible help of some sort right away. God’s help happens in God’s timing.

Moving into a Productive Groove “Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established”. ESV Prov 16:3. This is a wonderful promise that every marketplace believer should lay hold of. If it is worth doing, it is worth committing to the Lord. There is much misunderstanding among Christians concerning the role of planning and working. For the moment, let us simply say this is an area for significant growth. Find the way through prayer to commit what you do to the Lord and cooperate with Him to help you establish it, it is in this way that even though you may still  get tired of working and still have to work, God will guide you as you work and refresh you when you get tired. When God refreshes you, you will gain the energy and the endurance to get back in the game and go back to work!

Blessings to you, your family & upon your endeavors as you work! R. Hubbell & “The WIN International Ministries Team”