There are two men I need to thank for blessing my understanding of prayer: Mike Bickle and Andrew Wommack.
Mike Bickle (from International House of Prayer - Kansas City) teaches that one can pray Scripture. I never understood this until Mike opened that door in my mind. He teaches that there are Scriptures that (1) exhort us to believe God's Word and there are those that (2) exhort us to obey God's Word.
The first type declares that God loves us, forgives us, leads us, protects us, provides for us, etc. And we can pray prayers that thank God for this, praise God for it, ask God to remind us of these truths despite our circumstances or feelings. We can rejoice in these spiritual truths that are unshakable and eternally true.
The latter type of Scriptures require obedience, such as to serve one another, to humble ourselves, to bridle our tongues, to offer time and money to God, etc. They should give us confidence that as this is the will of God for us, He Himself will enable us to fulfill them. As such we can pledge our willingness to obey and ask God for His assistance to help us obey. How will we grow in these areas if we never consciously purpose to do so? If these Christian disciplines remain vague in our subconsciousness, our lack of focus will cause us to grow in these areas only by chance.
The lesson from Mike is thus to take Scripture in a deliberate and focused way so that it may shoot root in my heart and bear fruit.
As for Andrew Wommack. This man of God opened my spiritual eyes to how settled the truths in the Bible are. Andrew explains that when Christ died on the cross and said "it is finished" it truly was. In the spiritual realm things WERE SETTLED. The most perfect demonstration of this is Is 53: 5 and 1 Peter 2: 24. Isaiah prophesies that by the stripes of Christ we ARE healed by His stripes. Peter says we WERE healed by His wounds. Without going into the semantics of the present tense and the past tense of "is" in this blog - we can do so another time - it is clear that I have been healed "historically" when Christ was wounded at His crucifixion. Here I am, hundreds of years later, but the Word says my healing was effected then already. This means, the aches and pains that await me a week or years from this day, have already been healed in the spiritual. So too the diseases and pains my unborn children may suffer - they were already healed on Calvary. Similarly, every other thing Christ paid for, has historically and spiritually already been deposited: Jesus died to set captives free, to heal the brokenhearted (Is 61: 1) , to restore the barren ones (Joel 2: 25), He tore the veil and now we can enter the Holy of Holies (Mat 27: 51) and fellowship with Love, Joy, Wisdom, Kindness and Peace Himself. Oh Jesus, Jesus... Hallelujah for all You have done because You love me.
It is with this understanding that I pursue the prayers I will be praying in this blog. Thank you Mike and Andrew. Thank You Jesus for teaching me through these teachers.
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