Freedom Through Prayer



        [Relinquishment] [Importance] [Attitude] [Obstacles] [Answers]






        When you pray,
        go into your room,
        close the door
        and pray to your Father,
        who is unseen.
        Then your Father,
        who sees what is
        done in secret, will reward you.
        _Matthew 6:6


        Those who pray most in private
        pray best in public.
        _R. Edward Davenport



        A key element in keeping prayer personal is making it creative. Often, routine is the assassin of effective prayer.
        One of my own creative ways, is to sing prayer. It is so very uplifting, and fills my heart with the joy of the Lord! :)



        Relinquishment



        I bring those whom I love to You,
        commit each to Your loving care:
        then carry them away again
        nor leave them there:
        forget that You who lived
        to die (and rose again!)
        care more than I.

        So back I come with my hearts' weight
        confessing my lack of faith
        in You alone, addressing all
        I cannot understand
        to You, who do.
        You know each heart,
        each hidden wound, each scar,
        each one who played a part
        in making those we bring to You
        the ones they are
        (and dearer each to You than us, by far).

        So now I give them to Your loving care,
        with thankful heart, and leave them there.

        ~ by, Ruth Bell Graham*




        The Importance of Prayer

        Prayer is our most important work as Christians. It is a journey filled with the satisfaction of helping the helpless, seeing the purposes of God fulfilled and the strategies of Satan thwarted. In the unseen arena of prayer the real work of God is forged. We often see the results in the visible world of men, but God is moving behind the scenes, acting in response to those who labor daily in prayer.


        Exodus 17 illustrates this principle vividly. As the Israelite army fought the Amalekites on the plain of Rephidim. Moses stood on a hill overlooking the battle. Whenever he held up the staff of God, Israel prevailed. But when he lowered the staff, the Amalekites gained the advantage. A clear principle of prayer emerges from this account: God acts in response to the prayers of His intercessors, supernaturally enabling those He has called to accomplish the assigned task. Moses' part in the victory, though probably unseen and unnoticed by those in the fight, was vital.<

        Our role in the work of God throughout the world may be unnoticed, unseen, unappreciated. But, like Moses, God calls us to "hold up the staff of God" _to pray. In fact, God is looking "for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found none" (Ezekiel 22:30). We need to take our part in the plan and program of God seriously, developing the attitude that Samuel had toward Israel when he said, "As for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the LORD by failing to pray for you" (1 Samuel 12:23).

        Prayer is work. Prayer is hard work. But prayer is a holy work as well_vital and indispensable. God has a more difficult time finding people for prayer than he does for any other assignment.



        Principles of Prayer


        As we begin to develop a personal prayer strategy, we need to examine some principles of prayer from God's Word.
        Attitudes of Prayer


        Prayer is conversation with God. But when we talk with God it is not just like any other conversation. There are several qualities that should mark our attitudes as we converse with out Creator:

        Awe.When John the apostle saw the glorified Christ, he "fell at his feet as though dead"...(Revelation 1:17). When prophet Isaiah had his vision of the throne room of God, he exclaimed, "Woe to me!...I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty" (Isaiah 6:5).

        Yet, as A.W. Tozer has said, We go to God as we send a boy to a grocery store with a long written list, "God give me this," and our gracious God often gives us what we want. But I think God is disappointed because we make him no more than a source of what we want.

        Awe simply means being constantly amazed at who God is and that he would even allow us to address him as "father."

        Helplessness.We must be genuinely convinced of our own inability to accomplish the thing for which we are praying to God. O. Hallesby, in his classic book, Prayer, highlights this truth when he says:

        Be not anxious because of your helplessness. Above all, do not let it prevent you from praying. Helplessness is the real secret and the impelling power of prayer. You should therefore rather try to thank God for the feeling of helplessness which He has given you. It is one of the greatest gifts which God can impart to us. For it is only when we are helpless that we open our hearts to Jesus and let Him help us in our distress, according to His grace and mercy.

        The apostle Paul similarly speaks of our total inability to accomplish anything on our own in the spiritual realm. He confesses, "You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly"... Romans 5:6. And again in Romans 8:26 he says, "The Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for."

        The proper starting place in prayer, then, is an awe of God, which in turn makes us see our own helplessness. It is the realization that we are totally powerless within ourselves to make our prayers happen. Our helplessnesss induces prayer.

        Faith. But it takes more than helplessness. It is faith that shapes the cries of our hearts into genuine prayer. Hallesby points out that,

        Without faith there can be no prayer, no matter how great our helplessness may be. Helplessness united with faith produces prayer. Without faith our helplessness would only be a vain cry of distress in the night.

        The writer of Hebrews agrees:
        And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him (11:16).

        But faith is often the very thing we feel that we lack in our prayer life. Perhaps we do not understand that in the very act of praying we are demonstrating faith. By going to God, we exercise genuine faith. It may be a young faith, but it is faith! We have "faith enough" when we turn to Jesus in our helplessness. The results of prayer are the concern of God. Our concern is to come to him in prayer with the awareness that we are helpless in ourselves.

        Confidence. The essence of faith is our confidence in God's ability to do what he has promised. Abraham stands as our clearest illustration of confident faith:

        Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised (Romans 4:20-21).

        Too often we unconsciously shift our faith from confidence to God's ability to do what he has promised, to confidence in our ability to believe he will do a certain thing. In other words, we put our confidence in our faith rather than in God! Jesus makes it clear that the size of our faith is not what matters when he says, "I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you (Matthew 17:20). It is the object of our faith-God-that is the basis of our confidence in prayer.

        Persistence. In Matthew 7:7 Jesus says, "ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you." This verse translated literally says, "Ask and keep on asking...seek and keep on seeking...knock and keep on knocking." We are told the importance of persistent prayer, of continuing to bring our prayers to God. Even Jesus, on the night of his betrayal, brought his anguished plea to the Father three times before relenting.
        Obstacles to Prayer


        Even the most mature Christian will sometimes feel that their prayers are not getting "beyond the ceiling." There are several things that can seriously hinder our prayer life:

        Unconfessed sin. David confessed, "If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened" (Psalm 66:18). Isaiah tells us, "Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden His face from you, so that he will not hear" (Isaiah 59:1-2)

        Sin renders our prayers useless because it alienates us from the object of our prayers-God. When we are out of fellowship with God due to unconfesses sin in our lives, our prayers are powerless monologues. We need to confess our sins of anger, lust, envy, gossip, or whatever else that has become a barrier between us and our Father. The basis of our access in prayer is fellowship with God.

        Broken fellowship with others. Too often, "fellowship" is mistakenly understood to be an activity, when in fact it is a condition. Fellowship is not so much something we do as something we are either in or out of. The apostle John illuminates this for us:

        If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, His Son, purifies us from all sin (1 John 1:6-7)

        It is clear from this passage that our relationship with God is inseparably linked to our relationship with other believers. We cannot go to God in prayer when we are out of fellowship with one of His children. Jesus emphasized this truth to His disciples in the Sermon on the Mount when he said:

        Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift (Matthew 5:23-24).

        Restitution of broken relationships is a prerequisite to effective prayer. This principle applies to relationships both inside and outside the church; it is especially relevant within the home. The apostle Peter said that conflict between spouses will "hinder" their prayers (1 Peter 3:7).

        We can surely say in the light of these Scriptures that if we are not on speaking terms with God's people, we are not on speaking terms with God either. As with unconfessed sin in general, we should make immediate efforts to restore any broken relationship before we resume the ministry of intercession. If restoration is not possible immediately, we need to confess this broken fellowship to God and make a commitment to him to deal with it as soon as possible.

        Wrong motives. A final obstacle to prayer has to do with the intention of our hearts. James warns us,

        When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures (James 4:3).

        If we pray for things that will "feed" that part of us known as our "sinful nature" (Romans 7:18), we cannot expect those prayers to reach the heart of God. Why not? Because God's goal for each one of us is to transform us into the likeness of His Son, Jesus Christ (Romans 8:29). God is not pleased to hear prayer that is contrary to his plans and purposes for our lives. But John assures us that we will be heard when we pray according to His will (1 John 5:14-15).
        Our motives, the driving force behind our requests, are crucial factors that can limit the effectiveness of prayer.





        ...taken from Wide World Publications,...Rev. Billy Graham - 1995 Personal Prayer Journal


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