Prayer Done the Right Way – Part 5

Praise the Lord saints.

Paul says in Eph.6:18 praying always with all prayer and supplications in the Spirit. “ We are to consistently have an attitude of prayer for anything that happens even if we know we have the ability to correct or fix something.  Now this kind of attitude breads humility and is a hard thing to discipline ourselves to. But it is necessary so that we train ourselves to be God dependent.

Col 1:9-10 For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that you may have a walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God;

It would be good to pray this for we are to walk correctly thereby having the confidence that God hears us and will answer. Because we have the understanding of his will. Paul’s prayer is for a knowledge which leads to godly living in accordance with wisdom and the Spirit, rather than the theoretical knowledge of the false teachers. True knowledge leads to wisdom for living .Paul is asking for this in their walk in contrast to the effects of the false teachers’ “wisdom” they were exposed to. God’s people have always been destroyed by a lack of knowledge

Phil. 4:6 “do not be anxious about anything but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” To wait with patience is very different from commanding God for what you think you may want.   We should not expect that every prayer will be answered the way we would like. Elizabeth in Lk.1 was righteous yet her prayers were not immediately answered. It wasn’t until she was very old that God granted her and her husband their request – the answer a miracle in their lives with John the Baptist as the herald for the messiah. It was God’s perfect timing.

Paul asked in 2 Cor.12:8-9 about the thorn in his flesh. The Lord responded by saying to him that his grace is sufficient. God’s purpose was not to deliver Paul from his immediate uncomfortable position but he had a greater purpose. Paul’ suffering became his pulpit with power, for when he was weak God was strong through him.

  If we look at Heb.11 the great men of faith they became outcasts at certain times of their lives or most of them. Hebrews 11 mentions all these faithful ones Abraham, Moses Samson etc. the writer also states Heb 11:36-12:1 “Still others had trial of mockings and scourgings, yes, and of chains and imprisonment.  They were stoned, they were sawn in two, were tempted, were slain with the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented–  of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, in dens and caves of the earth.  And all these, having obtained a good testimony through faith, did not receive the promise, God having provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us.”

E.M.Bounds wrote,  Obedience helps faith, and faith, in turn, helps obedience. To do God’s will is essential to true faith, and faith is necessary to implicit obedience. Yet faith is called upon, and that right often to wait in patience before

God, and is prepared for God’s seeming delays in answering prayer. Faith does not grow disheartened because prayer is not immediately honored; it takes God at His Word, and lets Him take what time He chooses in fulfilling His purposes, and in carrying on His work. There is bound to be much delay and long days of waiting for true faith, but faith accepts the conditions — knows there will be delays in answering prayer, and regards such delays as times of testing, in the which, it is privileged to show its mettle, and the stern stuff of which it is made.

1 Pet 1:6-7 “In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” We are married to Christ and His love will see us through the worst of times in our pilgrimage on earth. He never told us to pray to be delivered out of the trials but that we should be strengthened through them. This is for our own benefit. If we were to be delivered out of every trial we would be weak in spirit.

Till next week,

God Bless.

Elder Dr. Robert L. Harrison