Praying with God's Power
Larry Christenson’s   “The Renewed Mind”   5 Keys to answered prayer: 1. Think God's Thoughts. 2. Feel God's Emotion..... 3. Desire God's Plan........ 4. Speak God's Word....... 5. Do God's Works..........   Think God’s Thoughts: Don’t misfire on the launching pad thinking our thoughts rather than God’s thoughts.  Example:  Matt: 16:23  When Jesus told the disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, there to suffer and die, Peter rebuked Him and said, “God forbid, Lord! This shall never happen to you!”  But Jesus answered. Get behind me, Satan!  You are a stumbling block to me, because you think not as God, but as man.” It is not enough to think about something that needs our prayer.  We must think about it the way God thinks about it. God’s thoughts went beyond the suffering that Jesus would encounter in Jerusalem, beyond the rejection and the humiliation, beyond the cross and the grave, God’s thoughts looked forward to the Resurrection, to the triumphant ascension, to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, to Christ’s glorious Second Coming, and His reign upon the earth. Peter’s response, typical of the response which is merely human, was short-sighted.  He saw the immediate problem fit into God’s overall thinking.  He jumped right in and surrounded the problem with an army of thoughts recruited in the backyard of his own human reason. My thoughts are not your thoughts, says the Lord.  As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my thoughts higher than your thoughts.”  Isa. 55:8-9.  In order to think God’s thoughts we must be prepared to go beyond the limits of mere human thinking.  This does not mean that we become foolish or illogical.  It just means that we submit our thinking to a higher wisdom thanb our own human reason. Instead of being bound by a short sighted view which sees only the immediate situation, we begin to think about it the way God does. This does not mean that we see and understand a situation fully, as God does.  As a matter of fact, when we begin to think God’s thoughts, we usually do not see His overall plan.  We just have one thought that leads us along in a particular direction.  The important thing is that it is God’s thought, and that we follow it. As we do, God will reveal more of His thoughts. When God’s thoughts first come to us, they often appear impossible or unreasonable.  Like Peter our natural tendency is to reject them.  But if we wait and are alert, God will confirm His thought to us.  One of the ways He does is to bring the same thought to two or more people. God’s thoughts seldom concern just us, alone.  He thinks about us in relation to others, especially fellow Christians.  So if you believe God may be beaming one of His thoughts to you, keep your eyes and ears open to see whether He is saying the same thing to others.  It’s one of the surest ways for Him to confirm His word to us.  And it is a first giant step toward answered prayer.  Jesus said, “ If two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Fatgher in heaven”  (Matt. 18:19)  It isn’t agreeing on our thoughts that brings answered prayer, but agreeing on His thoughts! 2.  Feel God’s Emotions The giant Goliath strutted up and down before the armies of Israel, taunting them, challenging them to battle.  Young David heard the giant’s challenge, his heart was incensed with him.  He felt the pain of the ridicule being heaped upon the armies of the Lord. He became indignant, and jealous for the Lord’s honor. David said, “You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, “  he called out to Golliath.  “But I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel.  This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand”  (1 Sam. 17: 45-46). David’s heart was filled with God’s feelings.  There was no room for the fear which had immobilized the men of Israel. Our prayers lack power because too often they are bound up and immobilized by our own emotions.  They do not reflect God’s feelings. Does it surprise us to think of God as having feelings?  The Bible makes that abundantly clear.  God is tender hearted and compassionate.  God is sorrowful, He grieves over His people.  God becomes angry; He hates sin and wickedness. More over people and angels share God’s emotion.  Jesus wept over Jerusalem.  The angels rejoice when a sinner repents.  When Nehemiah heard about the desolation of the holy city of Jerusalem, he sat down and wept for days. God does not take seriously those who do not share His feelings. “These people honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me” (Matt 15:8)  If our prayers are to be answered we must not only think with God; we must feel with Him. We saw above that in thinking God’s thoughts, that it is important to check signals with other Christians; God often confirms something by bringing the same thought to more than one person.  This is even m,ore true in regard to God’s feelings.  We will never learn to feel God’s emotion all by ourselves. Emotion is contagious. That’s why the writer to the Hebrews tells his people not to neglect to meet together as Christians, too often we simply vent our own feelings.  We need to be sensitive to what God feels, and express that. Because what we express will spread to others. Emotion , by its very nature, tends to be a shared experience.  If you feel an emotion, it’s almost impossible to keep it to yourself.  Even if you try, those who dknow you best pick it up.  “ Say, what’s bothering you?  You’re not yourself today.”  Or, “You look like the cat that swallowed the canary.  What’s up?”  When you feel something, you tend to communicate it to others. On the other side, when others feel something, you pick it up from them.  Have you ever picked up a mood from, someone else?  Met someone full of enthusiasm and can’t wait to share something with you, and it completely changes your day. ( This happens in the Men’s Prayer Breakfast, many times for me). “Thank you Lord, thank you Jesus.” 3.  Desire God’s Plan: You can think God’s thoughts, and feel God’s emotions, yet still stand on th sidelines as an observer.  This is the step of personal cdommitment.  This is where God’s thoughts and God’s feelings become your personal concern.  You not only know what God know and feel what He feels, but now you want what God wants. “I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness” (Ps. 84:10).  David would give up all earthly honors and accept the lowest position inm God’s house, so intense was his desire to be with God. Notice that David contrasted a life in the tents of wickedness with a life in the house of God.  Desire for God’s plan increases only as we let loose our desire for some other plan. In order to desire God’s plan, we must be ready to sacrifice anything that stands in the way of that plan. Many of our prayers go unanswered because we try to serve God and obey God without really desiring His plan.  We feel a certain obligation to God, and so we give a little and do a little.  But whether anything comes of it or not doesn’t too deeply move us.  Once we’ve done our duty, we can go back to the thing we really desire, which is our own plan, our own life lived the way we want to live it. We need to become so deeply involved in the plans of God that if they fall, we go down with them.  We need to become sensitive to the things God wants us to give up, in order that He can kindle within us a desire for His plan.  “Thy kingdom come!” must become more than a phrase learned by rote.  It must become the consuming passion of our lives. An Example:  Loren Cunningham, founder of  “Youth With a Mission,”  tells how God showed him a new field of ministry which was financially impossible to undertake. But as he realized that this was God’s thought, not his, and as he began to feel God’s emotion behind it, he found it harder and harder to dismiss. “Lord what do you want us to do?” he asked, “Give everything,” God told him.  :Go right down to nothing.” When they gave everything they had and went down to nothing, they began to desire this plan with all their heart and soul.  And that was when God began to answer their prayers in miraculous ways.  In order to get answers to our prayers, we must desire God’s plan.  And in order to desire God’s plan, we must sacrifice anything that stands in the way of that plan. 4.  Speak God’s Words: Thinking, feeling, desiring  -  we think of these as being essentially silent expressions even though, as we have seen, they involve real commitment.  But there comes a point in our prayers when we must speak out.  We must declare God’s word for our particular situation. We must put our faith ojn the line. God thought about a world; He desired a world. But the world came into existence only when God spoke. Jesus thought about raising Lazarus even before He arrived in Bethany, where Lazarus had died.  He experienced God’s emotion at the graveside, and wept, for He said, “I can do nothing of my own accord, but only what I see the Father doing”  (John 5:19).  He knew that it was God’s plan for Lazarus to be raised, and He desired that plan.  But Lazarus remained in the tomb until Jesus cried out, “Lazarus, come forth!”  The spoken word energizes God’s plans. Why do so many of our spoken prayers go unanswered?” Why do our petitions our out in a torrent, while our answers come back in a trickle? It is because we speak our words instead of God’s words. Our words may express only a wish or a hope.  God’s words express a divine intention which God will back up.  “As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and return not thither but water the earth…..giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes froth form my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose” (Isa. 55:10-11) If we want our prayers to be answered, we must come to the place where we speak not our words, but God’s words  -  where the words of our prayers on earth are an echo of the words which God has already spoken in heaven. Jesus said, “I do nothing on my own authority but speak thus as the Father taught me” (John 8:28)  That was why His prayers were so effective.  He spoke God’s words. Speaking God’s words, of course, is closely related to thinking God’s thoughts, but it is not the same.  Thinking God’s thoughts, but it is not the same.  Thinking God’s thoughts can go on quietly inside us.  Our desire for God’s plan can be pretty much a private commitment.  But when we speak God’s words, the commitment becomes public. And this poses two opposite and equal dangers. On the one hand, we are in danger of speaking our merely our own desire of ambition.  On the other hand, for fear that we will not be speaking God’s word, we clam up and sya nothing. What is the answer to this dilemma? St Paul said, “Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said” (1 Cor:14:29). The prophet might be speaking God’s word, according to the best of his understanding.  But it’s possible that he didn’t get the whole message, or didn’t understand it fully.  So his words are weighed by the others.  If we want to learn to speak God’s words, we must be willing to submit our prayers and utterances to evaluation and correction by fellow Christians. This will me some radical reevaluation of our whole attitude toward prayer.  If a person makes a false or ill-founded statement in a discussion, it is called to his attention.  But if someone does the same kind of thing in prayer, it is swallowed up in pious silence. Speaking God’s words is no easy thing.  Where did we ever get the idea that we could learn to do it with never a bit of help, never any correction or guidance?  If we want to speak God’s word, we must be reay to enter into the “School of Prayer” in the lieteral sense of that term.  Through help and correction from fellow Christians, we can learn to distinguish God’s wor. Then our speaking will not be just words in the air, but the release of power. 5.   Do God’s Work: If we have started out thinking God’s thoughts, and followed through to speaking His words, the chances are that we’ve gotten ourselves into an impossible situation!  And right here is where a lot of prayer answers get lost.  We see the impossible situation, and we push the panic button.  “Must have made a mistake somewhere!  This is impossible!”  The tragedy is at this point the prayer is as good as answered.  All it needs now is that we do what is possible – and trust God for what is impossible. The “possible” may be some kind of a commitment or sacrifice on our part – not enough to do the whole job, but the full extent of what we are able to do.  It’s the story of the little boy with his five loaves and two fish. All that was possible for him was to give them to Jesus.  But it was all God needed to release the miracle.  “Doing God’s works”  means to do everything that is possible and trust God for the rest. This is our fifth key to answered prayer:  Do God’s works.   Summary:  ·        Think God’s Thoughts ·        Feel God’s Emotion ·        Desire God’s Plan ·        Speak God’s Word ·        Do God’s Works.   What does it all add up to?  Jesus put it this way:  “The Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever he does, that the Son does likewise”  (John 5:19)  The secret of answered prayer is to find out what God is doing – and do the same thing.