From Basic Training to Targeted Strategies
Stephen Kendrick
Prayer is spiritual strategy, not religious filler — a practical system for a disciplined, persistent prayer life.
Most people treat prayer like a vending machine. The Kendricks reframe it as strategic communication with God — borrowing from military strategy to build a structured approach that treats prayer with the seriousness it deserves.
Everything the Kendricks want you to walk away with
Most people treat prayer like a vending machine: insert request, wait, walk away frustrated. The Kendricks reframe it as strategic communication with the most powerful force in the universe. Prayer is engagement, not passivity.
Prayer has an enemy, a commander, objectives, and rules of engagement. Treating it as spiritual warfare — not a casual chat — transforms both the urgency and the focus of your prayer life.
Scripture-grounded prayer is both more focused and more persistent over time. When you anchor requests in what God has already said, you stop guessing and start aligning with promises that have already been made.
Build a rhythm: daily anchor time, weekly intercession, corporate prayer with others. Without structure, prayer becomes sporadic — something you do only when you're desperate. A plan turns it into something you do because you're strategic.
The Kendricks catalog moments where sustained, organized prayer preceded breakthroughs that looked impossible. This isn't superstition — it's a pattern documented across centuries and continents.
God invites honest prayer, but he also calls for clean hands and a pure heart. Preparing to pray means examining yourself first — addressing grievances, confessing sin, and positioning yourself to hear, not just to speak.
Fasting isn't about earning God's attention — it's about removing distractions and sharpening your spiritual focus. It says to God and to yourself that this matter deserves your full attention.
Praying alone is essential, but praying with others adds agreement, accountability, and power. The early church prayed together before every major decision and movement. Corporate prayer is not optional — it's foundational.
Jesus told parables specifically about not giving up in prayer. The widow who kept returning to the unjust judge got her answer through persistence. God honors tenacity because tenacity reveals genuine belief.
A scattered prayer life produces scattered results. A strategic prayer life — organized, persistent, Scripture-anchored, and community-supported — produces the kind of spiritual power that changes circumstances and transforms character.
These notes are inspired by direct excerpts and woven together into a readable guide you can follow from start to finish.
By Stephen Kendrick and Alex Kendrick
It should not surprise you to discover that the greatest and most spiritually successful men and women in the Bible were always people of prayer. Abraham walked by faith but was guided by prayer, and the nations of the world have never been the same because of it. Isaac’s intercession on behalf of his barren wife resulted in the birth of Jacob, who became the father of the nation of Israel (Genesis 25:21). Moses spoke with God “as a man speaks to his friend,” receiving guidance and revelation for his leadership decisions (Exodus 33:11). The world still has the Torah and the Ten Commandments as fruit of it.
Before choosing His disciples, Jesus spent all night in prayer to God. As they followed Him, the disciples discovered His private habit was to rise early and pray before the sun rose (Mark 1:35). Even as His popularity was exploding, He would “often slip away to the wilderness and pray” (Luke 5:15–16). The pattern is unmistakable: the people who shaped history most profoundly were those who made prayer the foundation of everything they did.
Prayer provides an unlimited spiritual data plan—you never need to worry that you’ve drifted out of range from the signal tower. Access to God’s presence is always available, always on, always sufficient. With everything that prayer can be to you, why would anyone choose not to pray?
Prayer aligns the body of Christ with her Head. It is the key to intimacy between the bride of Christ and her Bridegroom. When Jesus ran the money changers out of the temple, He proclaimed: “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a robbers’ den” (Mark 11:17). With that one violent, surprising motion, He distilled down the purpose of God’s house and the meeting together of God’s people to a central priority: believers getting together for prayer. He did not say, “My house shall be called a house of sermons” or “a house of singing” or “a house of evangelism” or “a house of fellowship.”
God never intended for you to live out the Christian life or accomplish His work on the earth in your own wisdom or strength. His plan has always been for you to rely on the Holy Spirit and live a life of obedience in prayer.
Scripture specifically ties each of the following to prayer—consider them a preview of what will happen when a church truly becomes devoted to prayer: evangelism of the lost (Colossians 4:3; 1 Timothy 2:1–8), cultivation of discipleship (Luke 11:1–2; John 17), true Christian fellowship (Acts 2:42), wise decisions (James 1:5), obstacles overcome (Mark 11:22–24), needs met (Matthew 6:11; Luke 11:5–13), true worship ignited (Matthew 6:13; Acts 2:41–47), and revival sparked (2 Chronicles 7:14).
Ultimately, all prayer is for the glory of God. The best answer He can give to any prayer is whatever answer brings Him the most glory.
When God reveals His glory, He is unwrapping a measure of His identity—some of His nature, His holiness, His power, His lovingkindness. This should shape the posture of every prayer you offer: “Your ways are higher than my ways. Work in my heart and in each of my situations, Lord, so that You are most glorified.”
Realize that in prayer you are bowing before the same One who, in John’s Revelation, is described in overwhelming terms—His head and hair white like snow, His eyes like a flame of fire, His feet like burnished bronze glowing in a furnace, His voice like the sound of many waters, His face like the sun shining in its strength (Revelation 1:14–16). Prayer is entering the presence of that God.
Prayer is communion with God in order to:
When you pray, “Give us this day … lead us not into temptation … deliver us,” you are seeking to access God’s kingdom resources, for His mighty power to work on your behalf, and for Him to reveal His glory in your situation.
Prayer is not about prayer. It is about a Person—God Himself. When it becomes merely about accessing the provision or protection of God rather than knowing and pleasing the Person of God, you are getting off track.
When you study praise in Scripture, you will observe people expressing one or more of the following things to God: a reminder of who God is (“You are our Creator; You are awesome; Lord of all”), a recounting of what He’s done (“You rescued us; You saved us; You provided for me”), a recognition of His holiness (“There is none like You; You are greater than … higher than … more powerful than … anything else”), a rejoicing in His name (“We lift up Your name; I praise Your name; we honor Your name”), and a relinquishing of control (“I love You and give You my life; I surrender to You; all that I am and have is Yours”).
Your heart is more pure and ready to pray in faith when you have first adored God, confessed your sins, and thanked Him for what He’s done. Intercession—praying on behalf of others—is another vital type. While Haman was planning to destroy the Jews, Esther interceded in prayer and then politically interceded for the people and saved her nation.
You don’t need to always include every type of prayer when you pray. Sometimes you need to just get to the point, like Peter when he cried, “Lord, save me” (Matthew 14:30), or when Jesus said, “Father, glorify Your name,” and that was it (John 12:28).
What may surprise you is how many of God’s answers to prayer, when you pull them out and look at them under better spiritual lighting, are a variation of yes. But in general terms, His answers form up under about five different types.
Prayer should be a natural part of your thinking—not just in your quiet moments but also in your chaos. If you were to say that kids “play constantly” or that teenagers “text their friends constantly,” you wouldn’t mean they never do anything else. You’d just mean that throughout the day, kids are often trying to integrate play into what they’re doing, and many teens communicate hourly with their friends through text messages. Likewise, God desires that prayer become an ongoing opportunity you take full advantage of—quietly praising, thanking, and leaning on Him at any moment and in any context, in your mind and heart.
What if the richest man in your city called you today and said he would give you ten thousand dollars in cash every morning if you showed up and rang his doorbell at 6:00 a.m.? Would you be there? Absolutely. No question. Why? Because if you really want something bad enough and value it enough, you make it happen. You figure out a way to fit it into your schedule. At the same time, your Savior, Jesus Christ, is daily offering you eternal treasures from His Word and the opportunity to talk with His Father, the God of the universe, to share your heart and needs. And yet you still come up with excuses as to why you don’t have time to make it work.
Many prayers from Scripture were made with uplifted hands. The idea of folding our hands, while meaningful, is actually more recent in history. The Bible talks about raising hands—“the lifting up of my hands as the evening offering.” And while closing our eyes is a good way of limiting distractions and maintaining focus, a common biblical expression was lifting the eyes toward heaven, like when Jesus “raised His eyes” before praying at the tomb of Lazarus (John 11:41), or when “looking up to heaven” as He blessed the five loaves and two fish (Luke 9:16).
You can identify the difference between the prayers you make while flat on your back, fighting sleep—and the prayers you make while deliberately kneeling, or raising your hands, or speaking aloud. Posture shapes engagement.
Certain things can hinder your prayers from being effective. Scripture identifies several “locks” that block the connection between you and God.
First, relational neglect in marriage: “Husbands … live with your wives in an understanding way … and show her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life, so that your prayers will not be hindered” (1 Peter 3:7).
Second, indifference to the poor: when you show compassion to those in need, God shows favor on your requests. But the opposite is true as well: “He who shuts his ear to the cry of the poor will also cry himself and not be answered” (Proverbs 21:13).
Third, unforgiveness: “Whenever you stand praying,” Jesus said, “forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father who is in heaven will also forgive you your transgressions. But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father who is in heaven forgive your transgressions” (Mark 11:25–26). Bitterness is a toxin that not only poisons you spiritually, mentally, even physically, but also poisons the effectiveness of prayer and the full experience of your relationship with God.
Where the previous chapter identified locks, this chapter reveals the keys that open the door to powerful prayer. The first key is persistence: “Keep asking, and it will be given to you. Keep searching, and you will find. Keep knocking, and the door will be opened to you.”
The second key is praying in Jesus’ name. Praying in His name means to pray as He would—to pray from within your relationship with Him. You don’t approach God based on your authority, your righteousness, or what you’ve done, but based upon Christ’s and what He’s done.
Fasting opens up your spirit to God when you would otherwise be feeding your flesh. It puts seeking Him above all your appetites. Jesus fasted and prayed. Esther fasted and prayed. Nehemiah fasted and prayed. This is an overlooked key—going without food (or some other daily need) in order to focus more fully on the Lord for a concentrated period.
The fourth key is obedience: “Whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight” (1 John 3:21–22). And the fifth is delighting in the Lord: “Delight yourself in the Lord,” the Bible says, “and He will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4). The Hebrew word for “desires” here is the word for petitions. When your delight is in Him, your desires begin to align with His will.
Before diving into what’s involved in developing a more vibrant and effective prayer life, the first place for anyone to start is by pausing to make sure they’ve even begun a genuine relationship with God in the first place. Jesus said:
“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of My Father in heaven. On that day many will say to Me, ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in Your name, drive out demons in Your name, and do many miracles in Your name?’ Then I will announce to them, ‘I never knew you! Depart from Me, you lawbreakers!’” (Matthew 7:21–23)
This is admittedly one of the most terrifying passages in the Bible. But Jesus is not trying to haunt you with these words. He’s trying to help you. Eternity is too long to be wrong about your ultimate destiny.
The path to a genuine relationship with God runs through the cross: “If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9–10). If you were put on trial for being a Christian, would the evidence of your life be overwhelmingly clear that you know Christ and that He knows you? Genuine salvation is a life-changing experience. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold new things have come” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
Good works do not remove sins, nor can they save anyone. But after a person is genuinely saved and is truly transformed by Christ, specific good works will start showing up as evidence of their salvation. The book of 1 John gives seven key indicators of genuine salvation—not the cause or roots of salvation, but the fruits of true salvation.
These seven indicators are signs of a changed life—litmus tests revealing whether God has really made you a new creation or not.
Pride is one of the greatest sins of all (Proverbs 6:16–17). It leads to almost every other sin. “When pride comes, then comes dishonor, but with the humble is wisdom” (Proverbs 11:2). The things you tend to chase in life—wealth, success, applause, awards—can all lead to greater pride if obtained.
The antidote is honest prayer of surrender: “Where I’ve worked so hard to build myself up, I see now I’ve actually been tearing away at what my relationship with You can be. Today, Lord, I come to You with nothing but gratitude, asking You to purge me of pride and help me see things as they really are. You first. You always.”
The enemy does everything possible to keep God’s people divided, because once believers come together in unity, they gain momentum and take ground for the kingdom. Unity in prayer is not optional—it’s strategic.
Scripture is clear about the opposite posture: “Let him ask in faith without doubting. For the doubter is like the surging sea, driven and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord” (James 1:6–7). Division breeds doubt; unity fuels faith.
When you pray, you should rest in the fact that God is not unaware, unable, uncaring, unwilling, or unlikely to answer. If you don’t feel like praying much anymore, the diagnosis probably lies in one of four misconceptions about God’s heart and identity.
Misconception 1: God doesn’t know or understand my needs. “But if He already knows what’s in our heads, why does He want us to pray?” Remember, prayer is about (1) intimately knowing, loving, and worshiping God; (2) conforming your life to His will and ways; and (3) accessing and advancing His kingdom, power, and glory. All of these require interaction. God could do things without you. But He’s too good and kind to kick you to the curb.
Misconception 2: God isn’t able to help. Paul answered this with one of the most resounding exclamations in the Bible, declaring that God is “able to do above and beyond all that we ask or think” (Ephesians 3:20).
Misconception 3: God doesn’t care. If He knows everything and can do everything, then why won’t He help? Jesus pointed to the birds of the air to prove that God cares. If He cares for them, how much more does He care for you?
Jesus provided two parables that paint polar opposites to the caring character of God. In one, a man with unexpected company runs to a neighbor’s house late at night asking for bread. “Don’t bother me!” comes the answer. “The door is already locked, and my children and I have gone to bed” (Luke 11:7). But persistence wins out. In the second, a widow being mistreated keeps approaching a heartless judge to plead her case. Not until she’s almost worn him down does he finally give in (Luke 18:1–5). Jesus’ point: God is not a calloused, uncaring judge or a sleeping neighbor. How much more quickly and willingly will He answer your requests than those reluctant figures? Not only does He care; He cares for you more than anyone else in your life.
Misconception 4: God isn’t likely to do anything anyway. That’s not the impression you get from Mark 11:24—“all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you.” He is willing to listen and respond and counsel and comfort and encourage and direct and rescue.
| Battlefront | Faith-Killing Lie | Faith-Building Truth |
|---|---|---|
| God’s Knowledge | ”God doesn’t understand what I need.” | He knows your needs fully and still invites relational prayer. |
| God’s Power | ”God can’t handle this situation.” | He is able to do beyond what you can ask or imagine. |
| God’s Care | ”God is distant and unconcerned.” | He is compassionate and attentive to His children. |
| God’s Willingness | ”God probably won’t act anyway.” | He hears and responds wisely, lovingly, and purposefully. |
Of course, He is not a genie who grants wishes. You should be glad of that, since you’d soon learn the horror of worshiping a God who was controlled by you, rather than one who rules all and takes all things into account. God has given you the capacity to trust that His reasons are in keeping with His wisdom and His will. Because God is sovereign, He may or may not choose to do something, even though He certainly has the ability.
Scripture reveals that the primary way Jesus prayed was in secret. Though there are a few accounts of short prayers He prayed publicly, as well as one longer high-priestly prayer (John 17), His routine was to either rise early to be alone in prayer (Mark 1:35), send everyone away in the afternoon and escape to a solitary place (Mark 6:46), or stay up late and pray after the others had gone to sleep (Luke 6:12). The most powerful prayers are not performed for an audience—they’re offered in hidden communion with the Father.
A lot of people hide behind prayer. They hope it will cover for disobedience in other areas that are a lot harder and more costly to do than just praying. God keeps telling them to do things, but they keep “praying about it” with no steps of action.
Pray and obey. Obey and pray. Put those two together, and you’ve got a powerful combination.
“Indeed, none of those who wait for You will be ashamed” (Psalm 25:3). God may use delays in your life to reveal your heart and your level of trust in Him.
When Elijah was facing the false prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, he prayed once, and fire fell from heaven (1 Kings 18:37–38). When he was praying for the dead son of the widow, he prayed three times before the boy came back to life (17:21–22). When he was asking God to send the rain, he ended up praying seven times (18:41–44). The point is, you don’t know if God’s answer will come immediately, after several days, or even years. Persistence is not a lack of faith—it is the expression of it.