Prayer is a communion between earth and heaven. It is a request made by man on earth to the Divine who dwells in the unseen. But this man on earth follows the will and promises of heaven on earth: 'Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.' On the question of heaven, you have to have Divine presence within you just as the Master said that the kingdom of God is within you, and that's because you have received the Holy Spirit and become the temple of God. This is what makes it possible for you to live on earth as it is in heaven.
There is a part of prayer that belongs to man that man must hold dear if his request must be answered. Like everything else that holds value, prayers demand strict adherence to permanent principles. The one we pray to is not going to do what He has not promised to do. No matter how sweetly worded the articles of the orison have been worded, it must be based on the promises made by the God you are asking from.
Prayer is a spiritual encounter. Prayer is not a physical exercise but you make it while in the physical inspired of the Spirit [the Word] that dwells in the unseen within you. When you have the word in you, then the word which is Spirit leads you to pray accordingly. You do not pray outside it. The Spirit in you selects prayer points for you according to what it sees before you. The Spirit is unlimited but you are limited. The Spirit sees what you do not see. It is the reason the Word says that we do not know what to pray and that it is the Spirit that maketh intercession in us.
When you pray, you make intercession to the Spirit in your spirit. God is already in you. You pray to the Spirit in you. You ask the Divinity that abides in you. You are in partner with Him. You thirst for Him because you already know Him having been introduced to Him but you must keep seeking to know Him as Paul the apostle desired to despite all he already knew.
The disciples waited in the Upper Room for the promise of the Father so they could receive and seal their partnership agreement with Him. The seed was already in them and that was what activated the obedience to wait up there. They thirsted for the life that they had heard by faith, so that the life will be fully installed in them and more abundantly for the work that was set before them.
Without the seed being in them there was no way they could have earned justification, gone on to sanctification and eventually received the promise of the Father, the Holy Spirit, in the Upper Room.
The reason you are the temple of God is that God dwells in you and that is why you must continuously possess your vessel in sanctification. You do not do things to defile that temple. You do not grieve that Spirit and one reason you do not grieve the Spirit is so that your prayers are not hindered. You belong in a kingdom whose head is God and who rules by His Word, the thus saith the Lord.
This is the same I am that was with Moses in the Burning but unconsumed bush; the Emmanuel; the Way, the Truth and the Life; the same yesterday, today and forever. He is the unchanging one who manifested Himself in the flesh as Jesus, the Emmanuel, for the purpose of fulfilling the practical mandate of redemption through the shedding of blood.
Take prayer as a child who is making a request to his or her father. This child lovingly asks. This child trusts the father and believes what the father has said. When the child asks, it looks forward to receiving what it asked. When the father returns home from his outing, the child asks for the evidence. When the father makes a promise the child believes in the promise and waits simply in expectation. You have to see prayer this way.
The child is requesting of the father what is the duty of the father to perform. The father knows his duty. One very funny thing is that the child who always asks seems to be the one who always gets. It is not because of the wickedness of the father, it is the zeal of the child who asks ceaselessly; the child who asks without ceasing. That child keeps the father on his toes. Unlike the one who does not worry the father much, though he may get things, it could almost be based on the requests of the one who asks always. Ponder on this thought a while.
Prayer is not shouting. As it is written somewhere, prayer can be said to be a command, after the one who prays has done all that he or she needs to do. But the strength of the command is based on the part that God Himself wants man to play. God wants man to know how valid man is and that man is a partner in the promise. That it is the right of man to know his right and to play his part right and by so doing a request can become an order or command after man's obedience is complete.
Though prayer is not shouting, we can cry aloud to God in our prayers. We can groan the spirit out aloud. On the Cross at Calvary, Jesus cried: 'Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani', My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
That was the Righteous Branch. Can the Righteous ever be forsaken? This is the Paradox of Faith. The Son was showing sons and daughters an example of how to roll with the Father. And the Father is always in sons and daughters but in fullness in the Son.
At the grave of Lazarus, Jesus cried with a loud voice. That is the promised voice as spoken in the prophetic epistle written by Paul to the people of Thessalonia: For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first.
That is the same voice of the archangel that shall wake the dead from sleep when the 7 Thunders shall utter their voices. Notice that the weeping of Jesus preceded the crying out with a loud voice. He groaned in his spirit and then wept and God heard the cry of His Son.
Mind you that Jesus, the Christ being our example, the first fruits, prayed to the God in him. Be reminded that the fullness of the Godhead dwelleth in him bodily. That means that he was the physical embodiment of the Father in heaven, the Son on Earth and the Holy Spirit, which is the very same Spirit of the Father for God, the Father is a Spirit. God the Father is the Word which Jesus is, which Jesus spoke, which Jesus said is Spirit and is Life. While He spoke here physically on earth He was everywhere else because God is the only Omnipresent who covers all space and time.
Man must always remember that he was made in the image and likeness of the Maker and man must therefore know this position with a clarity and definiteness of purpose and order, but man must stay humble yet, despite being a small god.
Sometimes our prayer does not ward off what we label evil. As humans we have certain fixations about the carnal and earthly things. We have certain expectations of how we want things to go and we tend to base our orisons and profound thoughts on them. We are the ones who label experiences evil but Life says we must give thanks in all things because all things work together for good to them that love God. The question we must always ask ourselves is: Do I love God?
Do you recall that upon concluding His fireful prayer in Gethsemane, the soldiers came and arrested Him? Yet, that hour of darkness symbolised light and life for us. As a man, He prayed the Father to let the cup pass over Him. Yet, He Himself never asked any man to pray for Him.
Prayers come from the place of depth. When your prayer does not affect your spirit, it may not reach the One that you direct it to. God to whom you pray, being a Spirit dwells in your spirit. If your spirit is not touched by your request, it does not touch God. It is just a lip service. Think about this a little bit more.
You can pray in silence. Your thoughts can be orisons and it can be highly efficacious. The imaginations of your heart become potent prayer when your imaginations are funded by the articles of the Truth. Then your thoughts are one with the Word. Your thoughts are one with the Way and align with the Life. In this case you are in such an uncanny synchrony that in silence you conquer and make things happen.
When Hannah prayed in silence on her knees bowing down the head to the ground, only God who sees in secret answered the groaning of her heart. Her need was tried for the last time by Eli, the high priest, speaking harshly to her, but she maintained her calm and integrity. Let us learn a lesson from that. What if Hannah spoke back in the same tone and manner that the high priest had spoken?
There must be an alignment to your orisons, such alignment that your thoughts, your words, and your actions become one with the thoughts and words of the one you are making a request to. And after you have made the request, you may have to wait a while.
Because a prayer is not instant in response does not mean that God has not answered or will not answer. It may take some time beyond your own expectations. No matter how desperate things get with you, God has His time. For Abraham it took about 23 years to get circumcised after he was called out. It took about 25 years to be blessed with Isaac, the son of promise, who was a type of the Son of Righteousness upon whose shoulders the government of the earth shall be placed.
Prayer may be as instant as it can be elongated. Yet, the one who prays must know the mind of the God he or she is praying to and making a request from. The principle of request is based on what God has promised to do. God made Abraham promises. It is the promises that Abraham always reminded God of. Abraham is not required to go request outside the promises. As long as Abraham stuck to the promises, God is obligated, however long it takes to fulfill His promises. This is how prayer is the pleading of God's promises.
Ponder a bit on the intercessory prayers made by Abraham on account of Lot. At the Burning Bush Moses communed in a conversation that seemed like a negotiation with God. He sought certainty. Gideon sought to be certain when he used the fleece and dew samples. He desired closure. It takes faith to go that length. When you have the faith of the Son of God, in order to move mountains, you prove all things with all assurance. Unless by faith, there is no prayer.
In the fullness of time, God will do what He has promised. He will not do it earlier or later. If we know His mind, we can learn the art of waiting as we do the things that we ought to do in order to get to the point of maturity. Waiting is not indolence. We wait on our toes doing some or many things.
Prayer is for the one who believes against the power of doubt and impossibilities. The one who believes hopes against hope that all things are possible and that He who made the promise shall keep it. Prayer still gets answered as we speak. Our ways however alienate us from the Way of receiving. This is the hindrance to our orisons.
The subject of prayer is not one that can be exhausted. We can go on and on but these are just a few thoughts on prayer as they hit my thoughts on the morning of March 11 2021. We must stay in the place of prayer and pray with all prayer and supplications without ceasing. If we can pray, then God can answer.
