In Prayer

Gen.32:²⁴ “This left Jacob all alone in the camp, and a man came and wrestled with him until the dawn began to break.”

Mysteriously, it seems that Some Prayers Need To Be Long Whilst Others Need To Be Short. Matt.14:^{23 & 25} “After sending them home, he went up into the hills by himself to pray. Night fell while he was there alone… About three o’clock in the morning Jesus came toward them, walking on the water.” Jesus went to pray before dark and the next time the disciples saw Him was at three o’clock in the morning. John 11:^41-42 “…Then Jesus looked up to heaven and said, “Father, thank you for hearing me. You always hear me, but I said it out loud for the sake of all these people…”. From these two examples and when we examine the life of Jesus, we see that Jesus prayed long prayers in private and short prayers in public. Some ‘very spiritual’ people pray long prayers in public and pray short prayers in private. If the longest time you pray is when you are in church, something is wrong with that. From Jesus’ example, His long prayers were done in private, and His short prayers  where mostly in public.

Mysteriously it seems We Can Reason And Negotiate With God. It appears that we can actually change things. In Gen.20:3-7, Abimelech negotiated with God for his life saying, “…Lord, will you destroy an innocent nation?” He negotiated his way out of death. Isa.1:¹⁸ “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord…” (KJV). The Voice translation of the same Isaiah 1:18 says “Come on now, let’s walk and talk; let’s work this out…” Is it not beautiful that God will say to you, Come, let us take a walk and sort this thing out? This thing that you think is a problem, let me show you how it is not a problem.’ Isn’t it just mind-blowing that the God of the whole earth will say, ‘Come, let’s have a conversation’? Isa.41:²¹ “Set forth your case, says the Lord; bring your proofs, [“Set forth your arguments,”] says the King of Jacob.” (ESV & NIV).

Isaiah said to Hezekiah, ‘put your house is not in order’, Hezekiah faced the wall and brought his own strong case to God. Hezekiah’s argument was, ‘God, nobody dances like me in church, so who will praise You like me? I dance recklessly, praising You from my heart. If you take me, the dead cannot praise you?’ God said, ‘hmmm… that makes a lot of sense.’ [2 Kings 20:1-5 paraphrased]. I am sure you know that God could have reasoned that out by Himself. But He wants us to come and have a conversation, negotiate with Him. There are so many cases, even in the church, where we should not have taken possession. But we will go and negotiate, and we will change things. There are certain things that people want to do that the Holy Spirit will tell me, and I will change it. Joseph saw the sun, moon, and stars bow to him in a dream. His father, Israel said, ‘will I also bow to you?’ Read that story [Gen.37], everyone else bowed to Joseph but Israel did not bow because he is a Patriarch. There are things that the enemy would want to do in your nation that if you have weight [power] with God, you can change it.

Prayer: Holy Spirit, help me to pray as I ought to pray in every season, in Jesus Name. Amen!