A Lifestyle of Prayer
Every believer needs to develop a lifestyle of
prayer. The Word says, “Pray without ceasing” (First
Thessalonians 5:17). We need to realize that we can live
in the spirit of prayer, whereby we pray all the time. Our
heart can always be crying out to Him. Our thought life is
never far away from God.
I asked the Lord why some people never feel or
sense His touch in their lives. It’s because most of their
waking moments are caught up in the affairs of this life.
Their hearts are far from God.
Jude 20 says, “But ye, beloved, building up yourselves
on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy
Ghost.” It is important to pray in the Spirit and keep
yourself built up spiritually. Some would say; “I need to
get prayed up.” Don’t just get prayed up; stay prayed up.
Stay in the Spirit.
Different Rules for Different Prayers
We know that just as different sports have
different rules, so there are different kinds of prayer and
not all prayer has the same rules. For the believer who
would be used of God, there are two prayers especially
among all the others that need to be prayed.
The first is the prayer of consecration. Jesus
prayed this prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. It was a
prayer of consecrating His will to do the will of His
Father.
The second prayer is the prayer of repentance,
always keeping our hearts right with God. This is not on
the basis of sin consciousness, but out of our love for
Jesus. We would not want to do anything to hurt Him in
any way, shape, or fashion.
These two prayers are lacking in many lives. For
those who desire to have the anointing, a consecrated,
yielded, repentant heart will be used of God.
Is God a Captive in His Own Heavens?
There are those in the Church who think that to
see revival our prayer life must be directed towards the
devil in a warfare attitude. They believe we must wage
war on the devil in the heavens to release God so that He
can move freely. They act as if God is bound in the
heavenly realm, waiting desperately for a believer to
loose Him so that the plan and purpose of God can be
done on earth.
Honey, I Blew up the Devil and other Nintendo Games
This game of spiritual warfare is nothing more
than a spiritual Nintendo game played by baby Christians
who have no understanding that Jesus defeated the devil
two thousand years ago. He has sent the Holy Ghost to
empower the believer and to flow through that
individual’s life to enforce the devil’s defeat.
In this game, the devil is seen through the eyes of
the believer as very big and in control. God is having a
problem containing him. Believers, instead of preaching
the gospel, are in their closets waging war on the devil.
Many live in a fantasy world of spiritual warfare. It’s
probably the result of a bad dream and an overdose of
pizza with too much cheese.
This has permeated the Church, infiltrated the
worship, prayer, and study of the Word to such an extent
that when you go to some churches, you wonder who are
you going to worship. All they ever seem to do is talk
about the devil and pray about what he is doing. Even the
sermon and their heavenly language is directed toward
the devil.
By the end of the service, all the believers are
stamping their feet, binding and loosing in a frightened
frenzy. It reminds me of a bunch of kids who have been
told they are going to have to walk home in the dark past
a graveyard after they’ve just seen a horror movie.
Pulling Down Strongholds in the Mind or Heavenlies?
(For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal,
but mighty through God, to the pulling down of strong
holds;) Casting down imaginations, and every high thing
that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and
bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of
Christ (Second Corinthians 10:4,5). This speaks of a warfare
in the mind of man rather than in the heavenlies.
We have no account of Paul or anyone else -
including Jesus – indulging in these so-called warfare
practices. This practice is based on Daniel’s 21-day fast
while the angel was trying to get through. This, of course,
is Old Covenant. The Holy Ghost is here on earth now.
He came on the day of Pentecost and never left.
So rather than indulging in religious practices that
do not produce any fruit, let us turn to the proclamation
of the gospel linked to the demonstration of the power of
the Holy Ghost resulting in the establishment of the
kingdom of God. “The kingdom is not meat and drink;
but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost”
(Romans 14:17).
It is interesting to note that the greatest soul
winners in the world have never indulged in such
practices. They have spent their time in prayer,
fellowshipping with the Lord on a daily basis, and
ministering out of an overflow of that communion with
Him.
