Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name, Your kingdom come, You will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. Matthew 6:9-13
One of the hardest things for most people to do consistently is to pray. I know we all talk to God a few minutes a day in prayer, we pray over our meals, we ask God to forgive us our sins, and we pray over our families and for help when we have problems, but are we really disciplined to spend quality time with God on a regular basis. I am not sure whether we are too busy to pray or we do not understand the privileged and authority we have in prayer. The word pray, in one form or another, is listed in the NKJV 141 times. Jesus, the Son of God was disciplined to pray on a regular basis. Luke 5:16 “So He Himself often withdrew into the wilderness and prayed.” Mark 1:35 “Now in the morning, having risen a long while before daylight, He went out and departed to a solitary place, and there He prayed.” In fact, Jesus consistency in prayer made such an impact on His disciples that they asked Him to teach them to pray. Even after walking with Jesus for 3 years and seeing the affect His prayers made, the disciples still struggled with a consistent prayer life. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus asked His disciples, “What could you not watch with Me one hour? Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation.” Through the years, I have talked to many adult Christians who do not know how to pray extensively and have never spent an hour in prayer. I was with a group of about 14 women recently and we began to talk about prayer, only one other woman had spent an hour in prayer. I went to a women’s conference several years ago and after the evening service ended about 10:30, they asked the women to stay and have an hour prayer meeting. A pastor from Chicago taught on prayer, walking us through how to spend an hour in prayer, then we prayed together for over an hour. It was an experience; I will never forget. I taught a college group for several years and each spring before they graduated, I taught on prayer, and we spent one solid hour in prayer. The college group would always come to the one-hour prayer meeting with apprehension, thinking it would be very difficult to pray for an hour. I gave them an outline of categories to consider and I asked them to plan ahead of time what they wanted to pray for. We spent 5 minutes praying over the different categories, things like family, our nation, the sick, and those who need to know Jesus, and then we would go to the next category. At the end of the evening we usually spent an hour and ten to fifteen minutes in prayer and they were so excited they were able to pray for an hour. Praying for an hour is more than just the bragging rights of being able to say we have done it; prayer truly changes things. I think the biggest challenge to our prayer time is that we do not realize what prayer really does, because if we knew the power we have in prayer, we would be more disciplined to spend quality time in prayer every day. Is prayer really necessary? Isn’t God all sovereign and all powerful? Doesn’t God control the universe? If God has complete control and He does whatever He wants, why did Jesus teach His disciples to pray, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done.” If God is all knowing, all powerful and He has the final say, is everything that happens God’s will? Is it God’s will for Christians around the world to be persecuted? Is it God’s will that millions of babies are never given a chance to fulfill their destiny because they are aborted? Is it God’s will for people to starve to death? Is it God’s will for people to die and go to hell? (“The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. 2 Peter 3”9-10') I believe one of the biggest weapons the enemy uses against the church is the lie that God is in complete control and the church has no responsibility or role to play in the outcome of things. While God is sovereign and all powerful, He created mankind and gave mankind dominion over all the earth. In Genesis 1, after God made man, He blessed them and told them “have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” Mankind was given the authority and responsibility to have dominion over the earth. Psalm 8:4,6 tells of Satan’s protest in the courts of heaven over man. “What is man that you are mindful of him? You have made him to have dominion over the works of your hands and you have put all things under his feet.” In God’s complete sovereignty, He chose to work and do things on earth through mankind. It was never God’s will for Adam to sin and give his authority to Satan. When Adam chose to disobey God, he gave his dominion over to Satan. Jesus acknowledged that Satan was the ruler of this world in John 12:31, 14:30 and 16:11. Adam’s sin gave Satan legal access and authority over the earth. Jesus was born of a virgin (The sin is passed down through the father), lived a sinless life and died on the cross and rose again after three days, taking back the dominion and authority that rightfully belonged to man. Jesus told the disciples in Matthew 28:18 “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.” Not only did Jesus take back the authority over the earth, He gave the authority to the believers, “Behold I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy and nothing shall by any means hurt you.” Jesus has given mankind the authority and dominion Adam lost when he sinned. We not only have our authority on earth back, Jesus told his disciples n Mathew 16:19 “And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatsoever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” It troubles me when I hear people pray things like, “If it is your will heal__.” The only time in the Bible when Jesus did not heal was because of the unbelief of the people, Matthew 13:58 “Now He did not do many mighty works there because of their unbelief.” I think we have to ask ourselves is God really able to and is He willing to do what He promised for each of us? God is able and willing, but He is waiting for you to pray for “His kingdom to come and His will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Too often we think we are waiting on God, while in all honesty God is waiting of us to pray and come into agreement with His will so He can answer our prayers. John Wesley wrote, “God does nothing on the earth save in answer to believing prayer.” E.M. Bounds said “God shapes the world by prayer. The more praying there is in the world, the better the world will be, the mightier the force is against evil…The prayers of God’s saints are the capital stock of heaven by which God carries out His great work upon earth. God conditions the very life and prosperity of His cause on prayer.” “Prayer is essentially a partnership of the redeemed child of God working hand in hand with God toward the realization of the redemptive purposes on earth.” Jack Hayford. Prayer always changes things, God heard the prayers of the Israelites and sent Moses to deliver them, Elijah stopped the rain for three years with prayer, when Daniel realized it was time for the Babylonian captivity to end and he began to pray, God made a way for the Jews to return to their homeland, God opened women’s barren wombs when prayer was made, and He is still willing and able to do mighty things when we pray. No wonder Satan does everything he can to distract us when we are praying. In scripture we are commanded to lay hands on the sick and pray and they will be healed, cast out devils, speak to the mountain and it will move, and to intercede for the lost. We are to stand in the gap, when we choose not to pray, we hinder God’s plans for the earth and for people. Ezekiel 22:30-31 “”So I sought for a man among them who would make a wall and stand in the gap before Me on behalf of the land, that I should not destroy it, but I found no one. Therefore, I have consumed them with the fire of My wrath and I have recompensed their deeds on their own heads,” says the Lord God.” Will you accept the call of standing in the gap? I pray that you have a fresh revelation of the power of prayer! When we really understand the power our prayers have, I believe we will be drawn deeper into a more extensive prayer life. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name, Your kingdom come, You will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
Cathy Nesmith