Ezekiel 22:30
For it is God who works in you to will and to act according to His good purpose.
Phil. 2:13.
The entire Christian life is one that is lived in the power of Another—the presence of Christ, who dwells in us. Many people realize this, especially that God’s work is done by God, doing His will through us—in work, preaching, witnessing and planning for ministry.
The part we don’t realize is that even prayer—real prayer—is only possible in partnership with our Lord who dwells in our hearts. The way into the presence of the Father is only available through Him. In other words, only He can take us into the Father’s presence, impart the knowledge of the Father’s will to us, and thus enable our praying.
Prayers that we offer that we originate don’t get above the ceiling—prayers that originate in the heart of God are always effective, because they are His idea in the first place. Much complaining about unanswered prayer would be eliminated if we realized that our ideas are worthless. God only moves in accordance with His own will, and only He knows what that is!
The Holy spirit, who is the Spirit of Christ living in believers, takes the prayers that Jesus is offering in heaven, and brings them down to earth so that we can speak them out. THEN he does what was His idea was from the beginning!
So much grief would be avoided if we just gave up our own ideas and admitted to God and to ourselves that without His enabling, we are not able to pray (contact God) at all. We can talk out loud at God; we can complain, we can question, but prayer comes from above, originating with God, and it flows through us in a circle. Coming from Him, it then goes back to Him. This might seem strange, but when you think about it, God does everything this that way. In the beginning He SAID “Let there be light; and then there was light on earth.
In all of creation and in all of God’s dealings with earth since the beginning, God has been the Head—the originator of all things. There is no reason to believe that He wouldn’t also plan that prayer would operate this way. If we give up everything—all of our ideas about what God should be doing, all of our own abilities and solutions, and just wait on God, He will communicate to us what He wants to do.
There are all sorts of answers to prayer just waiting to be given, if we learn how to ask. If we get in touch with heaven as the Holy Spirit leads, God will flow His revelation (answers) into our minds so that we can request exactly what His will is, and then he will DO what His will is! This process takes practice if you have been talking out loud at God for a long time, but the practice is worth it!
God hears his own will and without fail responds. There are times when God’s revelation takes time to come, because Satan blocks it from reaching us—so keep inviting God’s enabling without discouragement, even if some time passes.
We pursue God because and only because He has first put an urge within us that spurs us on to the pursuit.
A. W. Tozer
Without God, we cannot. Without us, God will not.
Augustine
God always hears the prayers of His son, and if the Son of God is formed in me, the Father will always hear my prayers.
Oswald Chambers
When I learn what intercession is, and how to respond to the Holy Spirit’s prodding to do it, I am moving into partnership with the Father in the highest sense.
Jack Hayford
When we speak to God it is really the God who lives in us speaking through us to Himself. The dialogue of grace is really the monologue of the divine nature in self-communicating love.
P. T. Forsyth
True prayers are like carrier pigeons; from heaven they came,
Charles Spurgeon
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