Orphan or heir?

Do you see yourself as an orphan or an heir when you pray?

Susie Larson, author of Your Powerful Prayers: Reaching the Heart of God with a Bold and Humble Faith, says that the answer to that question is critical.

She says Christians who see themselves as orphans do not expect much from their prayers.  And they usually get what they expect.

But people who have put their faith in Jesus are new creations, she writes.  They are no longer orphans eating crumbs off the floor, but heirs of a bountiful God who is offering them a spiritual feast.

So, we should pray like that.

"Jesus loves and treasures the spiritual orphan," says Larson.  "That's why he made a way to adopt us into the family of God.  But once we become heirs, he doesn't wants us acting or thinking like orphans any longer.  Spiritual orphans beg and plead.  Heirs pray and believe."

Larson notes that scripture says "that the same power that raised Christ from the dead is in you".

She points out that the apostle Peter declares in 2 Peter 1: "His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness."

And he adds that God has "given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature". 

Larson comments that we will more easily access this power the more we get to know God and what he wants for our lives.  God empowers us to live an otherworldly life.

This does not mean that we will escape trouble or suffering.  We must recognize that God permits trouble in our lives because he is carving us into Christ's image with untold benefits in the life to come.  As the apostle James says in James 1, we should even embrace suffering because it leads to endurance and spiritual growth.

She acknowledges that disappointment and sorrow can sour us on God and prayer.  Ultimately, though, we need to look beyond us to God who loves us so much that Jesus sacrificed his life for us on the cross.  He is working out things for our good and for triumph over Satan, sin and death.

"Going into the storms of life, if we can know that we are his children, his heirs, his prized possessions, we'll stand more sturdily on his truths when the storms hit," Larson writes.  "And, we'll learn to live and pray with expectancy amidst these storms, because we'll know in the depths of our souls that God wastes nothing and allows nothing that he can't use, redeem, restore, and repurpose for his name's sake."

She says many of us react to disappointment or despair over our own failings by shying away from bold prayer.  Or, we indulge in negative self-talk, or "we find ourselves whispering those begging types of prayers that leave us feeling small, not loved or embraced like we actually are".

Instead, we should remember that we are God's heirs, his children whom he loves so much that we are always welcome to come to him, even when we mess up.

"May you remember today that Jesus' overwhelming victory on the cross gave you a place at the table of grace.  You get to be there because Jesus unequivocally defeated sin, death, inferiority, insecurity, imperfection, isolation and rejection, just to name a few."

What a heartening truth!

Jesus and inner healing prayer

John Eldredge says that "the glorious news is that God restores the soul - he heals the broken heart".

Eldredge, author of Moving Mountains, joins other writers in declaring that inviting God into our emotional and spiritual issues can lead to inner healing.

Eldredge and others like Leanne Payne, who wrote The Healing Presence, say that bringing Jesus into the painful incidents of life - past and present - can bring release and peace.  They have seen the results in their ministries.

In fact, Jesus referred to the broken-hearted in Isaiah 61:1 when he declared his mission to the world as he shared scripture in his home town synagogue in Nazareth.  Isaiah 61:1 speaks of preaching the good news, binding up or comforting the broken-hearted, proclaiming freedom for captives, and release from darkness.

In her book, Payne notes that God says: "I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind." (Jeremiah 17:10)  Scripture describes the many kinds of heart that God sees.

"These are hearts that are either sinful or wounded and need healing," Payne says. "In their healing, Jesus first of all comes in and stands in the midst of that heart.  He who is the Light of the World illuminates it."

She adds: "He then speaks the healing word, one which, if received and acted upon, sets the heart free from all the other dominating voices: those of the world, the flesh and the Devil."

Typically, Payne and the person she is praying with invite Jesus into the emotional problem they are praying about and ask him to reveal the fundamental issue.  Sometimes it can be a word which triggers memories.

This can lead to forgiving others or seeking forgiveness.  Imaginations and hearts are cleansed.

Eldredge tells the story of an elderly man "who had been experiencing profound, unresolved sadness, which he could not name, nor link to any cause".

As Eldredge and his team prayed, Jesus brought back to the man's memory an incident when he was five years old.  The young boy had grown up without a father who had disappeared after his mother had become pregnant outside of marriage.

One day, the five-year-old boy was running from room to room throughout the house.  His mother asked him what he was looking for and he said: "I'm looking for my daddy."

That kind of wound can be deep-seated and need healing from Jesus.

I know a woman who has been healed physically and emotionally.  The emotional healing took longer, but for her, it was the most important.

I acknowledge that many Christians today believe that divine healing was for the limited time of the New Testament and is no longer necessary now that we have the written scriptures.

I believe God heals today physically, emotionally and spiritually.  There are many reports of miraculous physical healings that cannot be explained by medical science.

In my view, healing prayer works best in concert with good medical care - they are both avenues God uses to heal us.  For example, there are obviously some chemical imbalances that are best dealt with through medication.

But God does heal the broken-hearted.  Let's rejoice in this truth.

Resisting the enemy

A fully-effective prayer ministry must include resisting Satan and his works, says Watchman Nee.

Nee, a great Chinese Christian who died in a Communist prison decades ago, says that "prayer is the best offensive weapon against our enemy".

He suggests in his book Let Us Pray that a complete prayer life should involve three elements - praying for our own needs, praying for the glory of God and the fulfillment of his will, and praying against Satan and his efforts to undermine the work of God in us and the world.

He notes that many Christians pray for themselves; a smaller proportion also pray for God's glory; and even fewer dream of praying against Satan.

I have long been among those who neglected Satan in my prayer life.  And yet the apostle John said in 1 John 3:8 that "the Son of God came to destroy the works of the devil".  Should that not be part of our mission, too?

Nee takes Jesus' story of the widow pleading with the unjust judge to avenge her against her adversary as an illustration of our battle against the evil one (Luke 18:1-8).

The author points out that Jesus clearly contrasts the unjust judge with God.  The unjust judge eventually - but reluctantly - agrees to assist the widow but only after a lot of pleading.  However, God loves to come to the immediate aid of his children.

We are like the widow, says Nee.  On this earth, we are helpless by ourselves - we are vulnerable to attacks from the enemy.  But, like the widow, we can appeal for help - our help comes from the Lord.

He suggests that the adversary in the story is just like Satan.  He is determined to hurt the widow.

The story closes with Jesus declaring: "And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night?"  In other words, God will act against the adversary as we pray to him.

Nee says that God has already won the ultimate victory over the evil one through Jesus' sacrifice on the cross.  But Satan remains powerful in our world until Jesus' return to earth at the conclusion of history.

"The aim of a true prayer touches on not just personal gain," Nee writes, "but more importantly on the glory of God and the loss of the enemy."

He says that the enemy "will do anything which can cause believers to suffer either spiritually or physically, to fall into sins, or to incur loss or damage".

Here are some of the ways he suggests praying against Satan:

• As God cursed Satan in the Garden of Eden, so we can ask the Lord to curse Satan under the power of the cross in our current situation;
• As Jesus forbade the demons from speaking, we can ask God to forbid Satan from speaking through the mouths of people around us;
• As Jesus talked about "binding the strong man (Satan)", so "we may ask God to bind Satan and render him powerless";
• We can appeal to God to "destroy (Satan's) work in us, destroy his manipulation over our work, destroy his devices in our environment, and destroy all his works"; and
• We can ask God to rebuke the enemy as the archangel Michael called on God to do against Satan (Jude 9).

Praying against Satan is an extra arrow in our prayer quiver.  Let's use it.

Even when it's hard

Prayer power depends on doing what God asks us to do - even when it's hard.

Jesus is our supreme example - Son of God and yet a man who was constantly praying to the Father, seeking direction as to what to do next.  And then he did what the Father laid out before him.

His greatest test came in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before his death.  He asked his closest disciples to go with him as he prayed in anguish before the Father, knowing that he was soon to die for the sins of men.  The gospel of Luke tells us that he even sweat drops of blood from the overwhelming stress.

"Abba, Father," he cried out in Mark 14:36, "everything is possible for you.  Please take this cup of suffering away from me.  Yet I want your will to be done, not mine."

Jesus faced physical pain and death, but - even more - he was about to be cut off from his loving ties with the Father on the cross as the full force of man's sin fell upon him.  He was to be the sinless sacrifice to pay for our sins so that we might have access to an eternal relationship with God.

The Father answered Jesus' prayer by giving him the strength to go through with his mission.  His obedience led to a stunning victory over Satan and evil.

Imagine what would have happened had he not obeyed!  We would all be hopeless - in the grips of Satan and hell.

Before Gethsemane, Jesus gave a clue to the power of his ministry.  In John 5:19, he said: "I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself.  He does only what he sees the Father doing.  Whatever the Father does, the Son also does."

I believe Christ is talking about his time in prayer with the Father as God shows him what to do.

The apostle Paul also made a difficult choice to obey what God asked him to do.

Towards the end of his evangelistic career, Paul was informed by the Holy Spirit he was to go to Jerusalem with suffering and jail awaiting him (Acts 19).  He went ahead with the trip even though his followers pleaded with him not to go.

He said: "My life is worth nothing to me unless I use it for finishing the work assigned me by the Lord Jesus - the work of telling others the Good News about the wonderful grace of God."

Paul's letters glow with wonderful prayers for the people he is talking to.  He called on people to pray always in all circumstances.  His prayers were marvellously answered - because he obeyed what God told him.

The Lord often lets me know what I must do when I ask him.  He lets me know through scriptures and promptings in my mind.

But sometimes I balk because there is a cost to obedience.

The apostle John said in 1 John 3:22 that we will receive whatever we ask if we obey God and do what pleases him.  The implication is that I will not necessarily receive what I seek if I do not obey him.

This speaks to me.