Prayer

I'm purposefully cutting out this section, because of your underlined sentence.

In my experience, HAMel, there is no such thing as an unanswered prayer. Typically, one of two things is going one. Either
1. God has not yet answered, but will answer in His time and according to His will
or
2. God's answer to us was "No."
Some people cannot accept that, as they've been conditioned to view God as this Heavenly ATM that dispenses blessings the moment they call on His name. That is nothing but man's twisted philosophy interfering with the Word of God. Nothing in scripture says we will always have a good life, or will always be happy.

 

I believe man has some capability for compassion. Otherwise, we're not much more than puppets being moved by God, with no ability on our own to do anything. Some people pray a lot. Others pray very little, if ever. Do you think those who pray less than others are somehow less inspired by God? That's not a leap I'm willing to make.

I'll tell you as I answered this question a few days back in another thread. My grandfather told me when I first started in the ministry to never pray for someone to be healed, but instead to pray for God's will to be done. God might not intend to heal that person, yet if we gather together and pray for healing that never comes, then we risk opening a door in which a family member or the person being prayed for can blame God for not healing them. I've seen what you've seen, HAMel. I had a cousin who was given only a few weeks to live by the doctors in 1998. She passed away in 2009. Conversely, the same grandfather who told me to pray for God's will was given four months to live in late-September of 2012. He passed on October 23, 2012. Four weeks; not months. We do not know what God's plan holds for us. We can only pray to be found in His will, doing His will, and offering up our bodies a living sacrifice.

I fear we're speaking crossways, HAMel. What I intended by that statement was the folks had been essentially brainwashed to believe that if they prayed for God to give them a million dollars, then they should have a million dollars. If they don't have it, then they obviously didn't pray with enough faith.

If the Lord impresses you to pray for a certain matter, then go for it. Do it with all your heart. If He doesn't impress you to pray for a certain matter, then pray anyway. Pray without ceasing.

 

I appreciate this post and want to provide my sincere input. Unfortunately, I’m afraid that this might unintentionally provoke those who hold to the status quo to turn this into a debate – with people vested in the idea that they are going to “win” or “lose” the debate. If this turns into a debate, then everyone loses.

Revivals are a grace of God, but I don’t think we are instructed anywhere in the New Testament that the way revivals come about is through simply praying for them. The arrival of the Spirit at Pentecost was the beginning of a new era. The Old Testament idea of asking God to reveal His presence and power in periods of revival was replaced by the ever-present Spirit with us as we serve and are transformed in the Kingdom of God. “Revival” is constantly available to us, individually and corporately, as we participate in the Kingdom.

Unfortunately, because of theological and social reasons, not to mention ignorance of the teaching of Jesus because of an inordinate emphasis on the writings of Paul (actually misinterpretations of Paul) because of the false teaching that the Kingdom of God was delayed until the Second Coming. Jesus plainly teaches us how to enter the Kingdom and shows us how to commune with God through emulating his actions – many of the classic disciplines of Christian spiritual formation. But since this is rarely taught from pulpits in the Western world today, we do not participate in the work of the Kingdom.

I have been part of exactly one true revival, and the primary instigating factor was that the gospel was preached (rather poorly) to a church that was largely unconverted. The power was not in the preacher, the people who heard the message, or anything that was engineered – there were no plans for a “revival” – but in the good news that Jesus was Lord and He is trustworthy. Hundreds, even thousands of lives were radically changed over the course of two years. The revival began to lose power when the pastor of the church began to make what happened about him and tried to build an empire. Also, some huge theological gaps in the gospel message presented by the pastor created difficulties where people didn’t know what to do once they had come into faith. They intuitively knew there was more (they wanted growth and transformation in the Kingdom of God), but the pastor did not have any understanding of it.

Praying for God to do something is great! But it is more important to learn what Jesus taught and then learn how to do it. That is the key to revival.

 

Jesus Christ is love.The key to prayer is love.

If people in the church of God could just unpack what it is to truly love Christ and to love others as ourselves, the world would be different and we would be in a constant state of prayer.