By Faith Enterprises

PRAYER Governs our Conduct and Conduct makes Our Character

2009-07-05T09:35:00.001-05:00

Tip! God's people do not have authorization to demand the Savior's promise of, "...Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do," in order to gain something very special for themselves.

PRAYER governs our conduct and conduct makes our character. Conduct, is what we do; character, is what we are. Conduct is our outward life. Character is our life that other people do not see, it is hidden within us, but yet it is evidenced by what is seen. Conduct is external, seen from without; character is internal -- operating within us.

From God's perspective, conduct is the substance of what makes our character. Character is the state of our heart; conduct is its outward expression. Character is the root of the tree, conduct, is the fruit that it bears.

Prayer is related to all the gifts of grace. To character and conduct its relation is that of a helper. Prayer helps to establish our character and fashion our conduct, therefore, in order to have continuing success with these two, depends on our prayer life.

There may be a certain degree of moral character and conduct independent of prayer, but there cannot be anything like distinctive religious character and Christian conduct without it. Prayer helps, where all other aids fail. The more we pray the purer and better our lives will become.

The very end and purpose of the atoning work of Christ in us is to create spiritual character in us so we will show the world our Christian conduct.

"Who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works."

In Christ's teaching, it is not simply works of charity and deeds of mercy that He requires from us, but it is our inward spiritual character as well. This much is demanded of us as children of the Most High God our Father, and nothing short of it, will be sufficient.

If you look into Paul's Epistles, there is one thing that stands out more clearly and unmistakably than anything else -- the persistence on holiness of heart, and righteousness of life. Paul is not trying, so much, to promote what he calls "personal work," nor is the leading theme of his letters deeds of charity. It is the condition of the human heart and the blamelessness of our personal life that forms the burden of the writings of Apostle Paul.

Tip! So it is the same elsewhere in the Holy Bible (James 1:5) we have 'asking' put into view as a prayer: "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all men liberally, and upbraiding [scolding somebody] not, and it shall be given him."

You can see everywhere in the Scriptures, too, it is character and conduct that are made most important. The Christian faith deals with people who are lacking in spiritual character, and who are unholy in life, and aims so to change them, that they will become holy in heart and righteous in life. It desires to change bad people into good people; it deals with inward badness, and works to change it into inward goodness. And it is just here where prayer enters and demonstrates its wonderful value and fruit.

Prayer drives toward this specific end. In fact, without prayer, no such supernatural change in our moral character can ever happen. Because the change from badness to goodness is not brought on, "by works of righteousness which we have done," but only according to God's mercy that saves us "by the free gift of Salvation through Jesus Christ." And this marvelous change is brought to pass through earnest, persistent, faithful prayer. Any alleged form of Christianity that does not effect this change in the hearts of people, is a fantasy and a trap.

Trust Sees God doing Things Here and Now when We Pray! Part I

2009-06-14T08:30:00.002-05:00

Tip! If we, God's people expect to carry out the works of Christ that will glorify our Father, then we must believe in Him for the very work's sake, and pray fervently in His Name.

PRAYER does not stand alone. It is not an isolated duty or an independent principle. It lives in association with other Christian duties, prayer is married to other principles, and it is a partner with other graces. But to faith, prayer is unbreakably connected. Faith gives prayer its color and tone, shapes its character, and secures its results.

Trust is when our faith becomes unreserved, ratified and completed in our heart. There is, when all is said and done, a sort of serious and sincere effort in faith and its exercise. But trust is a firm belief; it is faith that grows into full flower. Trust is a conscious act, a fact of which we are aware of. According to the Holy Scriptures this idea of trust is the eye of the new-born soul, and the ear of the renewed soul. It is the feeling of the soul, the spiritual eye, the ear, the taste, the feeling -- all of these things have to do with trust.

How brilliant, how distinct, how conscious, how powerful, and more than all, how Scriptural is such a trust! How different from many forms of modern belief, so feeble, dry, and cold! These new phases of belief bring no consciousness of their presence, no "Joy unspeakable and full of glory" results from their exercise. They are, for the most part, adventures in the peradventures of the soul. There is no safe, sure trust in anything. The whole transaction takes place in the realm of "maybe and perhaps".

Trust like life, is a feeling, though much more than a feeling. An unfelt life is a contradiction; an unfelt trust is a misnomer, a delusion, a contradiction. Trust is the most felt of all attributes. It is all feeling, and it works only by love. An unfelt love is as impossible as an unfelt trust. The trust of which we are now speaking is a conviction: An unfelt conviction? How absurd!

Tip! Seeking God's will for our life - This type of prayer requires us to really open up our spirit and seek to hear what God is saying to us. We need to come humbly before him, asking him to use us as a tool for his work - and praying for guidance and wisdom as we seek to follow where his is leading us.

Trust sees God doing things here and now. Yes, and more. It rises to a high distinction, and looking into the invisible and the eternal, realizes that God has done things, and regards them as being already done. Trust brings eternity into the records and happenings of time, changes the substance of hope into the reality of completion, and transforms a promise into our present ownership. We know when we trust just as we know when we see, just as we are conscious of our sense of touch. Trust sees, receives, and holds. Trust is its own witness.

Yet, quite often, our faith is too weak to obtain God's greatest good, immediately; so it has to wait in loving, strong, prayerful, pressing obedience, until it grows in strength, and is able to bring down the eternal, into the realms of experience and time.

To this point, trust masses all its forces. Here it holds. And in the struggle, trust's grasp becomes mightier, and grasps, for itself, all that God has done for it in His eternal wisdom and abundance of grace.

In the matter of waiting in prayer, mightiest prayer, faith rises to its highest plane and becomes indeed the gift of God. It becomes the blessed nature and expression of our soul that is secured by a constant communication with, and continuing devotion to God.

Trust Sees God doing Things Here and Now when We Pray! Part II

2009-06-14T08:27:00.001-05:00

Tip! 'Intercession' is amplification in prayer; it is going out in broadness and fullness from ones self for others. Primarily, it does not center in praying for others, but refers to the freeness, boldness and childlike confidence in praying.

Jesus Christ clearly taught that faith was the condition on which prayer was answered. When our Lord had cursed the fig-tree, the disciples were very surprised that its withering had actually taken place, and their remarks indicated their inexperience. It was then that Jesus said to them, "Have faith in God."

"For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed and be thou cast into the sea, and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he said shall come to pass, he shall have whatsoever he said. Therefore, I say unto you, what things so ever you desire, when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you shall have them."

Trust grows nowhere so readily and richly as in the prayer-room of your heart. It's unfolding and developments are rapid and wholesome when you are regularly and well kept. When these engagements are hearty and full and free, trust flourishes exceedingly. The eye and presence of God gives vigorous life to trust, just as the eye and the presence of the sun make fruit and flowers grow, and all things glad and bright with fuller life.

"Have faith in God," "Trust in the Lord" form the keynote and foundation of prayer. Primarily, it is not trust in the Word of God, but rather trust in the Person of God. For trust in the Person of God must precede trust in the Word of God. "Ye believe in God, believe also in Me," is the demand our Lord makes on the personal trust of His disciples. The person of Jesus Christ must be central, to the eye of trust. This great truth Jesus sought to impress on Martha, when her brother lay dead, in the home at Bethany. Martha asserted her belief in the fact of the resurrection of her brother:

"Martha said unto Him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day."

Tip! God's people do not have authorization to demand the Savior's promise of, "...Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do," in order to gain something very special for themselves.

Jesus lifts her trust clear above the mere fact of the resurrection, to His own Person, by saying:

"I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever lives and believeth in Me, shall never die. Believe thou this? She said unto Him, Yea, Lord: I believe that Thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world."

Trust, in an historical fact or in a mere record may be a very passive thing, but trust in a person vitalizes the quality, endorses it, and enlightens it with love. This trust that informs prayer then centers in on a Person (Jesus Christ).

Tip! 'Supplication' is the very soul of prayer in the way of pleading for some one thing, very much needed, and the need intensely felt.

Trust goes even further than this. The trust which inspires our prayer must be not only trust in the Person of God, and of Christ, but in their ability and willingness to grant the things we are prayed for. It is not only, "Trust, ye, in the Lord," but, also, "for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength."

The trust that our Lord taught as a condition of prevailing prayer is not from our head but from our heart. It is this trust that "doubts not in his heart." Such trust has the Divine assurance that it will be honored with large and satisfying answers. The strong promise of our Lord brings faith down to the present, and counts on a present answer.

Trust Sees God doing Things Here and Now when We Pray! Part III

2009-06-14T08:22:00.001-05:00

Tip! 'Supplication' is the very soul of prayer in the way of pleading for some one thing, very much needed, and the need intensely felt.

Do we believe, without a doubt? When we pray, do we believe, not that we will receive the things that we ask for on a future day, but that we will receive them, now? This is the teaching of the inspired Scripture. How we need to pray, "Lord, increase our faith," until doubt be gone, and total trust claims the promised blessings, as it's very own.

This is no easy condition. It is reached only after many failures, after much praying, after many long hours or even days of waiting, and after much trial of our faith. Could our faith so increase until we realize and receive all the fullness there is in that Name that guarantees to do so much!

Our Lord puts trust as the very foundation of praying. The background of prayer is trust. The whole issuance of Christ's ministry and work was dependent on implicit trust in His Father. The centre of trust is God. Mountains of difficulties and all other hindrances to prayer are moved out of the way by trust and his virile henchman, faith. When trust is perfect and without doubt, prayer is simply the outstretched hand, ready to receive.

Trust perfected, is prayer perfected. Trust looks to receive the thing asked for -- and gets it. Trust is not a belief that God can bless, that He will bless, but that He does bless, here and now. Trust always operates in the present tense. Hope looks toward the future. Trust looks to the present. Hope expects. Trust possesses. Trust receives what prayer acquires. So that what prayer needs, at all times, is abiding and abundant trust.

The regrettable lack of trust and following failure of the disciples to do what they were sent out to do is seen in the case of the possessed son, who was brought by his father to nine of them while their Master was on the Mount of Transfiguration. A boy, sadly afflicted, was brought to these men to be cured of his dilemma. They had been commissioned to do this very kind of work. This was a part of their mission. They attempted to cast out the devil from the boy, but had signal handedly failed. The devil was too much for them. They were embarrassed at their failure, and filled with shame, while their enemies were in triumph. Amid the confusion Jesus arrives on the scene. He is informed of the circumstances, and told of the conditions connected to the problem. Here is the succeeding account:

Tip! What really determines' the effectiveness of our labor for Christ is the measure of our faith and the fervency of our prayers. If our faith is poor and our praying is indifferent; how can we expect to achieve much for Him?

"Then Jesus answered and said, O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I suffer you? Bring him hither to me. And Jesus rebuked the devil, and he departed out of him and the child was cured from that very hour. And when He was come into the house, His disciples asked Him privately, "Why could not we cast him out?" And He said unto them, "This kind can come forth by nothing but by prayer and fasting."

Can you see why these men were having trouble? They had been lax in growing their faith by prayer and, as a consequence, their trust utterly failed them. They trusted not God, nor Christ, nor the ability of His mission, or their own for that matter. So has it been many times since then, in many a crisis in our own lives. Failure has resulted from a lack of trust, or from a weakness of faith, and this, in turn, from a lack of prayerfulness.

Tip! So when we ask Christ to carry out His works in our hearts we are fervently praying that our Father may be glorified in His Son.

Many a failure in revival efforts has been traceable to this same cause. Faith had not been nurtured and made powerful by prayer. Our neglect of the inner chamber or secret prayer time with our Father, this is the cause of most spiritual failure. And this is as true with our personal struggles with the devil as was the case when we went out to attempt to cast out devils in our own lives. The only way to change this is we must be on our knees in private communion with God. This is the only guarantee that we will have Him with us either in our personal struggles, or in our efforts to convert sinners.

Everywhere in God's Word we see that when people approached Him, our Lord put trust in Him, and the divinity of His mission, in the forefront. He gave no definition of trust, and He furnishes no theological discussion of or analysis of it; for He knew that people would see what faith was by what faith did; and from its free exercise trust grew up, spontaneously, in His presence. It was the product of His work, His power and His Person. These furnished and created an atmosphere most favorable for its exercise and development.

Trust Sees God doing Things Here and Now when We Pray! Part IV

2009-06-14T08:11:00.002-05:00

Trust is altogether too splendidly simple for verbal definition; too hearty and spontaneous for theological terminology. The very simplicity of trust is that which staggers many people. They look away for some great thing to come to pass, while all the time "the word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart."

When the saddening news of his daughter's death was brought to Jairus our Lord interposed: "Be not afraid," He said calmly, "only believe." To the woman with the issue of blood, who stood tremblingly before Him, He said:

"Daughter, thy faith hath made you whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague."

As the two blind men followed Him, pressing their way into the house, He said:

"According to your faith be it unto you. And their eyes were opened."

When the paralytic was let down through the roof of the house, where Jesus was teaching, and placed before Him by four of his friends, it is recorded after this fashion:

"And Jesus seeing their faith, said unto the sick of the palsy: Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee."

When Jesus dismissed the centurion whose servant was seriously ill, and who had come to Jesus with the prayer that He speak the healing word, without even going to his house, He did it in the manner following:

Tip! So when we ask Christ to carry out His works in our hearts we are fervently praying that our Father may be glorified in His Son.

"And Jesus said unto the centurion, Go thy way; and as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee. And his servant was healed in the selfsame hour."

When the poor leper fell at the feet of Jesus and cried out for relief, "Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean," Jesus immediately granted his request, and the man glorified Him with a loud voice. Then Jesus said unto him, "Arise, go thy way; thy faith hath made thee whole."

The Syrophenician woman came to Jesus with the case of her afflicted daughter, making the case her own, with the prayer, "Lord, help me," making a fearful and heroic struggle. Jesus honors' her faith and prayer, saying:

"O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour."

After the disciples had utterly failed to cast the devil out of the epileptic boy, the father of the stricken lad came to Jesus with the plaintive and almost despairing cry, "If Thou canst do anything, have compassion on us and help us." But Jesus replied, "If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth."

Tip! If you do not know the Lord Jesus Christ and want to know for sure that you are a child of God, then I would like to invite you to earnestly pray and ask Jesus to come into your heart.

Blind Bartimaeus sitting by the wayside, hears our Lord as He passes by, and cries out pitifully and almost despairingly, "Jesus, Thou son of David, have mercy on me." The keen ears of our Lord immediately catch the sound of prayer, and He says to the beggar:

"Go thy way; thy faith hath made thee whole. And immediately he received his sight, and followed Jesus in the way."

To the weeping, penitent woman, washing His feet with her tears and wiping them with the hair of her head, Jesus speaks cheering, soul-comforting words: "Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace."

One day Jesus healed ten lepers at one time, in answer to their united prayer, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us," and He told them to go and show themselves to the priests. "And it came to pass as they went, they were cleansed."

Who do You Pray To?

2009-05-25T06:13:00.002-05:00

Tip! 'Intercession/ is amplification in prayer; it is going out in broadness and fullness from ones self for others. Primarily, it does not center in praying for others, but refers to the freeness, boldness and childlike confidence in praying.

OUR Lord Jesus declared that "men ought always to pray and not to faint," and the parable in which His words occur, was taught with the intention of saving men from faint-heartedness and weakness in prayer. Our Lord was seeking to teach that laxity must be guarded against, and persistence fostered and encouraged. There can be no two opinions regarding the importance of the exercise of this indispensable quality in our praying.

Persistent prayer is a mighty movement of our soul toward God. It is a stirring of the deepest forces of our soul, toward the throne of heavenly grace. It is the ability to hold on, press on, and wait. Restless desire, restful patience, and strength to grasp are all contained in it. It is not an incident, or a performance, but deep passion of our soul. It is not a want, half-needed, but a sheer necessity.

The wrestling quality in persistent prayers does not spring from physical strength or fleshly energy. It is not an impulse of energy, not a mere earnestness of our soul; it is an inward force, a sense implanted and aroused by the Holy Spirit. Virtually, it is the intercession of the Spirit of God, in us; it is, moreover, "the effectual, fervent prayer, which avails' much."

The Divine Spirit informing every element within us, with the energy of His own striving, is the spirit of the persistence which urges our praying at the mercy-seat, to continue until the fire falls and the blessing descends.

Tip! So when we ask Christ to carry out His works in our hearts we are fervently praying that our Father may be glorified in His Son.

This wrestling in prayer may not be boisterous nor violent, but quiet, persistent and urgent. Silent, it may be, when there are no visible outlets for its mighty forces.

Nothing distinguishes the children of God so clearly and strongly as prayer. It is the one infallible mark and test of being a Christian. Christian people are prayerful but the worldly-minded is prayer-less. Christians call on God; the world ignores God, and do not call on His Name. But even we who are Christian have a great need to cultivate continual prayer.

Tip! So it is the same elsewhere in the Holy Bible (James 1:5) we have "asking" put into view as a prayer: "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all men liberally, and upbraiding [scolding somebody] not, and it shall be given him."

Prayer must be habitual, but much more than a habit. It is duty, yet one that rises far above, and goes beyond the ordinary implications of the term. It is the expression of a relation to God, a yearning for Divine communion. It is the outward and upward flow of the inward life toward its original fountain. It is an affirmation of our soul's parenthood, our claim of son-ship that links us to the Eternal God our Father.

Prayer has everything to do with molding the soul into the image of God, and has everything to do with enhancing and enlarging the measure of Divine grace. It has everything to do with bringing the soul into complete communion with God. It has everything to do with enriching, broadening and maturing our soul's experience in God.

Therefore a person cannot possibly be called a Christian who does not pray. By no possible pretext can we claim any right to the term, nor its implied significance. If we do not pray, we are sinners, pure and simple, for prayer is the only way in which our soul can enter into fellowship and communion with the Source of all Christ-like spirit and energy. Hence, if we pray not, we are not of the household of faith.

Think on this for awhile - Are you a child of God? Do you pray to God our Father through Jesus Christ? Who do you pray to?

2009-05-24T07:13:00.001-05:00

Fervency in Prayer is the Forerunner of Answered Prayer

Tip! It opens the door for salvations. (Act 2:42) "And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers".

The motivation to fervency in our spirit before God is precisely the same as it is to be in continued and earnest prayer. While fervency is not prayer, yet it derives from an earnest soul, and is precious in the sight of God.

Fervency in prayer is the forerunner of what God will do for us by way of answered prayer. God stands pledged to give us the desire of our hearts in proportion to the fervency of spirit we exhibit, when we seek His face in prayer.

Fervency has its seat in the heart, not in the brain, nor in the intellectual faculties of our mind. Fervency therefore, is not an expression of our intellect.

Fervency of spirit is something that is far beyond any poetical fancy or sentimental imagery. It is something else besides a mere preference or the differences of like with dislike. Fervency is the throb and gesture of our emotional nature.

It is not in our power, perhaps, to create fervency of spirit at will, but we can pray and ask God to implant it. It is ours, then, to nourish and cherish it, to guard it against extinction, to prevent its end or decline.

Tip! Our Lord warns us against feeble praying. "Men ought always to pray," He declares, "and not to faint." That means that we are to possess sufficient fervency to carry us through the severe and long periods of pleading prayer.

The process of personal salvation is not only to pray, to express our desires to God, but to acquire a fervent spirit and seek, by all proper means and to cultivate it. It is never out of place to pray and ask God to produce within us, and to keep alive the spirit of fervent prayer.

Fervency has to do with God, just as prayer has to do with Him. Desire has always an objective. If we desire at all, we desire something. The degree of fervency with which we fashion our spiritual desires, will always serve to determine the earnestness of our praying. In this same idea, Adoniram Judson says:

"A travailing spirit, the throes of a great burdened desire, belongs to prayer. A fervency strong enough to drive away sleep, which devotes and inflames the spirit, and which retires all earthly ties, all this belongs to wrestling, prevailing prayer. The Spirit, the power, the air, and food of prayer is in such a spirit."

Prayer must be clothed with fervency, strength and power. It is the force that is centered on God and determines the outlay of Himself for our earthly good. People who are fervent in spirit are bent on achieving righteousness, truth, grace, and all the other uplifting and powerful graces which beautify the character of a genuine, unquestionable child of God.

God once declared, by the mouth of a brave prophet, to a king who, at one time, had been true to God, but, by the incoming of success and material prosperity, had lost his faith, the following message:

"The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward Him. Herein hast thou done foolishly; therefore, from henceforth thou shall have wars."

Tip! So when we ask Christ to carry out His works in our hearts we are fervently praying that our Father may be glorified in His Son.

God had heard Asa's prayer in early life, but disaster came and trouble was sent, because he had given up the life of prayer and simple faith.

In Romans 15:30, we have the word, "strive," occurring, in the request which Paul made for prayerful cooperation.

In Colossians 4:12, we have the same word, but translated differently:

"Epaphras always laboring fervently for you in prayer." Paul charged the Romans to "strive together with him in prayer," that is, to help him in his struggle of prayer. The word means to enter into a contest, to fight against adversaries. It means, also, to engage with fervent zeal to endeavor to obtain.

Tip! THE possibilities of prayer are gauged by faith in God's ability to do. Faith is the one prime condition by which God works.

These recorded instances of the exercise and reward of faith, allow us to easily see that, in almost every instance, faith was blended with trust until it is not too much to say that the former was swallowed up in the latter. It is hard to properly distinguish the specific activities of these two qualities, faith and trust. But there is a point, beyond all peradventure, at which faith is relieved of its burden, so to speak; where trust comes along and says: "You have done your part, the rest is mine!"

Fervency Before God Counts in the Hour of Prayer

2009-05-23T06:16:00.001-05:00

Our Lord warns us against feeble praying. "Men ought always to pray," He declares, "and not to faint." That means that we are to possess sufficient fervency to carry us through the severe and long periods of pleading prayer. Fire makes us alert and vigilant, and brings us to the place of being more than conquerors.

The atmosphere about us is too heavily charged with resisting forces for limp or lazy prayers to make headway. It takes heat, and fervency and dramatic fire, to push through, to the upper heavens, where God dwells with His saints, in light.

Many of the great Bible characters were notable examples of fervency of spirit when seeking God. The Psalmist declares with great earnestness:

"My soul breaks for the longing that it hath unto Thy judgments at all

times."

What a strong desires of heart is here! What an earnest soul that longs for the Word of the living God!

An even greater fervency is expressed by David in another place:

"As the hart pants after the water brooks, so pants my soul after Thee, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?"

That is the word of a man who lived in a state of grace, which had been deeply and supernaturally created in his soul.

Tip! In (Phil. 4:6) we have these words about prayer: "Be careful for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God."

Fervency before God counts in the hour of prayer, and finds a speedy and rich reward at His hands. The Psalmist gives us this statement of what God had done for the king, as his heart turned toward his Lord:

"Thou hast given him his heart's desire, and hast not withheld the request of his lips."

At another time, he expresses himself directly to God in preferring his request:

"Lord, all my desire is before Thee; and my groaning is not hid from Thee."

What a cheerful thought! Our inward groanings, our secret desires, our heart-longings, are not hidden from the eyes of God our Father with whom we have to deal in prayer.

Prayer that has no Fervor has no Heart

2009-04-18T06:23:00.004-05:00

Tip! Let us always be aware of the fact that the power that is achieved to do the greater works that are required for Christ, is only gained through fervent prayer and faith in Jesus Christ.

PRAYER, without fervor, risks nothing on the issue, because it has nothing to endeavor. It comes with empty hands. These hands are lazy, as well as empty, which have never learned the lesson of clinging to the Cross.

Prayer that has no fervor has no heart in it; it is an empty thing, an unfit vessel. Our heart, soul, and life, must have a place in all real praying. Heaven must be made to feel the force of our crying out to God.

Paul was a notable example of the man who possessed a fervent spirit of prayer. His petitioning was all-consuming, centered immovably upon the object of his desire, and the God who was able to meet it.

Prayers must be red hot. It is the fervent prayer that is effectual and that avails. Coldness of spirit hinders praying; prayer cannot live in a wintry atmosphere. Chilly surroundings freeze out petitioning; and dry up the springs of supplication.

It takes fire to make prayers go. Warmth of our soul creates an atmosphere favorable to prayer, because it is favorable to fervency. By flame, prayer ascends to heaven. Yet fire is not fuss, nor heat, noise. Heat is intensity -- something that glows and burns. Heaven is a very poor market for ice.

God wants warm-hearted servants. The Holy Spirit comes as a fire, to dwell in us; we are to be baptized, with the Holy Spirit and with fire. Fervency is warmth of soul. A indifferent temperament is objectionable to vital experience. If our religion does not set us on fire, it is because we have frozen hearts. God dwells in a flame; the Holy Spirit descends in fire. To be absorbed in God's will, to be so greatly in earnest about doing it that our whole being takes fire is the qualifying condition of the person who would engage in effectual prayer.

Passionate Desire is the Basis of Unceasing Prayer

2009-04-05T07:59:00.002-05:00

Tip! If you do not know the Lord Jesus Christ and want to know for sure that you are a child of God, then I would like to invite you to earnestly pray and ask Jesus to come into your heart.

Passionate desire is the basis of unceasing prayer. It is not a shallow, fickle inclination; no, but a strong yearning, an unquenchable love, which impregnates, glows, burns and fixes to our hearts. It is the flame of a present and active principle mounting up to God. It is enthusiasm propelled by desire that burns its way to the Throne of mercy, and obtains its plea.

This passionate desire is the belief that desire gives us triumph in the conflict, in a great struggle of prayer. It is the burden of a heavy desire that sobers, makes restless, and reduces to quietness in our soul as we just emerge from its mighty wrestling. It is the embracing character of desire which arms our prayer with a thousand pleas, and robes it with an invincible courage and an all-conquering power.

The Syrophenician woman is an object lesson in desire, settled to its consistency, but secure in its intensity and persistent boldness. The determined widow represents desire gaining its end, through obstacles impossible to feebler desires.

Prayer is not the rehearsal of a mere performance; nor is it an indefinite, widespread howl. Desire, while it kindles our soul, holds it to the object sought. Prayer is an indispensable phase of spiritual habit, but it stops to be prayer when carried on by habit alone. It is depth and intensity of spiritual desire which give intensity and depth to prayer.

Our soul cannot be listless when some great desire fires and inflames it. The urgency of our desire holds us to the thing desired with a tenacity which refuses to be lessened or loosened; it stays and pleads and persists, and refuses to let go until the blessing has been given.

"Lord, I cannot let You go, Till a blessing You bestow; Do not turn away Your face; Mine's an urgent, pressing case."

True Prayer, Must be on Fire

2009-03-16T04:17:00.002-05:00

Tip! Nothing short of being white hot for God, can keep the glow of heaven in our hearts, these chilly days.

The dampening of the flame of holy desire is destructive of the vital and aggressive forces in church life. God requires to be represented by a fiery Church, or He is not in any proper sense, represented at all. God, Himself, is all on fire, and His Church, if it is to be like Him, must also be at the level of "white hot" heat.

The great and eternal interests of heaven-born, God-given religion are the only things about which His Church that can afford to be on fire. Yet holy zeal needs not to be picky in order to be a consuming fire. Our Lord was in person the exact opposite of nervous excitability, the absolute opposite of intolerant or clamorous declamation, yet the zeal of God's house consumed Him; and the world is still feeling the glow of His fierce, consuming flame and responding to it, with an ever-increasing readiness and an ever-enlarging response.

A lack of passion in prayer is the sure sign of a lack of depth and of intensity of desire; and the absence of intense desire is a sure sign of God's absence from the heart! To grow less in eagerness is to retire from God. He can, and does, tolerate many things in the way of shortcomings and error in His children. He can, and will pardon sin when we pray for forgiveness, but two things that are intolerable to Him -- insincerity and being lukewarm. Lack of heart and lack of heat are two things He hates, and to the Laodiceans He said, in terms of unmistakable severity and condemnation:

"I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of My mouth."

Tip! A person's character is always demonstrated in their behavior. The Savior again said,"A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good ..." -- Luke 6:45

This was God's expressed judgment on the lack of fire in one of the Seven Churches. It is also His indictment against us His children for the fatal want of sacred enthusiasm. In prayer, fire is the driving power. Religious principles that do not emerge in this flame have neither force nor effect. This flame is the wing on which our faith grows; fervency is the soul of our prayer.

It was the "fervent, effectual prayer" that availed much. Love is kindled in a flame, and fervency is its life. This Flame is the air that we as true Christian can experience breathing. It feeds on fire; it can withstand anything. It is not a feeble flame that dies, chilled and starved to its core, every time the surrounding atmosphere becomes frigid or lukewarm.

True prayer, must be aflame. Our Christian life and character need to be all on fire. Lack of spiritual heat creates more disloyalty than the lack of faith. Not to be intensely consumed in the things of heaven is not to be interested in them at all. The fiery souls are those who conquer in the day of battle, from whom the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and who take it by force. The citadel of God is taken only by those, who storm it in dreadful earnestness, who besiege it, with fiery, unabated zeal.

Desire is Our will in Prayer

2009-03-15T08:09:00.002-05:00

Tip! In order to accomplish His high purpose, Jesus showed us His purpose in answering our prayers when He said, "...That the Father may be glorified in the Son."

In prayer, we are fastened to the Name, merit and intercessory asset of Jesus Christ, our great High Priest. If we search down, below the accompanying conditions and forces in prayer, we will come to its key basis, which is contained in the human heart. It is not simply our need; it is our heart's yearning for what we need, and for what we feel impelled to pray for.

Desire is our will in action; a strong, conscious longing, excited in our inner nature, for some great good. Desire exalts the object we are longing for, and fixes our mind on it. It has choice, is immovable, has a fire in it; based on this or prayer is explicit and specific. It knows its need, feels and sees the thing that will meet it, and we hurry to obtain it.

Holy desire is helped by spiritual thought. Meditation on our spiritual need, and on God's readiness and ability to correct it, helps our desire to grow. Serious thought engaged in before praying, increases desire, makes it more insistent, and tends to save us from the menace of private prayer -- wandering thought. We fail much more in desire, than our outward expressions show. We retain the form and act spiritual, while our inner life fades and almost dies.

We should ask ourselves, whether the feebleness of our desires for God, the Holy Spirit, and for all the fullness of Christ, is the cause of our so little praying, and of our laziness in the exercise of prayer? Do we really feel the inward pulling of desire after heavenly treasures? Do the deep-seated groanings of desire stir our souls to mighty struggles?

Sadly for us! The fire burns altogether too low. The flaming heat of our soul has been toned down to a halfhearted lukewarm tickle. This, remember, was the central cause of the sad and desperate condition of the Laodicean Christians. The awful condemnation is written that they were "rich, and increased in goods and had need of nothing," and knew not that they "were wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind."

Again: I must ask - do we have that desire which presses us into close communion with God, which is filled with unutterable burnings, and holds us there through the agony of an intense and soul-stirred prayer? Our hearts need to be worked over so much, not only to get the evil out of them, but to get the good into them. And the foundation and inspiration to the incoming good, is strong, propelling desire.

This holy and eager flame in the soul awakens the interest of heaven, attracts the attention of God, and places at the disposal of those who exercise it, the exhaustless riches of Divine grace.

Exceptional

2009-03-14T14:11:00.003-05:00

Amazing Grace

In the Beginning GOD Created the Heaven and the Earth

2009-01-15T10:14:00.001-05:00

Holy Inward Desires Break Out into Earnest Prayer

2009-01-07T05:25:00.002-05:00

Tip! A person's character is always demonstrated in their behavior. The Savior again said,"A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good ..." -- Luke 6:45

DESIRE is not merely a simple wish; it is a deep seated craving; an intense longing, for achievement. In the realm of spiritual affairs, it is an important addition to prayer. So important is it, that one might say, almost, that desire is an absolute essential of prayer.

Desire precedes prayer, accompanies it, and is followed by it. Desire goes before prayer, and by it, created and intensified. Prayer is the oral expression of desire. If prayer is asking God for something, then prayer must be expressed. Prayer comes out into the open. Desire is silent. Prayer is heard; desire, unheard. The deeper the desire, the stronger is the prayer.

Without desire, prayer is a meaningless mumble of words. Such perfunctory, formal praying, with no heart, no feeling, no real desire accompanying it, is to be avoided like a plague. Its exercise is a waste of precious time, and from it, no real blessing accrues.

And yet even if you discover that desire is honestly absent from your prayers, you should pray, anyway. We ought to pray. The "ought to" comes in, in order that both desire and expression can be cultivated. God's Word commands it. Our judgment tells us we ought to pray -- to pray whether we feel like it or not -- and not to allow our feelings to determine our habits of prayer.

Tip! 'Asking of God' and 'receiving' from the Lord - direct request to God, immediate connection with God - that is true prayer.

In such circumstance, we ought to pray for the desire to pray; for such a desire is God-given and heaven-born. We should pray for desire; then, when desire has been given, we should pray according to what it dictates. Lack of spiritual desire should grieve us, and lead us to be sad by its absence, to seek earnestly for its delivery, so that our praying, in the future, will be an expression of "the soul's sincere desire."

A sense of need creates or should create earnest desire. The stronger the sense of need, before God, the greater should be the desire, the more earnest the praying. The "poor in spirit" are extremely capable to pray.

Hunger is an active sense of physical need. It triggers the request for bread. In like manner, the inward consciousness of spiritual need creates desire, and desire breaks out in prayer.

Desire is an inward longing for something that we are not in possession of, and we stand in need of -- it is something that God has promised, and which may be secured only by an earnest supplication to His throne of grace.

Tip! Talking to God - This is the one on one type prayer - where we converse with God to develop our relationship with him. We may ask him to help us in areas that we need spiritual, physical or emotional support.

Spiritual desire, carried to a higher degree, is the evidence of our new birth. It is born in our renewed soul:

Tip! One might well ask, whether the feebleness of our desires for God, the Holy Spirit, and for all the fullness of Christ, is not the cause of our so little praying, and of our languishing in the exercise of prayer?

"As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word that ye may grow thereby."

The absence of this holy desire in the heart is probable proof, either of a decline in spiritual joy, or, that the new birth has never taken place.

"Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled."

These heaven-given appetites are the proof of a renewed heart, the evidence of a stirring spiritual life. Physical appetites are the attributes of a living body, not of a corpse, and spiritual desires belong to a soul made alive to God. And as the renewed soul hungers and thirsts after righteousness, these holy inward desires break out into earnest, supplicating prayer.

A Study in Prayer and Trust - Part 1

2008-12-21T10:52:00.003-05:00

Tip! It opens the door for salvations. (Act 2:42) "And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers".

PRAYER does not stand alone. It is not an isolated duty or an independent principle. It lives in association with other Christian duties, prayer is married to other principles, and it is a partner with other graces. But to faith, prayer is indissolubly joined. Faith gives prayer its color and tone, shapes its character, and secures its results.

Trust is when our faith becomes unreserved, ratified and completed. There is, when all is said and done, a sort of endeavor in faith and its exercise. But trust is firm belief; it is faith in full flower. Trust is a conscious act, a fact of which we are sensible. According to the Scriptural concept trust is the eye of the new-born soul, and the ear of the renewed soul. It is the feeling of the soul, the spiritual eye, the ear, the taste, the feeling -- these one and all have to do with trust.

Tip! A person's character is always demonstrated in their behavior. The Savior again said,"A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good ..." -- Luke 6:45

Trust like life, is feeling, though much more than feeling. An unfelt life is a contradiction; an unfelt trust is a misnomer, a delusion, a contradiction. Trust is the most felt of all attributes. It is all feeling, and it works only by love. An unfelt love is as impossible as an unfelt trust. The trust of which we are now speaking is a conviction: An unfelt conviction? How absurd!

Tip! The Master will not expect more from anyone than a person is capable of doing for Him. Jesus wants us to understand that each person will be rewarded according to their faithfulness in doing their given task.

Trust sees God doing things here and now. Yes, and more. It rises to a lofty eminence, and looking into the invisible and the eternal, realizes that God has done things, and regards them as being already done. Trust brings eternity into the annals and happenings of time, transmutes the substance of hope into the reality of fruition, and changes promise into present possession. We know when we trust just as we know when we see, just as we are conscious of our sense of touch. Trust sees, receives, and holds. Trust is its own witness.

Yet, quite often, faith is too weak to obtain God's greatest good, immediately; so it has to wait in loving, strong, prayerful, pressing obedience, until it grows in strength, and is able to bring down the eternal, into the realms of experience and time.

A Study in Prayer and Trust - Part 2

2008-12-21T10:48:00.002-05:00

Tip! 'Asking of God' and 'receiving' from the Lord - direct request to God, immediate connection with God - that is true prayer.

In the matter of waiting in prayer, mightiest prayer, faith rises to its highest plane and becomes indeed the gift of God. It becomes the blessed disposition and expression of the soul which is secured by a constant communication with, and unwearied application to God.

Jesus Christ clearly taught that faith was the condition on which prayer was answered. When our Lord had cursed the fig-tree, the disciples were much surprised that its withering had actually taken place, and their remarks indicated their inexperience. It was then that Jesus said to them, "Have faith in God."

Trust grows nowhere so readily and richly as in the prayer-chamber. It's unfolding and developments are rapid and wholesome when they are regularly and well kept. When these engagements are hearty and full and free, trust flourishes exceedingly. The eye and presence of God give vigorous life to trust, just as the eye and the presence of the sun make fruit and flower to grow, and all things glad and bright with fuller life.

"Have faith in God," "Trust in the Lord" form the keynote and foundation of prayer. Primarily, it is not trust in the Word of God, but rather trust in the Person of God. For trust in the Person of God must precede trust in the Word of God. "Ye believe in God, believe also in Me," is the demand our Lord makes on the personal trust of His disciples. The person of Jesus Christ must be central, to the eye of trust. This great truth Jesus sought to impress upon Martha, when her brother lay dead, in the home at Bethany. Martha asserted her belief in the fact of the resurrection of her brother:

"Martha said unto Him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day."

Jesus lifts her trust clear above the mere fact of the resurrection, to His own Person, by saying:

Trust, in an historical fact or in a mere record may be a very passive thing, but trust in a person vitalizes the quality, fructifies it, and informs it with love. The trust which informs prayer centers in a Person.

Trust goes even further than this. The trust which inspires our prayer must be not only trust in the Person of God, and of Christ, but in their ability and willingness to grant the thing prayed for. It is not only, "Trust, ye, in the Lord," but, also, "for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength."

A Study in Prayer and Trust - Part 3

2008-12-21T10:44:00.001-05:00

Tip! 'Supplication' is the very soul of prayer in the way of pleading for some one thing, very much needed, and the need intensely felt.

The trust which our Lord taught as a condition of effectual prayer is not of the head but of the heart. It is trust which "doubts not in his heart." Such trust has the Divine assurance that it shall be honored with large and satisfying answers. The strong promise of our Lord brings faith down to the present, and counts on a present answer.

Do we believe, without a doubt? When we pray, do we believe, not that we shall receive the things for which we ask on a future day, but that we receive them, then and there? Such is the teaching of this inspiring Scripture. How we need to pray, "Lord, increase our faith," until doubt be gone, and implicit trust claims the promised blessings, as it's very own.

This is no easy condition. It is reached only after many a failure, after much praying, after many long waiting, and after much trial of faith. May our faith so increase until we realize and receive all the fullness there is in that Name which guarantees to do so much.

Their regrettable lack of trust and ensuing failure of the disciples to do what they were sent out to do is seen in the case of the possessed son, who was brought by his father to nine of them while their Master was on the Mount of Transfiguration. A boy, sadly afflicted, was brought to these men to be cured of his dilemma. They had been commissioned to do this very kind of work. This was a part of their mission. They attempted to cast out the devil from the boy, but had signally failed. The devil was too much for them. They were humiliated at their failure, and filled with shame, while their enemies were in triumph. Amid the confusion incident to failure Jesus draws near. He is informed of the circumstances, and told of the conditions connected therewith. Here is the succeeding account:

"Then Jesus answered and said, O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I suffer you? Bring him hither to me. And Jesus rebuked the devil, and he departed out of him and the child was cured from that very hour. And when He was come into the house, His disciples asked Him privately, 'Why could not we cast him out?' And He said unto them, 'This kind can come forth by nothing but by prayer and fasting.'"

Wherein lay the difficulty with these men? They had been lax in cultivating their faith by prayer and, as a consequence, their trust utterly failed. They trusted not God, nor Christ, nor the authenticity of His mission, or their own. So has it been many a time since, in many a crisis in the Church of God. Failure has resulted from a lack of trust, or from a weakness of faith, and this, in turn, from a lack of prayerfulness.

Many a failure in revival efforts has been traceable to the same cause. Faith had not been nurtured and made powerful by prayer. Neglect of the inner chamber is the solution of most spiritual failure. And this is as true of our personal struggles with the devil as was the case when we went forth to attempt to cast out devils. To be much on our knees in private communion with God is the only surety that we shall have Him with us either in our personal struggles, or in our efforts to convert sinners.

A Study in Prayer and Trust - Part 4

2008-12-21T10:41:00.002-05:00

Tip! An effective prayer life can have a huge impact on not only our own individual life, but on the lives of those around us. Through prayer we can have an impact on our local community, our country and the world.

Everywhere, in the approaches of the people to Him, our Lord put trust in Him, and the divinity of His mission, in the forefront. He gave no definition of trust, and He furnishes no theological discussion of or analysis of it; for He knew that men would see what faith was by what faith did; and from its free exercise trust grew up, spontaneously, in His presence. It was the product of His work, His power and His Person. These furnished and created an atmosphere most favorable for its exercise and development.