A Better Way To Pray - Chapter 1 Hypocrites Love To Pray Prayer is the most abused part of the Christian life today. Misguided understandings about prayer mess more people up spiritually than anything else out there! Jesus taught that there is right and wrong praying: And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray. Matthew 6:5 Most believers don’t associate hypocrites with prayer. They think, If you’re praying, what could be wrong? Plenty, because hypocrites love to pray! Just because you start with the words “Our Father…” and conclude with “…in the name of Jesus, amen” doesn’t mean it’s prayer. A tremendous amount of what’s being called “prayer” today offends God and opens the door for the devil. There are right and wrong ways to pray! God’s Messenger Boy? In 1969, I heard a wrong teaching that Satan was “God’s messenger boy.” It said that the devil can only do what the Lord allows, and therefore, God uses him to work good in our lives. That’s totally wrong, but I didn’t know it at the time. I brought this teaching back to my girlfriend and she bought into it completely. On the tapes I gave her, there was an example of a boy who was too shy to witness to his classmates. He prayed and asked God to give him an incurable disease so he could show his faith in Christ by the way he responded to death. The next day he came down with leukemia. Four people were born again at his funeral. Although this young man’s faith brought some glory to God, this isn’t correct praying. My girlfriend prayed the same prayer and was diagnosed with leukemia the next morning. Four people were born again at her funeral. However, God wasn’t the one answering these two prayers by “blessing” them with leukemia. Satan took advantage of wrong praying and killed two young people before their time. Wrong praying gets wrong results! Praying Wrong Jesus had to reveal what prayer was not, before He taught what it is. (Matt. 6:5-13.) The Lord Himself had to counter the religious concepts concerning prayer in His day first, or the people would never have been able to grasp what He was about to say. It’s just as bad today, if not worse! Like the Pharisees Jesus confronted, prayer has become a religious calisthenic. People use it to soothe their consciences, feeling like they’ve done something to manipulate and motivate God to move on their behalf—wrong motives! The heart attitude behind your prayer interests God much more than the actual words you say. Just because you spend an hour, or more, in what you call “prayer” doesn’t mean you’re accomplishing anything. If your attitude is wrong, you’re praying wrong! And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. Matthew 6:5 “What a holy person! Have you heard them storm the gates of heaven?” That little ego-stroking pat on the back is all they get because man’s admiration is the only reward for such “praying.” They won’t receive anything from God! Are you aware that you can exercise powerful spiritual gifts and make tremendous personal sacrifices but still not impress God? That’s right! If you don’t have the proper motive, it doesn’t matter what you do. Praying in tongues, prophesying, having all faith, giving your possessions to the poor, or even laying down your life will all profit you nothing if done without God’s kind of love. (1 Cor. 13:1-3.) In the kingdom, heart attitude makes all the difference! If you aren’t seeing the desired results from your prayer life, check your motives. Are your prayers truly motivated by love? I understand this is hard to admit because you always want to be positive and believe the best. However, if you allowed yourself to take a critical and objective look at your own prayer life, would the honest evaluation be that it profits you nothing? Have you prayed for years and not seen the manifestation? Perhaps your body isn’t healed, or your finances still aren’t really improving; either way, it’s just not working. Friend, it’s not God who hasn’t been answering; it’s your prayers that have been wrong! God Already Moved Most Christians see prayer as an opportunity to “move God.” They believe He can do anything, but that He hasn’t done it yet. In this mentality, prayer is how to make God do something. If this is what you believe, your prayer life rests on an extremely faulty foundation. God has already done everything He’s ever going to do! He moved once and for all in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Through the atonement, God has already forgiven and healed every person who will ever be forgiven or healed. He doesn’t even have to lift His little finger now to cause a healing or salvation! As far as God’s concerned, the sins of the entire world have already been forgiven. The Lamb’s perfect sacrifice dealt decisively with the past, present, and future sins of every believer and nonbeliever alike. This doesn’t mean that all are just “automatically” saved (or healed). All individuals must receive for themselves by faith what Jesus Christ has already provided in order to actually benefit from it. A gift given isn’t fully yours until it’s received! As Christians, we are to instruct people to believe and receive what God has already done for them through the atonement. That’s why the popular evangelistic method of “asking Jesus to come into your heart” is biblically inaccurate. Technically speaking, you don’t have to “ask” God to “save” you. This implies that the Lord hasn’t done anything yet until after you make your request. Then, depending on how He feels about you, He’ll either respond positively or negatively. This is completely incorrect because Jesus did everything for all of us two thousand years ago! The Philippian jailer approached Paul and Silas, asking, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” They answered, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved” (Acts 16:30,31). Believe what? Believe that He fully dealt with sin at Calvary. Payment has already been made. Now it’s just a matter of believing and receiving! “I Don’t Know” After a meeting once, a lady informed me that she had asked the Lord into her heart a hundred times but still didn’t have any assurance of salvation. I told her, “Tonight we’ll pray and you’ll get assurance!” After praying with her to receive salvation, I asked, “Are you saved?” She responded, “Well, I don’t know.” “What do you mean you don’t know?” Pointing to my open Bible, I shared with her, “The Word says right here in Romans 10:9, ‘That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.’ Did you confess with your mouth?” “Yes.” “Do you believe God raised Jesus from the dead?” “Yes.” “Are you saved?” “I don’t know.” “Look with me at verse 13. ‘For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.’ Are you a whosoever?” “Well, I guess I am.” “Did you call on the name of the Lord?” “Yes.” “Are you saved?” “I don’t know.” She simply could not believe that she was saved! Receive What He’s Done In a situation like that, what would you think if I said to you, “I’m not sure why God hasn’t saved her. Would you please join with me in prayer, fasting, and agreement for her salvation? We shouldn’t let go of God until He saves her!” You’d probably disagree with me, answering, “No, Andrew, that’s not the way it works. God has already done it. If she hasn’t received, then her receiver is the problem, not God’s giver!” What if someone in a wheelchair came forward for healing during a service? If I prayed and didn’t see him rise out of the wheelchair immediately, I could ask the audience, “How many of you will stand in faith together with me? Let’s fast and pray in agreement, not letting go of God until He heals this person.” I bet I could persuade 90 percent of the people to go along with that! Yet God’s Word clearly proclaims, “As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him” (Col. 2:6). In the same way you appropriate and walk in forgiveness of sin, you receive healing, deliverance, prosperity, and everything else! If begging God to save the lady in the first scenario is inappropriate, then doing so for healing or anything else in the Christian life is absolutely wrong too! Christ already made full provision for the abundant life through His atonement. It’s now not up to Him to do, but you to receive what He’s done! Heal the Sick! Sometimes Christians approach God, praying, “I know You can heal me, but You haven’t done it yet. Therefore, I want to learn how to make You heal me.” This is rank unbelief! They don’t believe that He’s already done it and they think they can make Him do it. Wrong! Such unbelief explains why more people aren’t experiencing healing. In our Bible schools and teaching seminars, we confidently instruct people not to “pray” for the sick, but to heal them. Jesus commanded us in Matthew 10:8 to “heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, [and] cast out devils.” There’s a huge difference between healing the sick and just praying for them! John G. Lake understood this difference. As a world-renowned missionary preacher, Lake had a powerful healing ministry based in Spokane, Washington. Instead of doing all the work himself, he trained associates called “healing practitioners.” Whenever people requested prayer, Lake sent his practitioners out with little bottles of oil and told them, “Don’t come back until they’re healed!” These believers didn’t just go pray for sick people; they healed them! The longest it took for a practitioner to come back was three-and-a-half weeks. It might have taken a while, but they saw that person healed! Lake stated that not a single associate ever returned without seeing an individual healed. They stayed and diligently worked with them until the healing manifested. Although this might sound foreign to you, these are just normal results when you understand and believe that God has already done His part. Jesus Christ completed everything necessary to save and heal every person. You believed and received salvation. Healing comes the exact same way! It shouldn’t be any harder to receive your healing since He provided it at the same time as forgiveness for your sin. Neither does it take any more faith to raise someone from the dead than to see them born again! It’s Jackhammer Time! The greatest manifestation of God’s power came when you were born again! By nature, you were a child of the devil. He had legal rights and claims to you. As a citizen of the kingdom of darkness, the enemy legitimately dominated your life. At the time of your salvation, you hadn’t been fasting, praying, studying the Word, attending church, paying tithes, or living a holy life. Yet without any such effort, you received the greatest miracle of all! It happened because you believed it was already done. How could you doubt that God would do what He had already done? The gospel is good news (what He’s done), not “good prophecy” (what He’s going to do)! “News” in a newspaper has taken place in the past. The good “news” of the gospel is that God has already forgiven you. Why would you choose to go to hell with your sins forgiven? Why not take advantage of the Lord’s generous provision? You just need to understand that He’s already done His part! The question isn’t, “Will God save you?” but “Will you accept His salvation?” The gift has been given, but will you receive it? It’s the same with everything else in the Christian life! God has already healed, prospered, and delivered you. Yet most people beg and plead, attempting to manipulate and control God through prayer. Their underlying attitude is “How do I make God do something He’s unwilling to do?” That’s totally wrong! Prayer is not trying to twist God’s arm to make Him do something. Prayer is receiving by faith what He has already done! Should the Lord tarry, believers one hundred years from now will look back on most of the concepts being peddled today as “intercession” and think, How ignorant and barbaric can you get? Nobody in their right mind should believe the majority of current teaching being passed off as “intercession” in the body of Christ. It’s one of the biggest areas of deception and bondage in the church today! Before Jesus taught what prayer is, He revealed what it’s not. Let’s take a jackhammer to our faulty foundations and throw them out; they’re only hindering us!
Posted on: Tue, 22 Oct 2013 02:28:00 +0000
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