How prayer works

1. Don't focus prayer on requests, but in your personal, intimate relationship with God.

2. The Holy Spirit prays through us as we surrender to His leadership.

3. Don't stifle the Spirit, but let Him lead.

4. Ask, make me sensitive to what is really going on around me.

5. The Holy Spirit interprets our prayers by asking the Father to meet our real needs.

6. He changes our petition to match God's plan.

7. He reveals to us what our real need is.

8. Ask in prayer for your needs to be provided, or to change your perception of your needs to match His will.

9. Each answer to prayer is one more brick in your foundation of Faith.

10. The Holy Spirit clarifies the will of God.

11. He straightens out our prayers, so that God will answer prayer as if we would ask if we knew all that He knows.

12. The Holy Spirit teaches us God's mind.

13. He convicts us of sin.

14. He helps us escape from sin. He sounds the sin alarm (John 16:7).

15. He confirms the payment by Christ's blood.

16. He recharges us when we are spiritually and emotionally drained.

17. He is our moral compass.

18. He lives in us the life that God knew that we never could alone.

(taken from notes from Charles Stanley)