The Commandos

Earl Morton at Knox’s funeral pointed to his grave and said, “There lies a man who never feared the face of any man”. Was that not the secret of his great success? He feared nobody. Nobody. The Reformer John Knox prayed: “Give me Scotland or I die!” No wonder Mary, Queen of Scots, declared that she was more afraid of the prayers of John Knox than of an army of ten thousand.  She knew that a spiritual revolution and a praying Christian is more dangerous than any military or political power.

God has placed the most powerful weapon of prayer into the hands of a Christian. Prayer in the life of a believer is the greatest single activity that he can do to move mountains and opening doors in the spiritual and natural realm and to transform his life into one of power and grace. Praying with fasting makes it even more effective. With this tool, a Christian can overcome any obstacle in his personal life and bring the mighty power of God into our world for radical change.

Why is it that the most powerful weapon Christians have is the least used and is the most difficult to perform? The most powerful action Christians have in life, even more than any other faith in the world, requires discipline.

God chooses to do his greatest work through prayer because this whole scene is based upon relationship. God loves to work with man through the relationship he wants with each person. Prayer links people to God. A Christian must humble himself before God with an acknowledgement in his heart that he is helpless without him and his power to breathe let alone anything else. The follower of Christ must believe His prayers, which exhibits how God works and a reverential fear of His almighty power.

Prayer is indispensable to Gods work in this world, and is essential to getting God to work in earth affairs.  Therefore, God binds men to pray by the most solemn obligations.  Luke 18:1 God commands men to pray, and so not to pray is plain disobedience to an imperative command of Almighty God.  Prayer is such a condition without which the graces, the salvation and the good of God are not bestowed on men.  Prayer is a high privilege, a royal prerogative and manifold and eternal are the losses by failure to exercise it.  Prayer is the great, universal force to advance Gods cause; the reverence, which hallows Gods name; the ability to do Gods will, and the establishment of Gods kingdom in the hearts of the children of men.  These, and their co-incidents and agencies, are created and affected by prayer.

Prayer is an offensive and defensive weapon for winning spiritual victories, therefore as Christians, we are to explore and employ spiritual weapons available to us through prayers.

Hindrances to Prayer

A depositor whose account is in good condition normally has every check he draws honoured by the bank. Then why can a child of God day-by-day not draw on the bank of Heaven by having his prayers answered as a matter of course, as a daily business? He can! When a Christian fails to have his prayer-check cashed, he should regard it as proof that something is wrong that needs attention at once.

Often we pray for daily bread or for other daily necessities, such as money for rent, or for a job, or furniture or clothes, things for which God tells us to pray; and yet no answer comes. Christians often pray for the conversion of loved ones, pray for revivals, pray for help in temptation; all matters about which every Christian certainly has a right to pray, matters about which God has declared in His Word that He is concerned, and which He is anxious to give us; and yet Christians often do not get the answer to their prayers. Why? The answer is that many a good prayers cannot be answered by a holy God because of sins in the life and heart of the one who prays.

It is all too easy to fill our lives with ‘important’ activities and ministry while neglecting the most important activity of seeking God’s face and power.

When we cherish sin, embrace it, want it to exist as part of our lifestyles or take pleasures in them, we are harbouring and condoning sin and God will not hear us. We may not imagine ourselves cherishing sin, but it can be a subtle thing – a negative attitude toward a co-worker, an unhealthy desire for possessions, or unwillingness to follow God’s leading. If allowed to continue, our sins will render our prayers empty and powerless, for we will not have a clear conscience when we approach God.

Hidden sins (no matter how small they may appear), bitterness towards others and unbelief are issues that can threaten our ability to effective communicate with God. We are wise to examine our lives closely. Do we hold on to unconfessed sin, hard feelings, or a lack of belief? If so, how will we respond?

Sometimes, we simply do not believe that God will answer if we did pray. Instead of bringing our requests before the Lord, we worry over them, disregarding the hundreds of promises in God’s Word that He will hear us and help us when we pray. Some people struggle with their faith because of seemingly impossible situations, misplaced priorities, or questioning God’s power, ability or goodness. When we doubt God, it undermines our prayers.

Let us turn from obstacles to prayer and move towards healthy consistent communication with God. We can have a strong line of communication with God if we are willing to respond to His voice by making necessary changes in our attitudes, then shall the answers to our prayers be given and we will know that the Lord our God is mighty.

If My People...

Confession is needed because every person has sinned. We may try to hide our sin or pretend it does not exists. We may try to point the finger of blame at someone else. However, the truth remains that God is always ready to change each of us, but spiritual change requires us to yield to Him. When we confess our sin, we ask “How do I know when I am forgiven of my sins and if I am forgiven, why do I still feel guilt?

Some people are harder on themselves than the Lord is. Of course, we must repent to be eligible for the cleansing and forgiving powers of the Atonement, but once we have repented, there is no such thing as a spotted repenter in God’s kingdom. There is no black mark on our right ankle that says “2008 sin” or brown stain behind our left ear that says, “2010 trespass.” The Lord declared the comprehensive cleansing power of the Atonement when He said, “Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow” (Isaiah 1:18). That is the miracle of the Atonement of Jesus Christ.

This new plan I'm making with Israel isn't going to be written on paper, isn't going to be chiselled in stone; This time I'm writing out the plan in them, carving it on the lining of their hearts. I will be their God, they will be my people… I will forgive their sins and will no longer remember their wrongs." (Hebrews 8:10-12)

The promise is certain—if we do our best to confess and repent, we will be cleansed of our sins and our guilt will eventually be swept away, because the Saviour’s Atonement descended not only below our sins but also our guilt. Then we will be at perfect peace with ourselves and with God.

When we are at peace with ourselves and with God, then we can enjoy this privilege - If they pray to me and repent and turn away from the evil they have been doing, then I will hear them in heaven, forgive their sins, and make their land prosperous again.(2 Chronicles 7:14, GNT). God will heal our land when we have repented and turned from our evil ways. We can call upon Him in our days of trouble and he will deliver us.

Call to me when trouble comes; I will save you, and you will praise me." But God says to the wicked, "Why should you recite my commandments? Why should you… "Listen to this, you that ignore me, or I will destroy you, and there will be no one to save you. (Psalm 50:15-22, GNT).  Unless we consecrate our lives, we cannot obtain anything from God.

We also need to believe that He is …anyone who wants to approach God must believe both that he exists and that he cares enough to respond to those who seek him.( Hebrews 11:6, MSG). Even in our distressing moments, we need to trust God.

You and I can literally wake up, take a deep breath, and pray, “Father, I know you are sovereign over this day, that you will give me both bread and ability over my circumstances today, that you are willing and able to bring me through these things in accordance to your goodness. So therefore Father, be glorified in me today and help me to trust in you and your character as Jesus did. Make me more dependent on You like Jesus did, Amen!”

Teach us...

I visited my place of birth not long ago. People who knew me growing up asked a lot of questions about how I’ve been, what I’ve been up to, how good I look and all that, but an old friend asked me a question not like every other asked – “how's your prayer life?" I realized that this old friend had a real desire to know how my prayer life was, so I was hemming and hawing because no one had asked me that in years, and I was not sure what the answer was. If you are like me, you might be tempted to tell the truth and answer that question with a word or phrase like one of these: shallow, empty, quick, boring, struggling, rare, confusing, or sometimes I pray and sometimes I do not, but when I do it's always, "God, help!”

If any of the above words or phrases seem to describe your life of prayer, I want to remind you that as you grow in a relationship with Jesus Christ, you hunger more and more to understand what it means to pray. The disciples of the Lord Jesus had that hunger. They saw the need to pray to God, but after watching the life of Jesus, they became aware that there was something very seriously missing in their own concept of prayer. Luke 11:1-4:

“…when you pray, say:
'Father, hallowed be Thy name.
'Thy kingdom come.
'Give us each day our daily bread.
'And forgive us our sins,
For we ourselves also forgive everyone who is indebted to us.
And lead us not into temptation.'"

Almost all of our prayers begin by rushing into a series of request in which we pour out to God our problems, our needs, our irritations. This only tends to reinforce the focus of our attention on what our troubles are and in our inability to remedy it. It could be that is at least part of the problem of why we are more depressed and frustrated after we pray than before. When we have finished praying, we can scarcely bring ourselves to believe that our feeble words could have been heard, or that they could have made a difference in the things concerning which we have been praying. We have said our prayers but we have not prayed.

The disciples had grown up under the teaching of the Pharisees. They watched them pray three times a day after the model of Daniel (6:10) but they were also reminded by the Lord: "When you pray, you are not to be as the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners, in order to be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full." (Matt 6:5.) Some of the disciples had been with John the Baptist, and he had taught them to pray before he sent them to follow Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. They had seen the Pharisees and John the Baptist pray, and now they saw Jesus praying. That is why one the disciples on behalf of all of them said to Jesus, "Lord, teach us to pray." It was not so much that the disciples wanted to learn a method of praying as that they wanted to understand the secret of the Lord's life and why he was always praying. For as they watched the life of Jesus, they became aware that He spent much time in prayer, and as a result he gained strength, courage, wisdom and power to overcome the evil one and to bring new life to many around him.

"True prayer is an awareness of our own helpless need and an acknowledgment of divine adequacy. For Jesus, prayer was as necessary as breathing, the very breath of life itself." The effective prayer is not measured by how loud you pray, or how long you pray, or even if you say the words of the Lord’s Prayer again and again in a repetitious fashion. Your prayer life will be effective it you are sincere (your approach) and if you ask for the right things (what you say).

The Lord offered his disciples a model of prayer rather than a model prayer. There is a big difference; one is a framework in which to approach God, and the other is a prayer we pray over and over as on a Tibetan prayer wheel. In the latter case, you lose heart in it; you just spin the wheel and pray automatically. However, within this model of prayer our Lord gave the disciples five spiritual insights into the secret of prayer in their daily lives. These insights will also help us in our daily prayer lives with our heavenly Father.

Are you willing to say, "Lord, teach me to pray?" If so, then...

Stay Tuned...

Helping us, stay “connected” has become big business in our culture. Smart phones, Facebook, and Twitter give us instant access to friends, family, work, and the world. However, how much time do we actually spend building meaningful face-to-face relationships? Let us go one-step further—how much effort do we invest in connecting with God?

What kind of relationship do you have with the Lord? Is He a distant Deity or your closest friend? In one way or another, everyone has an association with Him, whether it is acknowledge or not. Even those who say they do not believe in God are bound to Him simply because He created them. Sadly, the majority of people in this world have no idea who their Creator is.

Yet the Lord designed humankind to relate to Him. That is what it means to be, created in His image. We have been giving a spirit that can communicate with His Spirit. Just look at the earth and the heavens above. Although God is the Creator of all these things, He can never interact with a mountain or a star as He does with you. There is no higher honour that He could have given us than to make us in His image.

To help us comprehend what closeness with the Lord looks like, let us examine the writings of David, whom the Bible calls a man after God’s own heart gives a vivid description of His consuming passion for His Lord. David said in Psalm 42:1 “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. (NIV)”

The most obvious element in this Psalm is a thirsting and yearning for the Lord. Every other pursuit in life seems like a dry desert when compared to the fulfilment of an intimate relationship with God. Our souls and spirits will never experience satisfaction until we discover the joy of devotion to the only One who can fill our emptiness. David’s passion even had a physical element to it: “my flesh yearns for You”. At times, those who have a particularly close connection with the Lord experience an aching for more of Him.

Being close to God means communicating with him--telling him what is on our hearts in prayer and hearing and understanding what he is saying to us. It is this second half of our conversation with God that is so important but that can also be so difficult. How do we hear his voice? How can we be sure that what we think we hear is not our own subconscious? What role does the Bible play? What if what God says to us is not clear? The key is to focus not so much on individual actions and decisions as on building our personal relationship with our Creator.

The most obvious way to become better acquainted with the Lord is through two-way communication. However, our prayers are often monologues rather than dialogues. We come to Him with our list of concerns, but how often do we take time to listen for His response? Although God delights in hearing our prayers, He also wants us to be still and listen to Him.

Since He speaks to us primarily through His Word, which is where we will most likely hear His voice. Try interacting with the Lord by praying as you read Scripture. Meditate on His words and ask Him questions: “What are You saying to me? How does this apply to my life?” Then be still and listen, giving Him time to speak to your spirit. Just remember that whatever He says will never contradict His written Word. The more you listen, the more you will hear His voice, and soon your time with Him will become your greatest delight.