Prayer Secret #2
The Will of God
Prayer Secret
#1 - establishing an intimate, personal relationship with
God the Father will get you into the door with Him. It will get
you to the point where God will now listen and consider each of
your prayer requests.
Prayer Secret #2 is the next step when
approaching God with a specific prayer request. This one seems
to be so easy to grasp, but many Christians keep violating this
basic common sense principle. Prayer Secret #2 is making sure
that your prayer request always lines up with the will of God
for your life.
I have a pet saying when it comes to this principle. The
saying is "Father always knows
best." God always knows what is best
for you in all situations - you do not! God’s knowledge and
wisdom is always perfect - yours is not! God knows what all of
your future will hold for you - you do not!
Too many Christians are constantly asking God for things
that He does not really want them to have. Here is the main
Scripture verse where this basic principle is being very
clearly stated:
"Now this is the confidence that we have in Him,
that if we ask anything ACCORDING TO HIS WILL, He hears us.
And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know
that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him." (1
John 5:14)
Interpretation - God hears your prayer only
if the prayer request is in His will for you and your life. If
it is not, then the above verse is implying that He will not
hear your prayer - and thus will not grant the prayer
request.
This is where each Christian has to really get a grip on any
specific prayer requests they are presenting to God. If God
comes back letting you know that what you are asking for is not
in His perfect will for you and your life, then you have to let
it go, trust that God knows best and move on.
When you approach God the Father with a specific prayer
request - this is very serious business. You are asking God to
bring something to you that normally would not be coming your
way. You are asking God to supernaturally bring or allow this
request to come your way through Him.
So the first thing you have to do before approaching God on
your specific prayer request is to make sure that your prayer
request is in His perfect will for you and your life. There are
several ways you can do this.
1. Analyze Your Prayer Request
Sometimes it is quite obvious that the request is needed and
in His will for you. You don’t even need to pray about whether
or not it is in His will for you. The answer is already obvious
and you can go ahead and shoot your prayer through.
An example would be is that maybe you have just lost your
job. You now have to go to God and ask Him to lead you to the
next job. You already know this request is in His will for you
because you need a job to survive and put food on the table.
This is quite obvious, and you can now go ahead and start
pressing in and praying to God that He lead you as to where He
will want you to go next.
Sometimes the request is not so obvious as to whether or not
it is God's will for you. Maybe you are dating someone and you
would really like to marry this person. However, God has not
voiced His opinion on the issue yet.
The way to properly handle this is to go to God and ask His
perfect will on the situation - whether or not you should marry
this person. If you really love this person and really want to
marry him or her, the best way to word your prayer is to tell
God you would really like to marry this person - but only if it
be in His perfect will for you to do so.
This way you are on safe ground with God in the way that you
have worded the request. You have voiced your opinion on the
matter - but you have also let Him know that He knows better
than you do as to who you should be marrying in this life, and
that you will not marry this person unless it is in His perfect
will for you to do so.
2. The Holy Spirit
The other way to approach this is to simply ask the Holy
Spirit if you should be approaching God with the prayer
request. I believe that the Holy Spirit knows most, if not all
of the time, whether or not God will answer your specific
prayer request. You can save yourself a lot of travailing and
praying by getting the Holy Spirit’s answer before you waste
your time and God’s time by praying on a certain issue.
For those of you who have established a good inner
connection with the Holy Spirit, the above is rather easy to
do. You simply tap into Him, ask His opinion and most of the
time you’ll pick it up with an "inner knowing" from Him as to
whether or not you should proceed any further in approaching
God with the request.
For those of you who have not yet established this kind of
inner connection with the Holy Spirit, you can still go ahead
and ask Him, and He will somehow get through to you as to
whether or not you should be praying to God on a particular
issue.
Here are 3 short powerful stories that will really
illustrate the importance of making sure that all of your
prayer requests always line up with the perfect will of God for
your life.
Three Stories
1. STORY #1 - About 10
years ago, a friend of mine told me this story and I will never
forget it. One of her girlfriends had been dating a man for
about two years. Everything was going great. She got to the
point that she was now wanting to marry the man. She went
before God and started praying, asking God if she should marry
him. God came back with a one-line answer and the answer was
"He is sufficient for now."
This obviously was not good enough for her. She kept
pressing God for an answer as to whether or not she should
marry this man. God came back with no further answers every
time she asked.
After about 6 months of continuing to ask God for His
opinion on this matter and not getting any additional answers,
she decided to make her own decision and marry the man without
waiting for God’s confirmation or approval.
Six months into the marriage relationship, this man's dark
side all of a sudden started to emerge. He started to
physically abuse her. The beatings got so bad that she had no
other alternative but to divorce the man for fear he was going
to end up killing her.
I have found from personal experience that whenever God is
silent on a specific prayer request, this means to hold your
position and do nothing until you receive further word from Him
as to whether or not you should move in the direction that you
are looking to move into.
2. STORY #2 - Here is another perfect
example on this. Another one of my friends was dating a man for
about 1 year. She too started asking God if she should marry
him. She got no answer from God for at least 3 months. Again,
she got impatient waiting for God to answer her. She went ahead
and married the man without any leading from the Holy Spirit to
do so and no confirming activity from the Lord that she should
marry the man.
One year into the marriage, she found out that her husband
had been having an affair behind her back with one of his
secretaries during the entire year that they had been married!
They were divorced shortly thereafter.
Do you see what happens when you go against God's perfect
will on a specific request? Total death can result. In this
case, both girls saw their marriages end up in divorce because
they were not patient enough to wait for God’s answer on their
specific requests! They were both praying for marriages that
obviously were not in the perfect will of God for their lives.
This is why I say God always knows best.
God knew the one man had a dark side that was going to
emerge once he married the girl. He knew the other man would
not stay faithful once he got married to the second girl.
Neither girl could have known these things were going to occur.
But God does know all these things and what our futures will
hold for us - and this is why your prayer requests have always
got to be within His perfect will for your life or the
consequences could be disastrous like they were in these two
stories!
3. STORY #3 - The third story is my own
personal story. About 15 years ago, I was dating a girl for
about one year when she got diagnosed with cancer. The doctors
told her she had a 50/50 chance of making it. She immediately
started chemo and the rest of the appropriate cancer
treatments. I took her to see Joyce Meyer for a healing, along
with some of the other ministers in our area who were supposed
to have the gift of healing operating through their
ministries.
None of the ministers were able to bring any type of healing
to my girlfriend. I then started to try and pray myself to see
if I could get God to heal her. I will never forget what
happened when I did. As I approached God the Father with the
request, I felt the Holy Spirit put up a shield between me and
God the Father. I initially ignored the shields and continued
to try and pray through to God for this request.
As I started praying the appropriate words, I saw my words
travel about two feet in front of my mouth and then drop
straight to the ground. I could tell my words were not
"hitting" God. I then felt the Holy Spirit start to literally
pull back on my words as I was trying to release them to God.
There was no anointing on my words. I had no wind at my back
from the Holy Spirit to be approaching God with this request. I
was really straining in trying to get my words to reach God the
Father.
After about the 5th or 6th time when
trying to pray to God about this and picking up the above
resistance from the Holy Spirit each time I tried to pray, I
immediately stopped and asked God if I should even bother to
continue to pray on this issue due to the resistance I seemed
to be picking up from the Holy Spirit.
I then received an immediate answer. I was given a strong
knowing that God did not want to heal her and that it was His
will that she be brought home to Him - and if I continued to
try and pray for this healing against His will, that I would
just be expending useless energy. He made it loud and clear
that His mind was already made up on the issue and that I was
to let it go.
He then conveyed to me as to why He was not going to
consider healing her. Long story short, my girlfriend was 40
years old when she came down with the cancer. 8 years prior to
this, she got diagnosed with the beginning stages of emphysema.
The doctors told her that if she did not quit smoking, that she
would end up in a wheelchair and on an oxygen tent on a
permanent basis.
For whatever reason, she would not quit smoking and she
continued to smoke for another 8 years. The emphysema was
starting to break into the next level and she still would not
quit. She then broke out with the cancer. God made it very
clear to me that He gave her 8 years to clean up her act, to
heed the warnings from the doctors and to quit smoking.
Our bodies are a gift from God and He expects us to do the
best we can with them - especially in the area of taking proper
care of them. When she refused to take proper care of her body
by giving up smoking, God decided He was not going to heal her
and that she would have to be brought home much earlier than He
would have really liked.
I believe to this day that had my girlfriend quit smoking 8
years before coming down with this cancer, that there would
have been a very good chance that God would have healed her of
the cancer. But because she did not take proper care of her
body, God had no natural desire to want to heal her when this
emergency presented itself. And God gave her plenty of time to
get her act together before the cancer hit - 8 years!
I did not tell my girlfriend what I felt God had conveyed to
me. I did not want to cause her to lose hope in the event I had
not properly heard from God on this issue. She tried several
other healing ministries, along with continuing all of the
cancer treatments, but nothing worked. She died one year later
after getting diagnosed with the cancer.
Conclusion
1. As you can see from the above three stories,
you can save yourself a lot of blood, sweat and tears when
praying to God if you can pick it up ahead of time whether or
not your specific prayer requests should be brought before Him
for His consideration. This is the beauty of the ministry of
the Holy Spirit. One of His jobs is to help us in our prayer
life with God the Father.
The Holy Spirit will always know whether or not God will
want to answer your specific prayer request. By tapping into
and connecting up with the Holy Spirit on a specific prayer
request, you’ll go a long way in being able to decide when to
approach God in prayer and when not to.
For those of you who have not got this far in your own
personal relationship with the Holy Spirit in order to be able
to pick Him up and read His movements, you can still approach
both Him and God the Father before you attempt to pray and just
simply ask God if it is His perfect will that a specific prayer
request be put before Him.
I have found that God will always come through loud and
clear on this issue. Remember, God wants to establish a loving
personal relationship with you - and in this personal
relationship will be the benefit of being able to approach Him
with your specific prayer requests.
2. God really wants to show you how to play the
prayer game with Him. It is prayer that will pull down major
miracles from God. You just have to learn what the ground rules
are and how to play the game with Him. The Bible lays down all
the ground rules that you will need to know in order to become
a very effective and powerful prayer warrior.
For whatever reason, God has this thing set up in that He
will not move many of the times on a situation unless we first
go into serious prayer with Him. The art of prayer is a
powerful tool in the hands of a Spirit-filled believer. God can
be moved to answer prayer no matter how dire the circumstances.
You just need the knowledge on how to properly approach Him in
order to get Him to move on a certain situation.
I think you will find the remaining prayer secrets very
interesting, as they will give you several different options
and strategies in which to approach God with on your specific
prayer requests. I believe with knowledge comes power. With
knowledge will come the ability to know how to properly play
the prayer game with the Lord.
I will leave you with one last thought. One of the benefits
of having established a true personal relationship with God the
Father is the ability to be able to approach Him with your
specific prayer requests. Think of the consequences and the
possibilities of this privilege that we now have with God the
Father.
God the Father has the full supernatural power to do or
accomplish whatever He should so desire. The Bible says that
"With God NOTHING IS
IMPOSSIBLE."
God loves to answer prayers. Prayers to God can save lives,
change circumstances and prevent catastrophes. The Bible says
that God is looking to "show Himself strong"
on behalf of those who have established a true, loving,
personal relationship with Him. However, many Christians do not
fully realize the power and
potential they have if they would simply learn
how to properly pray to God to get Him to move on certain
situations.
Many people are so wrapped up in themselves and their own
lives, they fail to see how their prayers to God can help
someone else out who may be in a dire situation. One of the
prayer secrets I will be discussing shortly is the power of
intercession - the ability to stand in the gap for someone
else, approach God as his advocate, and pray to God to help
them out of a dire situation.
Many people don’t really know how to properly approach and
pray to God the Father. As a result, people are either dying
early before their time is really up or they are forced to live
under tragic circumstances due to no fault of their own.
Accidents happen. Bad things can happen. But prayers to God the
Father can either prevent the bad things from happening before
they happen or change the situation for the better once the bad
thing has happened.
Remember, our God is in the life saving
business! Our God is a God of miracles. He is just looking
for true prayer warriors to pull down these miracles that
He is only to anxious to release!
Think of the possibilities that we all have with
this privilege that we have with God - to be able to boldly
approach His throne for prayer anytime, anywhere and for
any situation - to be able to save the day for someone who
may be at death’s door!
This is the call of the Eagle. A true Eagle of
God is a "master prayer." He has learned the fine art of
being able to properly and effectively pray to God in order
to literally move mountains when needed. Nothing is
impossible for a true Eagle of God because he knows nothing
is impossible with the God he serves.
Mark my words! God will be raising up an army of Eagles in
the coming years that will fly with the power and anointing of
God such as the world has never seen before or will ever see
again. The Bible says in the latter days just before Jesus
comes back, that an army will raised up. The verse is Joel 2:2.
It reads:
"A day of darkness and gloominess, a day of
clouds and thick darkness, like the morning clouds spread
over the mountains. A people come, great and strong, the
like of whom has never been; nor will there be any such
after them, even for many successive
generations."
The rest of the verses then go into how powerful this army
will be and the exploits they will do under God’s anointing and
power.
For more information on this coming army - see my article
titled "Prophecy
from Jesus to Mary Baxter on Joel's Army to Come" under the
"Prophecies"
section. A woman by the name of Mary Baxter received a direct
Word from Jesus about this army and who He will be calling to
be a part of it.
This was a very powerful Word given to this woman, and I
believe there is a strong possibility that this army will be
coming out of this generation!
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Prayer
Secrets
Sinners
Prayer
Prayer Secret
#1 - Relationship With God the Father
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Michael Bradley
Bible Teaching and
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Lessons
Scripture taken from New King James
Version.
Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2005-2008 by Michael Bradley.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5
License.
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