Prayer as prophecy

prayer as prophecy

How often do I see the power of prayer in this way – as prophetic? How often to I see the words I chose to speak out loud as whether they are curses or blessing? How often am I speaking into the wind and expecting that God will hear, carry out and answer those prayers as I utter them in faith believing they will move mountains?

It probably is not as many times as I should be – my prayers are fairly passive.

 

God rises up and scatters his enemies.
    Those who hate him run away in defeat. – Psalm 68:1 GNT
If I prayed this as a prayer my mind goes to these words – “may You scatter Your enemies.” As a prophecy it would sound more like – “You will scatter Your enemies.”
This is a prayer that needs to come from me without any doubts or lack of faith as if God sometimes delivers and others times He does not – allowing enemies to do to me whatever they wish. I need to come in prayer with a certain knowledge and a completely confident assurance that God will rise up and He will avenge Himself of His enemy. Is this where prophecy comes in?
If I pray as I should, He has promised to grant my request – is that not better than any assurance I can receive from any prophet?

I look at God’s providence over me holding in His hand the destiny of His enemies. I do not see Him looking down from heaven laughing at all their plans only to then rise up and scatter them. I see my prayer calling on God to rise up and in my call to Him, He does and He engages Himself to scatter His enemies.

“The work of the Spirit can be compared to mining. The Spirit’s work is to blast to pieces the sinner’s hardness of heart and his frivolous opposition to God. The period of the awakening can be likened to the time when the blasts are fired. The time between the awakenings corresponds, on the other hand, to the time when the deep holes are being bored with great effort into the hard rock.  To bore these holes is hard and difficult and a task which tries one’s patience. To light the fuse and fire the shot is not only easy but also very interesting work. One sees “results” from such
work. It creates interest, too; shots resound, and pieces fly in every direction! It takes trained workmen to do the boring. Anybody can light a fuse.” – Hallesby

 

 

Coming in prayer and praise

PrayerPraise

I cried to him for help;
I praised him with songs. – Psalm 66:17 GNT

This is where I see prayer and praise going together hand in hand. Some see them as separate but I am not sure how that works. The only difference for me would be one requires me to be eloquent with my tongue and the other with my heart.

If I had ignored my sins,
    the Lord would not have listened to me. – Psalm 66:18 GNT

Basically, if I looked at my sin, not glancing at it, I may find myself cherishing it, possibly loving it, at least excusing it. If so, another reason God may not be listening to my prayer. It is almost like I have made a decision to not hear God’s voice. I have been here and know what this is like. Most of us who have stayed here longer than we have ever wanted can feel what it is like to be considered a hypocrite.

But God has indeed heard me;
    he has listened to my prayer. – Psalm 66:19 GNT

Freedom from sin is the sign of answered prayer and confidence in my sincere heart to God. It is not a hope, rationale, or dream, it is definitive. Is it not true that I can sense God’s heart as He loves me when my own heart is sincere? There is something about knowing that God is listening to my voice, my cries – most importantly He interprets them correctly, accepts them and then replies. His grace on my heart as I stand right with Him.

I praise God,
    because he did not reject my prayer
    or keep back his constant love from me. – Psalm 66:20 GNT
 

I honour and love Him because He has not withdrawn His love from me nor the ability to pray freely. He did not throw out my prayer. Praise is part of my prayer and I am grateful to be able to enter into it.

I find myself be welcomed into God’s presence.

Come to the Lord, the living stone rejected by people as worthless but chosen by God as valuable. – 1 Peter 2:4 GNT

“Come” means it is an open door for me to “keep coming.” So I come for salvation, and also for worship, prayer and God’s Word every day.

If wrestling in prayer becomes a hard and bitter struggle, and you feel that your soul is out of touch and tune with God, and your prayers only empty words, then pray trustingly for the Spirit of prayer. He will point out the sin which is acting as a hindrance to your prayers and will help you to acknowledge it. And then He will make Christ so precious to you that you will voluntarily give up that sin which is threatening to sever your connection with God. – Ole Hallesby

 

Prayer for protection

prayer for protection

Most of us would not see the evil world as our enemy but this photo reminded me that they are our worst enemy. So when I read the Psalms this morning I tried to keep this in mind.

David prayed for God’s protection in Psalm 64 and I loved his opening sentence.

I am in trouble, God—listen to my prayer!
    I am afraid of my enemies—save my life! – Psalm 64:1 GNT

David finds himself in prayer when he is in trouble.

“He can but pray, but he can pray; and no man is helpless who can look up. However high and closely engirdling may be the walls that men or sorrows build around us, there is always an opening in the dungeon roof, through which heaven is visible and prayers can mount.” – Maclaren

The next Psalm (65) reveals just how abundantly God provides for those who call on Him in prayer and trust in Him. The response is praise from those He blesses.

O God, it is right for us to praise you in Zion
    and keep our promises to you,
    because you answer prayers. – Psalm 65:1-2 GNT

“Theology, which is the proper study of God, should always lead to doxology, the proper worship of God. Learning the truth about God, that He is the giver of all good things, should produce praise for God in the life of the believer.” – Steven Lawson

God answers prayer.

Because God’s image makes man to be man, prayer involves a response that has no parallel in human experience. Personal relations on the human level are necessarily partial. A man relates to his wife in a way that differs from his relating to a business partner or to a chance acquaintance. We sustain roles that can express only partially our own personhood. In relation to God, however, we are ‘naked and pinned down’ (Heb. 4:13). Our masks are gone, pretence is useless: the relationship is not partial, but total. All that we are stands related to our Maker and Redeemer. – Edmund Clowney

 

 

Always pray, pray for everything and sometimes ask for nothing

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Sometimes when I am praying, I find myself in a place where asking is not my primary mode of conversation. Sometimes I like telling God all the things I love about Him. In a way I am declaring my confidence and my trust in Him.

David does this too, although we do not see it that often. In times of trouble this is how he starts one of his journals. It is full of faith and trust, absent of fear, despair and petition.

I wait patiently for God to save me;
I depend on him alone.
He alone protects and saves me;
he is my defender,
and I shall never be defeated. – Psalm 62:1-2 GNT

“There is in it throughout not one single word (and this is a rare occurrence), in which the prophet expresses fear or dejection; and there is also no prayer in it, although, on other occasions, when in danger, he never omits to pray.” – Amyraut, cited in Spurgeon

But even here he is sure to remind us all to pray.

Trust in God at all times, my people.
    Tell him all your troubles,
    for he is our refuge. – Psalm 62:8 GNT

Isaiah gives us a description of what Jesus will look like and I think that helps when we have prayer times like this.

The spirit of the Lord will give him wisdom
    and the knowledge and skill to rule his people.
He will know the Lord‘s will and honor him,
    and find pleasure in obeying him. – Isaiah 11:2 GNT

Wisdom and knowledge speak of authority. It is the ability to give good and right advice and skill to the ability to carry them out.

He will not judge by appearance or hearsay;
    he will judge the poor fairly
    and defend the rights of the helpless. – Isaiah 11:3 GNT

I see Jesus life as one who wants to walk with me, just like He did with Nicodemus. He speaks into the ABC’s of spiritual life, truth that could never come from human wisdom. He describes how angels live, what happens after death, how prayer works, and even how the devil works. He examplied what and who I want to be and live. What does a prayer of faith look like?

James talks about that and he does so in the arena of healing and in the encouragement to pray in all circumstances.

Are any among you in trouble? They should pray. Are any among you happy? They should sing praises. Are any among you sick? They should send for the church elders, who will pray for them and rub olive oil on them in the name of the Lord. This prayer made in faith will heal the sick; the Lord will restore them to health, and the sins they have committed will be forgiven. So then, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, so that you will be healed. The prayer of a good person has a powerful effect. Elijah was the same kind of person as we are. He prayed earnestly that there would be no rain, and no rain fell on the land for three and a half years. Once again he prayed, and the sky poured out its rain and the earth produced its crops. – James 5:13-18 GNT

This is a place where I take all that trust I mentioned before and exercise it. I might see a physical healing, but I also might see an emotional or spiritual healing too. I look to Jesus, with His wisdom and understanding, and I know that with Him as my source of healing, He will know best how these healing should look like.

I like how James ends a session on discipleship with this call to pray with faith.

Prayer, true prayer, does not allow us to deceive ourselves. It relaxes the tension of our self-inflation. It produces a clearness of spiritual vision. Searching with a judgment that begins at the house of God, it ceases not to explore with His light our own soul. If the Lord is our health He may need to act on many men, or many moods, as a lowering medicine. At His coming our self-confidence is shaken. Our robust confidence, even in grace, is destroyed. The pillars of our house tremble, as if they were ivy-covered in a searching wind. Our lusty faith is refined, by what may be a painful process, into a subtler and more penetrating kind; and its outward effect is for the time impaired, though in the end it is increased. The effect of the prayer which admits God into the recesses of the soul is to destroy that spiritual density, not to say stupidity, which made our religion cheery or vigorous because it knew no better, and which was the condition of getting many obvious things done, and producing palpable effect on the order of the day. There are fervent prayers which, by making people feel good, may do no more than foster the delusion that natural vigour or robust religion, when flushed enough, can do the work of the kingdom of God. There is a certain egoist self-confidence which is increased by the more elementary forms of religion, which upholds us in much of our contact with men, and which even secures us an influence with them. But the influence is one of impression rather than permeation, it overbears rather than converts, and it inflames rather than inspires. This is a force which true and close prayer is very apt to undermine, because it saps our self-deception and its Pharisaism. The confidence was due to a lack of spiritual insight which serious prayer plentifully repairs. So by prayer we acquire our true selves. – P. T. Forsyth, Soul of Prayer

 

 

 

 

Pray for others in my prayer time

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Sometimes desperate situations that we have put ourselves in rob us of our faith to believe that God will do anything gracious to us. Sometimes, in those moments, we need others who seem to be in right standing with God, to make that prayer for us. Such was the case with Moses. The people knew their complaining was not to Moses, but directed at God. When He struck them, they knew exactly why. In this very real moment they did not ask for a golden calf, they knew the answer laid in the saving work of God.

The people came to Moses and said, “We sinned when we spoke against the Lord and against you. Now pray to the Lord to take these snakes away.” So Moses prayed for the people. – Numbers 21:7 GNT

God’s remedy was not necessarily simple to put together from Moses’ perspective but it was simple for the people to receive their healing. It took a little while to be organized and put together so more people died while waiting for the plan to take shape, but when it was completed all they had to do was look and live.

It is what we all hope for when we pray – that God would listen and hear as we call out to Him.

Hear my cry, O God;
    listen to my prayer!
In despair and far from home
    I call to you! – Psalm 61:1-2 GNT

Crying out is what I do when I am not content in expressing my need but an actually need for heaven to hear and for God to help. And while I may hope that my prayer is heard I want more. I want God to listen to it so that in His wisdom He may see fit as to how He will answer it. I do not believe that God is ever hardened against the cries of His own children. For whatever reason God does not act on our behalf in the way we think He should, praying is never something we do in vain.

I can only imagine how much this description can fit me when I am in a depressed or melancholy frame of mind – far from home. While I may be diminutive in my calling out, David continues to call out.  David knew that there is no place in the world unsuitable for prayer. What he is sure of is that some circumstances require resolve and it helps sometimes to call them out. Is it not true that when I fail to pray that it becomes the end of myself – despair takes over. I love that David sought no one else but God.

Am I not ashamed when I find myself praying with selfish motives after listening to such an honest prayer?

And when you ask, you do not receive it, because your motives are bad; you ask for things to use for your own pleasures. – James 4:3 GNT

I sometimes amaze myself when I think about how much I am not like God in how I think and act. When I drop the mask and really look at my motives when I pray, I believe I find much more self-centredness than I would hope to find.

At the end of the day, God has not called me to walk in comfort, but to live for Him in a world that does not actually like me – maybe I should be ready for the day when it will hate me. How much more important is my prayer time and to set aside time for others, like me.

It is a glorious divine manifestation of God unto the soul, shedding abroad God’s love in the heart; it is a thing better felt than spoken of: it is no audible voice, but it is a ray of glory filling the soul with God, as He is life, light, love, and liberty, corresponding to that audible voice, ‘O man, greatly beloved’ (Dan. 9: 23); putting a man in a transport with this on his heart, ‘It is good to be here.’ (Matt. 17: 4.) It is that which went out from Christ to Mary, when He but mentioned her name– ‘Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto Him, Rabboni, which is to say, Master.’ (John 20: 16.) He had spoken some words to her before, and she understood not that it was He: but when He uttereth this one word “Mary”, there was some admirable divine conveyance and manifestation made out unto her heart, by which she was so satisfyingly filled, that there was no place for arguing and disputing whether or no that was Christ, and if she had any interest in Him. – William Guthrie, The Christian’s Great Interest