What Constitutes Victorious Prayer?
1. Some Important Foundations
.....
2. What Really Is Prayer?
3. Under What Circumstances Does Prayer Bring Results?
4. Why Is Prayer Partnership of Value?
5. Who should be your prayer partner?
James 5:16 - "The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man accomplishes much."
We need to address three questions:
(a) What really is prayer?
(b) What makes prayer effective?
(c) Why is prayer partnership of value?
1. Some Important Foundations
But first, I need to lay some foundations. Let me ask you three basic questions:
(1) What is the main, central, foundational, most important issue for which "spirit-filled" Christians stand for?
Eternal life? John 17:3
Salvation? Been saved: Ephesians 2:5, 8 & 13
Being saved: 1 Corinthians 15:2 Philippians 2:12
Will be saved: Matthew 10:22 & 24:13, Romans 5:9-10
An individual intimate personal relationship with Jesus Christ in the here-and-now!
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(2) What must each of us do in order to enter into that?
Jeremiah 29:13 - "... you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart."
It Is Possilbe
For Each One Of Us
To Have
An Intimate Personal
Relationship With
Jesus Christ
In This Life
Here And Now!
Isaiah 55:6 - "Seek the Lord while He may be found. Call upon Him while He is near."
"Seek" and "call" here are in the sense of going so often as to beat a path, or in other words, make it a habit!
(3) Where is He to be found?
In you! In your (human) spirit!
Gal. 2:20; Rev. 3:20; etc.
Eph. 6:18 - go inside where our Lord dwells, in your spirit, to pray.
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When we seek Him, He causes us to:
(1) receive His life within us:
(2) experience His love for us and love Him in return;
(3) listen to and hear Him as well as talk to Him;
and (4) behold Him.
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Many years ago, A. W. Tozer published a little book titled That Incredible Christian. In a chapter entitled Our Unclaimed Riches, he makes the following four points. Listen to them carefully:
(1) You will get nothing unless you go after it.
(2) You may have as much as you insist upon having.
(3) You will have as little as you are satisfied with.
(4) You now have as much as you really want.
We are seeking to know (gnosko) and see (behold) Christ in the spirit - to fellowship with Christ so intimately that He is free to flow both in and through us with His life, light and love, as He chooses, without our struggling to do things for Him.
This is a dimension of relationship with Him far beyond what most of us now know or have so far experienced! But it is the most urgent of our Lord's goals for us here and now, and it is the only route to true peace that passes all understanding. How much of this is your present personal experience?
1. Receive His Life Within Me
2. Experience His TremendousLove For Me,
And Love Him In Turn
3. Listen To And Hear Him As Well As
Speak To Him
4. Behold Him, See Him
1. You Will Get Nothing Unless
You Go After It.
2. You May Have As Much As You
Insist Upon Having.
3. You Will Have As Little As You
Are Satisfied With.
4. You Now Have As Much As
You Really Want.
From A. W. Tozer, That Incredible Christian,
“Our Unclaimed Riches”
Most if not all of us have not yet learned to really listen to Him and behold Him in our human spirit.
We have a chicken-and-the-egg situation, here. We cannot make a commitment to live the "Christian life" without also having a commitment to seek Him. (None of us will ever able to live the "Christian life" - only He in us can!) Yet most if not all of us are so easily distracted by the pressures of our lives, and lack sufficient mental discipline, to persist in that seeking. Very few of us have the stick-to-it-iveness that is needed to pursue Christ continually.
We need Christ to cause us to seek Him that desperately. Start with that petition.
.....
2. What Really Is Prayer?
"Prayer" is not actually defined anywhere in the Scriptures; all references are to what it results in. The reason for that is that "prayer", like "faith", "grace", even "eternal life", etc., has no meaning whatsoever outside of such an intimate personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
In that relationship, prayer is 2-Way Spiritual Communication with God involving all four above aspects: Yielding, Loving, Hearing, Beholding. It flows from God unto us:
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One of the functionings of our human spirits is to radiate or transmit our thoughts into the spiritual domain and to receive (discern) thoughts from the spiritual domain.
(Even if one is not born-again, as thousands of young people are being taught by demons in Satanism and New Ageism today. Sad that we, who have the Holy Spirit of Christ in us, know far less than they about such spiritual phenomena.)
What is "spirit"? ...... Domain of incredible intelligence and tremendous power - domain of full reality.
God (Spirit)
Holy Spirit Dwelling In Us
My Human Spirit
My Soul
3. Under What Circumstances Does Prayer Bring Results?
In James 5:16, "effectual fervent" is Energuomene, which means "with superhuman power"! It also means with expectancy!
How do we pray with "superhuman power"?
By praying in His will! (That's what "in His Name" really means.)
Christ (in us) chooses to honor our human will. If/when our actual will is contrary to His, He is "prevented" from doing His will in/through us.
Prayer works with great power when we choose decisively to align our will with His!!!!
How do we know what His will is in given specific situations?
In many cases, the written word is clear. (i.e., salvation of others.)
Listen to Him. Behold Him. With an attitude of willingness to yield to whatever He says.
In other words, we pray with our will/volition/choosing and with expectancy.
When you take the time to seriously do this, He will speak to you and you will hear Him. And we must simply expect Him to!
4. Prayer Partnership And Its Value?
But we also each need a prayer partner. Why?
For Discipline, accountability and encouragement! Also hearing Him.
Most if not all of us are so easily distracted by the pressures of our lives, and lack sufficient mental discipline, to persist in that seeking. Very few of us have the stick-to-it-iveness that is needed to pursue Christ continually. We need another person with whom we are accountable, to help each other to discipline ourselves.
And when we're praying over an issue involving our conscious emotions, those emotions "mess up" and weaken our faith and make it very hard for us to pray with expectancy. That is almost always the case for each of us when we are faced with a very serious situation - one which is potentially life-threatening or at least involves a serious loss, or the opposite has great positive promise. Even though we are certain that the Lord can answer our prayer requests, we tend to question will He in this specific case. That’s why we need one another and have others pray for us in such cases, others who are not as emotionally involved with the particular situation and hence can indeed pray with the level of expectancy needed. That works both ways: now I for you, later you for me.
Also most of us need inner heart healing in order to seek Christ and walk in faith fully.
What is "inner heart healing"? Most of us have many hidden but powerful self-seeking motives to have our three needs of identity, purpose and acceptance met through our interpersonal relationships, or self-protecting motives to minimize being hurt by those needs not being met by other people. Those self-seeking and self-protecting motives must be repented of in the sense of dumping them onto Christ on Calvary so they are crucified with Him. Otherwise they hinder our personal relationship with Christ indwelling.
These are some of the reasons why we need a prayer partner.
The primary issue that you each must ever encourage and help the other with, is unto an ever deeper personal relationship with Christ.
We are here going beyond seeking Christ to meet our personal needs.
5. Who should be your prayer partner?
He/she must be someone also in Christ with whom you and he/she can be totally open and honest with each other, in love which does not weaken when each of you knows the other's weaknesses and sinful selfishness. You each need to know those things of the other in order to be able to intercede in prayer with each other in power.
Who should be your prayer partner? Ideally, your spouse. But I personally know of no marriages which are so free of fears and insecurities as to permit that level of total openness and honesty.
If not our spouse, then who?
Someone of the same gender. But also someone with whom you have no intrinsic emotional bondages or over/under any hierarchical authority. Certainly not a homosexual/lesbian partner. Someone with whom you have no hinderances of being totally open and honest without judgment nor fear of being judged.
Only Christ can select such a person. So seek Him on whom.
But don't be surprised with whom He chooses - my experience has been it's someone whom you on your own would least seek.
...
One cannot learn to pray by reading about prayer, nor listening to preaching/teaching about prayer as you have just done. You learn to pray only by doing it. But I hope you have been challenged by this to seek Christ, intensely, far beyond your present knowledge of Him.