Prayer Victories Originate from Our Relationship with God - Part 1

When a man or woman receives Christ by making Jesus Lord of their life, a supernatural power enters their heart and begins to change them from the inside out. Jesus said, "As many as recieved him, to them he gave the power to become a child of God.
The very first thing that changes on the inside of anyone who receives Christ is this - you gain a deep sense of acceptance and adoption. There comes a knowing that "God is my Father... I am not a fatherless person any more. I belong. I belong to God. God is my father, my papa, who deeply loves me in a good and holy and pure way, and that looks out for my benefit and protects me from hurt and harm. This is not a theory, it is a fact. Read Romans 8.14-16.
When you are a newborn son or daughter of God, prayer is so easy and exiting and organic. You don't have to try to pray. God watches over you and you have a sense of his closeness and of your new relationship to him and with him. It seems he answers every prayer almost before you get it out of your mouth.
Soon, though, your father begins to teach you through that sense of closeness, which is called the presence of God, the Glory of God, and in John's writings, it is called the Anointing.
As you grow in Christ, or when enough time has passed that you should have grown in Christ, it takes more obedience, more yielding of yourself to your father-God to have that sense of his nearness and favor.
That is absolutely right and fair and is not a gospel of works. You would have no relationship with God at all, if it were not by grace alone that you enter in to his kingdom and even to enter his presence today to pray and/or fellowship with him. But by using a Binary System of "off and on," he trains you, he guides you, to do those things that please him.
If you have lost the "sense of His presence" or "the anointing," don't blame him. Realize that he hasn't moved. You moved. You missed it, somewhere, if your peace and the testimony of His voice in your heart, has decreased.
Don't despair, kids!
He pulled back a little to let you know you missed it. He didn't leave.
Take the time, right now, to open your Bible and read 1 John 1, the entire 10 sentences.
In verse 8, he is saying that if we are living without an assurance in our heart, deep and strong, of God's presence, and of our sonship (relationship) through Jesus, then we are fooling ourselves or lying if we say we haven't sinned. That does't mean you are rejected ... it means you need to follow the directions found in verse 9. "But if we confess our sins to him, he can be trusted to forgive our sins and it is justice to do so since he paid the price for all our sins with the shedding of his own blood."
Confessing your sin is like spitting it out. It is seperating yourself from it. You stop doing it. That confession and seperation ... RESTORES US TO FULL FELLOWSHIP AND SONSHIP AND RIGHTSTANDING WITH GOD!
Once again, God draws near and we sense His presence. Our hearts are assured in His presence. In that place, in that atmosphere, faith and prayer become organic. This is the foundation of the prayer of faith.
This is the ground where the seeds of the promises of God's Word can grow until our faith is strong and can be harvested through the prayer of faith. More Later!

I Am the God of Abraham and of You

Just a quick note to remind you...

When you are feeling like nothing is working like it should;
And the prayers you prayed to change them
Didn't feel particularly anointed;
...It is time for you to begin to talk!
Not to others, but to your own soul.
Ask your soul, "What is your problem?"
Tell your soul to quiet down and listen!
Then say:
"I serve the God of Abraham!"

What does that mean?
The God who led Abraham and kept his promise to Abraham,
Even though there was no book to read or map to follow.
That is the God who makes His promises to you!

Now say:
"I serve the God of Isaac."
God kept his promise to Isaac,
Even though he Isaac was not as bold and forceful as his father had been.
Isaac did not treat his sons fairly.
He was not a great father to his boys.
But God remembered his promise to Abraham and revealed himself to Isaac in a way Isaac could grasp.
And Isaac believed.
God will reveal Himself to your kids in a way they can grasp and believe ...
If you will seek Him yourself, with all your heart.
If you to will believe His promises as Isaac did -
Not based on your temperment -
And join His covenant with Jesus.

Now say:
"I serve the God of Jacob."
He kept his word to Abraham and blessed Jacob...
Even though he shouldn't because,
Jacob was not the firstborn son.
Jacob was not his father's favorite.
Jacob was not as strong as strong as the brother who was.

Jacob was a weasel and a cheat.
But somehow, by letting Jacob be the victim
Of the same kind of schemes he pulled on others,
God changed Jacob from a schemer to a Man of Trust
And a praying man who prevails over his circumstances,
And a Prince with God, who He renamed Israel!

Wow!

Now, memorize this passage from Hebrews 13.7,8.
"Never forget the leaders,
Who first spoke to you the Word of God.
Remember how they lived and imitate their faith.
Jesus Christ is always the same (to you, as he was to them)
Yesterday, today, and for ever."

Then, remind your own soul, by speaking to yourself,
of all the times
That things seemed dire, dark and,
And the circumstances seemed impossible to change
And you felt completely alone.
And you prayed then; and God came through.
Came through for you

Walk through it all again in your mind,
And quietly begin to give thanks.

Thank you, Lord!
Thank you for what you did.
Thank you for bringing me through.
Thank you for breaking the habits of sin,
That used to seem would never be broken.

Wow.
Wow.
Amazing!
I worship you for who that situation in my life revealed you to be.

Now, remember and worship His Name.
He told Moses, years later, "My name is, 'I Am.'
"Tell them 'I Am' sent me.
"I am the God of Abraham.
"I am the God of Isaac.
"I am the God of Jacob.
"I am the God of Jesus.
"And through him, 'I am' the God of you."
"My name is known by what I do!
"By what I've done for men like you,
"And what I'll do today for you."

Ephesians One and Ephesians two,
Brings all this to Light
The God of Jesus, through the cross;
Brings hope when there was none!

Now go do what you must today,
He'll keep His Word to you.

Praise... the... Lord!

Prayer Seminar

With Phil Strickland

Materials:
· Notebook to keep my handouts in to review at home each week, and to bring back each week
· Spiral-Bound Index Cards – to hand-write the scriptures we cover in the class, because the Word of God is THE greatest key to a successful prayer life.
Preparation for the Class:
· Pray James 1.5 -8
· Pray Colossians 1.9-13
· Pray Ephesians 1.16-23 and 3.14-21.

If you want to review the last lesson, and sometimes even catch the new notes, go to

Week One – Lord Teach Us to Pray (Foundation Scriptures: Luke 11.1-13;
Week Two – What is Prayer? (Ezekiel 22.30, 31)
Week Three - Why Pray? (1 Timothy 1.18-2.4; Mark 1.35-38; Matthew 6.1-6 )
Week Four – The Purpose of Prayer
Week Five - To Whom Should We Pray?
Week Six – A Guide to Effective Daily Prayer
Week Seven – How to Pray with Power
Week Eight – God’s Promises About Prayer
Week Nine – Planning Your Daily Devotional Time
Week Ten – The Prayer of Faith
Week Eleven – The Prayer of Praise and Worship
Week Twelve – The Prayer if Intercession


Prayer is more than “saying your prayers.” It is more than a religious exercise or duty. It is communication with your Heavenly Father. Learning to pray is deciding to make Jesus Lord of your life and to really follow him. A follower of Christ who doesn’t spend time in prayer beyond church, meals, and “bedtime prayers,” is not doing much following and should be asking themselves some hard questions.
Prayer is joining forces with your Heavenly Father to see his will carried out on earth. It is entering in to living, current contact with Father God at his throne to talk about everything and anything. It is asking to get something changed in my own life or possibly in someone else’s life.
Learning how to pray is learning how to enter the Father’s presence to visit or to transact business.
Prayer is designed by God to be answered, to result in fellowship/friendship, and to be a way for you and God to share in the benefits of each other’s lives. Answered prayer and holy living glorifies God. It brings his abilities and resources to bear on human needs and desires, whether they are your basic needs of life or the broader supply of spiritual benefit, power, and grace needed to meet the needs of the world that Jesus died to save.
Through prayer, we refocus on the reality of his authority and power and in his presence we lose our fear of man. We find forgiveness and then peace for our weaknesses and failings. And we find courage to go on. Some people have never experienced this kind of peace … That’s why you are here!

Now – make this determination:
I will not study and learn about prayer, and then just “hang the diploma on my wall.” I will use what I learn in my own prayer life. I am ready to improve/increase my prayer life. I am ready to give myself to God and:
· even if it is hard for me at first, I will set aside the time necessary and do it.
· Even if I fail at first, I will not quit setting aside the time to pray and
· I will stay with it until praying is an ingrained habit in my life.

Some people say they don’t have time to pray. I don’t have time not to pray, everyday! So:

I ask you, Father, to give me wisdom and understanding in the area of prayer. Jesus, give me grace to pray like you did and to recognize I cannot make it in life without abiding in fellowship with you every day. Holy Spirit, help me, guide me, fill me, strengthen me, and make me a person of prayer.
I ask all this in Jesus mighty name, Amen!

Name:
Date
Witness:
Daily Target Prayer Time:




Psalm 145:18-20 The LORD is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth. He fulfills the desires of those who fear him; he hears their cry and saves them. The LORD watches over all who love him, but all the wicked he will destroy. NAS

Week One
Lord Teach Us to Pray

Foundation Scriptures: Luke 11.1-13; Ephesians 6.18; James 5.16-18

Introduction:

Luke 11.1-13 The disciples began to see the fruit of Jesus life was connected to his prayer life. He was telling them that they were chosen to be with him, follow him and do the works he was doing. So, one of them finally asked, "Lord, teach us to pray..." And that is what he did. You will not learn to pray until you start noticing some of the things they noticed and then, start asking some of the same questions.

Answered prayer is the fruit of every believer's life, if they are abiding in Christ. Any Questions?

1. Have you decided to follow Jesus? Learning to pray is a practical way you can begin in your quest to follow Jesus. Here (Luke 11.1-4) is the simple outline that you can follow to remember the things you need to pray about. If you follow it, you will grow in your prayer life. Why an outline?
a. If you were going to talk to someone important, and you wanted to be sure that you didn’t get tongue-tied and forget the important things, what would you do? … The outline is like having that list …
b. Check out the Matthew version of the same prayer

2. Kinds of Prayer (Ephesians 6.18). There are different kinds of prayer and each one has its own set of rules or principles that make it effective. Suppose you were to announce that after church on Sunday, we are going to have a picnic and play sports out in the field. There will be baseball, volley ball, soccer, and American football. Only this time, we are going to use the same rules for all the sports. You would have mass confusion ... We need to learn that different needs imply the use of different kinds of prayer and learn to use the correct tool for the need.
That’s what I want to teach you in this class. And I want to see you begin, here and now, a lifetime of friendship with God, through His Word and prayer of all kinds.
3. Some of the “Kinds of Prayer” are laid out in 1Timothy 1.18 - 2.4. Some rules of prayer apply to all the kinds of prayer and some of them only apply to one kind of prayer. When you read a scripture or a story about prayer, see if you can:
a. Discover what type or kind of prayer is called for by the situation,
b. Did they pray the right thing?
c. Did they get what they were asking for?
d. Are there any principles or learnings I/we can take from the story?
4. What are the limits of prayer? (James 5.16-18, Jeremiah 32.17)
a. What are the limits of God? The power is not in the prayer, the power is in the God you to whom you are praying.
b. The limits of prayer are on the man side not on the God side. Look at James 4.1-4 and Matthew 17.19-21.
5. What can you do, right now, to start your life of prayer, or jump-start it?
1. Get serious about this class. Put the strategies we discuss into action in your life.
2. Set a time for prayer every morning and give it to God, even if you just sit quietly in His presence. Do whatever is necessary to make your body comply with the desire of your heart to pray.
3. If you lack desire for a strong prayer life, apply for (ask) Grace and Mercy - Hebrews 4.16. God's grace can create the desire you lack ... "Remember your creator ..." Ecclesiastes 12.1
4. Recognize the weakness of your flesh and adopt strategies and attitudes that help will help you succeed. This is no different than what a young person has to do when he/she gets their first job and has to start getting up at 4:00AM in order to make it to work on time. Problem is, they have never seen 4:00AM except in college when they stayed up till 4:00, partying. Their body is not conditioned for a real job. They have to make it hard on themselves, do things they are not accustomed to, in order to keep this new job. That’s how serious you have to take following Jesus as Lord and learning to pray. (See Psalm 5 and Mark 1.35)
5. Learn daily devotional praying and the difference between it and deep intercession and waiting on God … Many years ago, I had faced a serious career setback in my ministry and calling and I had become a grumpy person that my wife no longer liked very much. So I started asking God to fix my wife! I felt she needed help to become a more understanding person. (That was pretty dumb, but I didn’t know that back then!)
One day, as I was working outdoors, the Holy Spirit spoke to my heart (just a series of thoughts accompanied by his presence) about the answer to my prayer. He led me to stop doing my daily prayer and Bible reading alone and separate from my wife. He spoke to my heart that if we would read and pray together, his presence would begin to solve some of the problems we were having in our communication with each other.
I presented that to her, and we began to read a portion of scripture together every day, and then pray. We followed the outline of the Lord’s Prayer in a loose and fairly short manner. We opened by giving God credit for who he is, Our Father, Our Provider, Our Healer, Our Righteousness, etc., as he has been revealed to us through the scriptures.
We would not try to cover the whole Bible but just one of His names for today. Then, we would take turns expressing our shared needs, and ask our heavenly Father for the things we knew we needed for the day, such as safety, provision, healing for our family and acquaintances, and then thank him for answering our prayer today, even though the day was yet to be played out.
Sometimes we would have to stop and apologize to each other or to God for grudges and arguments. (1 Peter 3.7) This often happened while the feelings were still raw, but we wanted our prayers to work and to close the door to the devil, so … It worked. God did all that He promised and much, much more.

The benefits of learning to pray like Jesus did are astronomical. Please give this study the attention and the honor that it deserves. According to Ezekiel 22.30, 31, eternity alone will reveal what a difference it made … or didn’t!

I stumbled across a discussion forum @ Commentary Magazine. com, of whether or not the US or Israel would respond with nuclear weapons if Iran were to nuke a population center in Israel and whether or not the leaders (mullahs) of Iran are convinced that we would respond, right now. I joined the discussion and my comment was along the lines of the following:

In the comment above, "Sean" states that there is a question as to whether the US or Israel would respond to the use of a nuclear weapon against one of Israel's population centers by "nuking" them back. So far, the mullah's have a pretty good record on their judgment along those lines.
For example, they had NO FEAR of President Jimmy Carter, and they acted accordingly to rub our face in the dirt for every minute of his presidency that they felt safe doing so. Then, they stopped and released our hostages only hours before Ronald Reagan took office, also rightly judging that he was going to kick #@* and take names later. All through the election process, Ronald Reagan refused to speculate what he might do to Iran if he was elected. So the Mullahs had to look at his record of dealing with riots as the Governor of California. That was enough for them. (I have watched to see if anyone would comment along these lines in the current electoral process. The answer is "No." The "drive-by" media has no time for research and real thought in these matters. They form an opinion, drive by the site of anything happening and conclude that it confirms what they already thought and then they present it as news. They have a political agenda and it's so clear, it makes you want to gag.)
When we invaded Iraq, the Iranians (if you believe the latest estimate from the CIA) halted their pursuit of nuclear weapons (as did Libya), rightly judging that the then and current occupant of the US Presidency would react with real action to their program, and not just whining and talking as the Democrats BRAG THAT THEY WOULD DO!
Keep it up, Dems. You never have understood what bad men fear and what they laugh at. If a Democrat wins the Presidency, it will be open season on the good guys around the world.
That doesn't translate into total safety if a Republican wins, either. Just a better chance that the Islamists and the tyrants will have to weigh the consequences of their choices and maybe back off of the nuclear options.
The Democrats, Ron Paul, and Mike Huckabee have already told them that if they win, the Hamas's, the Hezbollah's, and the nations like Iran and North Korea have nothing to worry about.