"The faith which creates powerful praying is the faith which centers itself on a powerful person," E.M. Bounds on Prayer
"Prayer projects faith on God, and God on the world. Only God can move mountains, but faith and prayer move God" Faith is a spotlight, it always highlights the object of its gaze, faith IN ..., it projects. Faith IN a powerful person begets powerful prayer.
Put most simply faith is a belief and a trust. We never need more faith; we only need to act on the faith given us by Christ in this moment. Even the demons believe. What separates our faith from theirs is trust, activation of the faith. Faith is foremost activated by prayer. For "without God we cannot and without us he will not"- Augustine. "All wonderful works depend on wonderful prayer, and all wonderful praying is done in the name of Jesus Christ"- E.M. Bounds.
Pardon the long quotation but men much wiser than I have spoken with greater eloquence. "When we pray, "give us this day our daily bread," we are in a measure shutting tomorrow out of our prayer. We do not live in tomorrow but in today. We do not seek tomorrow's grace or tomorrow's bread. They thrive best, and get most out of life, who live in the living present. They pray best who pray for today's needs, not for tomorrow's, which may render our prayers unnecessary and redundant by not existing at all. True prayers are born of present trials and present needs. Bread for today is bread enough. Bread given today is the strongest sort of pledge that there will be bread tomorrow.... Our Prayers need to be focused on the present.... As each day demands its bread, so every day demands its prayer. No amount of praying, done today, will suffice for tomorrow's praying. On the other hand, no praying for tomorrow is of any great value to us today. Today's manna is what we need; tomorrow God will see that our needs are supplied. This is the faith which God seeks to inspire." Amen.
Tell me where your thoughts naturally drift, tell me what your mind obsesses over, tell me what you worry about and I will tell you the health of your prayer life. Continual prayer is a battle over the mind and heart, to meditate and fix the eyes of our heart upon the only one worthy of our lasting attention.
Please pray that Christ would be the foundation of my thoughts and that scripture would practically guide my steps in the living present. "The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results," (James 5:16 NLT) and righteous we are THROUGH the blood of Christ.