Improving our Prayer Lives

—Prayer pt1: Fervent and Persistent

 
 
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• Andrew Fountain – Aug 10, 2014

Problems in Prayer

1. We don’t understand how prayer works:
2. In these days, nothing really remarkable will happen through prayer, at least not my prayers
3. Prayer is only for ‘spiritual’ things
4. Does our own “fervency” affect God’s answer, or should we just state our requests?

1. We don’t understand how prayer works

1. God has decided everything already, so prayer can’t actually change anything.

• “Have you not heard that I determined it long ago?
  I planned from days of old what now I bring to pass,
  that you should turn fortified cities into heaps of ruins 2 Kings 19:25

Isaiah 46:9-11

9. Remember what I accomplished in antiquity!
   Truly I am God, and there is no other;
   I am God, and there is none like me,
10. who announces the end from the beginning
    and reveals beforehand what has not yet occurred,
    who says, ‘My plan will be realized,
    I will accomplish what I desire,’
11. who summons an eagle from the east,
    from a distant land, one who carries out my plan.
    Yes, I have decreed, yes, I will bring it to pass;
    I have formulated a plan, yes, I will carry it out.

1. We don’t understand how prayer works

1. God has decided everything already, so prayer can’t actually change anything.
2. God has limited himself to only doing what we pray for

Ezekiel 36

24. will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries; then I will bring you to your land.
25. I will sprinkle you with pure water and you will be clean from all your impurities. I will purify you from all your idols.
26. I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your body and give you a heart of flesh.
27. I will put my Spirit within you; I will take the initiative and you will obey my statutes and carefully observe my regulations.
28. Then you will live in the land I gave to your fathers; you will be my people, and I will be your God.

Ezekiel 36 cont’d

35. They will say, “This desolate land has become like the garden of Eden; the ruined, desolate, and destroyed cities are now fortified and inhabited.”
36. Then the nations which remain around you will know that I, the LORD, have rebuilt the ruins and replanted what was desolate. I, the LORD, have spoken — and I will do it!’
37. “This is what the sovereign LORD says: I will allow the house of Israel to ask me to do this for them: I will multiply their people like sheep.
38. Like the sheep for offerings, like the sheep of Jerusalem during her appointed feasts, so will the ruined cities be filled with flocks of people. Then they will know that I am the LORD.”

1. We don’t understand how prayer works

1. God has decided everything already, so prayer can’t actually change anything.
2. God has limited himself to only doing what we pray for
3. Tension: God is sovereign, but we have a real part to play

Problems in Prayer

1. We don’t understand how prayer works:
2. In these days, nothing really remarkable will happen through prayer, at least not my prayers
3. Prayer is only for ‘spiritual’ things
4. Does our own “fervency” affect God’s answer, or should we just state our requests?

Super-powered prayer

“What I want to know is this:

What sort of an extra-special, super-powered prayer is needed to make everything turn out the way you want it”

HIS Magazine, WWII