Okay ladies, I hope you have had a chance to read lessons 1 and 2 in our series on prayer. As I mentioned yesterday, posts will appear from all of our Inspirerers on Monday, Wednesday and Friday but I needed to post last night so we could get going. As you know, I am using Dr. Bisagno’s book, “The Power of Positive Praying”, but I am also using my own notes from when I taught this to my Lifegroup class. God taught me many things and I am excited to share it all with you.
Today we will be talking about God’s will. This has been a topic for believers throughout the ages. We want to know HIS will for our lives and for many of us it can seem to be a mystery. But I am here to tell you it shouldn’t be. God has given us His Word and in it we have so much information about what His will is and what it is not.
Again, I find the easiest way to communicate some of the information I have compiled from Dr. Bisagno is to simply list it for you. So here we go:
- Leave the word “if” our of your prayers.
- There are different types of prayers: thanksgiving, praise, and confession.
- God is constrained by the prayer of faith. His Word is at stake. (remember yesterday we talked about appropriating the faith we have been given)
- God’s name and His honor stand behind His promise.
- The secret is to discern the will of God ahead of time. We need to see what God’s Word has to say about the matter we are praying about, then you pray.
- Submit your will to the Father. Jesus did. It was one last struggle of the flesh against the Spirit.
- “If” drains the power from our prayers.
- Quit blaming God for things He didn’t do! We have to factor in the carelessness of man.
- Find His will, then cooperate with it through positive activated faith.
- We know His will in alot of things! Live like it!
- If you know Him you need to learn the art of positive thinking, living and believing prayer. We need to put Philippians 4:8 into practice.
- Claim the victory in advance! Walk by faith, not sight.
- If you ask God for something but then make provision to obtain it or accomplish it, then you are not believing God for it. You have NOT prayed in faith.
- Expect God to answer your prayer.
These are 14 important things for us to read, re-read and ponder. For example, have you ever prayed using the word “if”? How powerless it is to pray “Lord, if it be Your will please speak to me when I read my Bible.” This doesn’t even make sense when you think about it. God gave us His word so He could speak to us! This is just one example of many I could come up with, but you get the idea.
As I thought about all of this I realized that we let the enemy cause us to pray weak prayers because we have let him make us think we have no right or authority to do so. Nothing could be further from the truth my friend. One of my favorite passages of all the Bible is found in Luke Chapter 10. It is here where we read that the Lord Jesus has given authority to us to trample demonic agents under our feet and over all the power of the enemy. So if we are praying weak and wimpy prayers it is because of two things: we aren’t appropriating the faith we have been given and we aren’t using the authority that the Lord Jesus says is ours. Once I confessed and repented to the Lord of how sorry I was for praying like a wimp. What an insult to our God, who has given us all we need to pray the way He wants us to; in activated, believing, receiving, bold, chain breaking, demon trampling faith. Now, if that doesn’t get you fired up, I don’t know what will!
In my study of how to know God’s will I found a wonderful website that I now use quite often. It is www.gotquestions.org and it has so much great information that helps when studying the Bible. Here are some things I learned about God’s will:
In Romans 12:2 we see God’s will is not a mystery. He wants us to see it and know it. In the area of mind renewal, it is the Spirit that does this for us. Our minds are renewed according to the will of God. Our minds are continually renewed. This is not some one time event that happens. God will renew our minds through His Spirit in us and our part is to surrender to this work.
We must also make sure as we seek God’s will that we are seeking what will bring Him glory. We should also check to see if what we are seeking will help us and others grow in our walk with God. We must always remember that everything for the believer, and I mean everything, is always about advancing the Kingdom of God. We are to be about His business, not ours.
Patience is an important virtue while seeking God’s will. We must walk it out, taking it one step at the time each day. We must be about our Father’s business just as Jesus was in Luke 2:49. As we are seeking to know His will it is important to keep doing the next thing until He gives you the next step. We are called to work while we wait. James 4:17 says, “Remember, it is sin to know what you ought to do and then not do it.”
If we know our Father well, we won’t have to ask Him about every particular situation that comes up. We should know what our Father in Heaven will say. Part of the journey for a Christian is obedience and dependence while we walk. As we do this we begin to develop the mind of Christ that we read about in 1 Corinthians 2:16. How well do you know the Father? Do you know what He will say because you KNOW Him?
Psalm 37:4 says, “ Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart. ” When your heart is right and you truly and genuinely want His will, no matter what, GOD will place the right desires in your heart.
Ask God every day to give you His thoughts, not your own and you will find that in time you are not only living out His will for your life but you will be praying His will too. So hit your knees dear one and seek The One who wants you to know and pray His will.
Living free,
Rene’
To read more about prayer and fasting see my personal blog, www.renecollins66.wordpress.com
