“When you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full.
“But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.” (Mat 6:5-6)
Journal,
There was a man in England named George Muller who cared for thousands of orphans. He kept a prayer diary. Muller recorded over 50,000 specific prayers that had been answered. The strange part is that Muller never took up offerings. He would only accepted unsolicited free-will offerings for his care of the orphans. He felt that these gifts had to be from the heart or he did not want them.
It was not always that way. Before he met Jesus, George Muller was a drunk, a liar, a thief, and spent time in jail. Naturally the Lord was not pleased with his life. And so he truly did come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ as his own Lord and Savior.
But why did George Muller decide to never let his needs for the care of the orphans be known to anyone other than his staff? It was because Muller took God at His word. He was what we would call a radical believer.
It was George Muller who gave me the inspiration to raise up a ministry to be called Christian Challenge International, on the same basis of taking God at His word. The ministry was to be built on prayer alone. To this day we still do not take up offerings. I have found that God is a man of His Word.
Let’s talk about how prayer and faith work together.
The simple secret
The word ‘unfeigned‘ speaks of something that is not pretended; sincerely felt or expressed. Jesus gave a simple secret to an unfeigned prayer life. It can be found in the
background for what we call, ‘the Lord’s prayer.’ The bottom line is that everything about faith and prayer will always rest upon a believer’s personal relationship with the heavenly Father.
George Muller actually based his prayers on a single Scripture, where the Lord said,
“I, the Lord, am your God, who brought you up from the land of Egypt; open your mouth wide and I will fill it.” (Psa81:10)
This passage became Muller’s challenge to faith and to believing. Sometimes it only takes one passage to change our whole course of life. The point at hand is that our prayer life has to be intensely personal. As sons and daughters of God, our interchanges with heaven should always be on a heart level.
And this brings us to…
The secret of being personal
Everything in the new covenant is personal. Each new birth from above is personal. What Jesus was teaching is that prayer and God’s Word is the connection between the believer and the heavenly Father. You can have all the people in the world praying for you, but until it reaches the level of being personal, the results will not always be satisfying.
For the individual believer, the real issue is always singleness of heart. And this brings me to the most important element in prayer. It has to do with the living Word of God. This is the heart lesson of John 1:1:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (Joh 1:1)
The point is that God doesn’t answer our prayers because we pray loud and long. Some people have the idea that we have to ‘pray through’ to something, as though our long prayers will eventually attain God’s attention. We are the very children of God. We have His full attention every moment of every day. We belong to the family of God. Prayer should be as natural to a child of God as breathing.
Paul said,
“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, …
“… so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.
“Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.” (Eph3:14-21)
The secret of divine communication
The foregoing Scriptures by the apostle Paul, lays out the very heart of our childhood in Christ. We have a loving Father who has caused us to be born of His very Spirit. The prophet of old said that our Father longs to be gracious to us.
Listen:
“Therefore the LORD longs to be gracious to you, and therefore He waits on high to have compassion on you. For the LORD is a God of justice; How blessed are all those who long for Him.” (Isa 30:18)
The secret is in divine communication. We speak to God in prayer. He speaks to us largely through His Word. Who do you think needs to do the most listening? You can do hours in prayer and carry out very little. Why is that? It is because the Lord wants to place answers in your heart and He does this by speaking to us through His Word.
This is why David said,
“Open my eyes, that I may behold Wonderful things from Your law.” (Psa 119:18 –The Hebrew for Law – Torah – speaks of divine communication and instructions.)
How can we have a proper prayer life if we never hear from God. It is on the basis of divine communication that we begin to understand where our faith really comes from. Paul said that our faith is the result of Christ communicating to our hearts. Jesus said it thus,
“My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.” (Jn10:27)
Paul said it this way:
“So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.” (Rom 10:17)
Thus we have…
The very secret of a living faith
The faith we are called to live by is not something that we conjure up. It is not a matter of working five principles of this or seven principles of that. We have a living faith and this
living faith is a matter of the very heart of God. Faith is God’s heart speaking in our heart.
Read very carefully what the apostle had to say about the deep of God:
“For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God.
“Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words.
“But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised. But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one. For WHO HAS KNOWN THE MIND OF THE LORD, THAT HE WILL INSTRUCT HIM? But we have the mind of Christ.” (1Co 2:11-16)
Did you catch a primary reason the Lord has given us the Holy Spirit as His indwelling presence in our hearts?
— So that we may know the things freely given to us by God … not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. —
The Spirituality Secret of Prayer
Let me share three reason why we should be devoted to prayer.
First of all, prayer is balm for the soul. It is not merely a matter of who you are praying for. The one who receives the greatest benefit is the person praying. Balm speaks of God’s healing medicine. It is in prayer that our souls become settled with God’s peacefulness.
A second reason is that prayer actually gives the believer power over temptation. A simple prayer under the influence of the Holy Spirit is worth more than a thousand rote prayers. Jesus said to the disciples,
“Keep watching and praying that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” (Mt26:41)
The third reason is that prayer puts us on God’s page. In all our teachings on our security in Christ, and of God’s love for us, we must take care that we do not neglect our part in the walk of faith. Knowledge by itself can cause a person to lose their spiritual bearing and become prideful. We must always be on God’s page.
Jude to this:
“But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting anxiously for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life.” (Jude 1:20,21)
Where Jude says, “praying in the Holy Spirit,” he is telling us to pray under the auspices or the influence of the Holy Spirit. This kind of praying simply speaks of Spirit guided prayers.
The secret of guided prayer
The disciples asked the Lord to teach them how to pray. Why did they ask this of Him? After all these Hebrew men had been schooled in proper prayers. They ask Jesus this question because they had never seen anyone pray the way Jesus prayed, with such intimacy and presence. They could see that the Lord had a wonderful and loving relationship with the heavenly Father. They wanted that same relationship
Were it not for the Holy Spirit we would be left drifting about in the land of prayer with little knowledge of what we should be praying for. Nor does this mean as some teach, that praying in the Holy Spirit means to pray in an unknown language. That is a grave misunderstanding of what praying under the influence of the Spirit really means.
God sent the Holy Spirit into the church to be the divine administrator of all that pertains to God’s family and to kingdom business. This is why Paul said,
“For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” (Rm14:17)
Having the Spirit of the Lord in our hearts is the awesome treasure of the new covenant. Jesus said,
“But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.” (Jn14:26)
The Holy Spirit is our spiritual tutor. He even works repentance in us by reminding us of that is right in the sight of God. This is why Jesus said,
“But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.” (Mat 6:6)
He also said we should not pray using loud noises and continual repetitions. He explained why we do not need to pray like heathens;
“For your Father knows what you need before you ask Him.”
There is much more to be said about prayer in the new covenant. It seems that George Muller found the secret of prayer. Have you found the secret?
Feel free to offer your thoughts or ask questions. Please let me know if this short instruction on prayer has helped you.
In Christ always,
Buddy
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