Tuesday, June 9, 2015

THY WILL BE DONE.....PRAYER - THE PLAN

Continuing on in the area of the Methodology of Prayer and God’s response, let us first recognize what an incredible privilege this is! In the west, we take Christianity and the God of the Bible so casually (which we all do) that we fail to full comprehend just Who we are talking about!  For goodness sake, He is the God of the Universe. He is the Ancient of Days.  He is the Sustainer of Life, the One Who holds every single breath in His Hands. He is the Creator and thus the Judge of all things and all peoples, the One Who holds our eternity in His Hands.

In His Hands,  reside the keys to this wonderful mystery called Prayer.  This is very important to note because this Almighty Supreme Being of the Universe, Who always existed owes us sinful humans nothing but the back of His Powerful Hand. We deserve not
hing more than rebuke from He Whose Voice sounds like Niagara Falls (the Book of the Revelation calls His voice “the sound of many waters”). So understanding this truth is primary to grasping absolute fact which is thus – God owes us nothing. Conversely, we owe Him everything. We owe Him Respect; Obedience; Worship and Praise.

Therefore the Methodology of the Effective Prayer life begins with the full comprehension of just to Whom we are praying.  Secondly, we simply do not know how to pray! The average Christian may pray once a week in church or in an emergency health or traumatic situation, cry out for help. Statistics show the average American pastor only prays 10 minutes per week! When we do pray, we stumble around unless we have been prayer warriors for a while. The bible says the following from Romans 8:26-27 “In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God".

So given all of this, are we losing courage in our prayer lives when God does not immediately, five minutes after we pray, tell us His Will for our lives? Do you get disheartened when we pray for the healing or health of a loved one and either nothing happens or the loved one’s health declines? Do we give up when we pray about say, moving to a state with more career opportunity when others are telling us to stay put? How does Sally if she should marry Jim, or Junior should marry Jill? Decisions decisions decisions.....How do we pray for an and expect an answer to these life-changing events we all must make, at one time or another?

God knows our weakness. The awesome thing about being born-again is that the same Spirit Who raised Christ from the dead lives inside of us to execute what God has revealed in the two verses above from Romans 8:27-28. The thing is we literally cannot do this on our own. Christians are supposed to function in such a way as to allow the Spirit access to our lives and decisions so He can interpret the needs and wishes of our hearts. This way, He can fulfill what this scripture says, in order to transmit our petitions and prayers directly to the Father in Heaven. Think of it this way. Think of the Holy Spirit as the Divine Filter of Heaven, Who takes our jumbled up words and weird wants, cleans them up and presents them the way God will accept before the Throne. This is the only way for the saint by calling to have our prayers heard by God. There is no going through a third party like a priest or pastor, or lighting a candle or whatever material thing mankind thinks must occur.  There is only the Holy Spirit and what He does, as just described here.

Subsequently, this also confirms a significant truth from the Bible that God ONLY hears the prayer of a righteous man! Who is a righteous man since we are still sinners from time to time? A righteous man is one who has repented, believed the Gospel, cried out to the Lord for the forgiveness of sins and accepted Jesus Christ as LORD and Savior. Anything else is easy believism modern western cotton candy Christianity. THIS is the only first step to following the Plan for Prayer, as God has ordained. This first step is Salvation. 
NEXT: EFFECTIVE PERSISTENT WARRIOR

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