Victory depends on your prayer life -Pastor Kim, Yong Do

(Luke 18:6-8) 6 Then the Lord said, “Learn a lesson from this unjust judge. 7 Even he rendered a just decision in the end. So don’t you think God will surely give justice to his chosen people who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? 8 I tell you, he will grant justice to them quickly! But when the Son of Man returns, how many will he find on the earth who have faith?”                                                                                                

The demons have been experiencing and dealing with the human race for countless occasions since the beginning. And as a result, they have had the opportunity to observe our thinking, behavior, emotions and our will. They have thoroughly figured out the human race.

The demons already have a knowledge of how to make us angry, to doubt, to argue, to despair, to frustrate and they know how to make us fall into certain temptations. In fact, they can do it so very well.

The demons come to us with deceitful tactics as they attempt to trap and stumble the believers. They often instigate the different ethnicity  within countries to negatively simulate them. The demons also approach us by disguising themselves as unique cultures within countries.

As a matter of fact, Prayer is SPIRITUAL WALFARE!  “Will you have them steal what is yours? Or will you take back more than what is already yours?” It is serious warfare.

Dear brothers and sisters, you will have all stolen from you if you do not have spiritual power. Jesus always emphasized to continuously pray and not to be in despair. He commanded us to always be thankful, be joyful and pray unceasingly.

The moment we begin our prayer, the Spirit of God and His angels come to help our prayer. Because of our prayers, others will join us in prayer. Your prayer will spread and your actions will be influential.

When we complain of our circumstances and conditions, certain types of spirits will spread and influence those around us. We do not realize the importance and effectiveness of our tongue and words.

The bible states that we either bring blessings or curses according to our words.
Proverbs 18:21 (Amplified Bible) Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and they who indulge in it shall eat the fruit of it [for death or life]

But there are times when we might think God is not answering our prayers even though we are praying? There will come a time when your victory will materialize. Prayer will determine the definite timing of our victory.

There will be a time where your prayers will overflow as it has accumulated. At first, you may sense the attacks of the demons as powerful and strong but you will reach a certain point when you will feel the Power of God which is much stronger. Then suddenly, your circumstances and days will turn into an over flow of blessings. When this sudden change occurs, you must lower and humble yourself. You must also be very careful not to let your faith become complacent.

 If your faith or belief is not balanced, the blame is yours. We must give all of ourselves to prayer so that we may have victory. It does not matter how long it takes, whether one year, 10 years, or a life time, we must continuously pray.

From the above scripture of Luke, the widow continuously cried out to the unjust judge. This unjust judge kept ignoring her and this caused the widow to cry out in prayer. In 1 Samuel, Peninnah’s roll was to make Hannah bore a heart to pray and cry out.

When God allows certain situations or circumstances, this means God is squeezing you. The same concept applies when individuals face difficult issues. God wants us to come before Him to cry out with our problems and concerns. We must digest our issues with prayer. Hallelujah!

We must go through a process. We must learn the methods of praying and we must find out what God really desires from us. Within that process, we will develop and realize our inspiration, wisdom, and spiritual insight, and etc. The genuine faith of a person is determined through the depth and width of their trials and experiences.

When we face difficult situations, we will many times experience receiving no answers from God. But no response is an answer. A no response is also another form of an answer from God.

 Many times, God desires us to be totally wounded and broken. We must experience the consequences from our wounds and scars. But when this happens, please accept it with a positive attitude instead of a negative attitude. It is something like procuring gum from the gum tree (Eucalyptus) after we have lacerated a scar on the gum tree.

We must have ability to overcome these difficult circumstances. Then we will finally know the true nature of prayer, and essence of prayer. We will also gain the power to digest difficult problems. During the bigger trials, we will gain a larger quantity of faith while thanking God.

 During the time at my first newly established church located in the basement, I was trained by God as I experienced difficult circumstances. Moreover, God only sent me challenging people who were also experiencing their own personal difficult situations. These people were also experiencing their own unique handicaps. At that time, they were on my prayer list and I was filling up the quantity of my prayers.

 I was trained and disciplined through those challenging people. God created the circumstances where I could not run from it even though I wanted to. So the only way out for me was to overcome through prayer. When I prayed, I had firm belief that God will not fail to deliver me and to work all things out. I used to cry a lot. Even as I walked in the middle of the street, I cried. I cried from hunger and I cried because I did not have any members in my church.

During that time, God prevented me from running away from my situation. But even in the midst of that critical situation, the vision God had given me was gradually coming to the pass.

When Moses was in training, he never imagined that he would have the calling to take the Israelite out from Egypt. When Moses finally reached his old age, God called him. God had called him when he was 80 years old.

When God chose Judges in Israel, God chose His servants who were not qualified in our eyes as His servant.

Every time when I pray and when I preach, I change once more. The problems in me breaks. Whenever I pray and cry out to God, the problems within me such as humanism which tends to please people break into pieces.

Whenever I pray, God works. It is your free will to believe in God or not. BUT, only if you believe God in the ‘PROPER WAY’, God will begin to move. As you are in the wilderness or trial, God will say, ‘I am preparing good food to give you, so knowing that, endure a little more’.

If the demons within us do not leave, it means that we have problems to correct. The problems may be our personality, temperament, and/or our nature. To correct our problems, God will employ His methods to discipline and trains us using the demons.

We must be changed. Just live your life on the word of God as your foundation with a thankful heart serving God and people with a positive mind. You will see restoration not knowing when it even had began.

When you are in the wilderness, it may look like you are going totally under, it may look you have been trampled on. But actually you are the one trampling. When we pray, we must have resiliency. It is like when we throw a ball hard on the wall, it will go higher into the air. We must pray with that tenacity.

 In my wilderness, most of the time, I prayed in such a way, “God, we are all out of food, and we don’t have no money to pay our bills.” As I prayed such way, I usually cried (Poverty was so severe). Our prayer must be practical. When God answers our prayer, God will fill the areas that we require, but, of course,  in practicality.

 At first, our tribulation and discipline may look very heavy, but if you endure faithfully, in the end, the days of blessing will open up to you. This is the grace of God.

 We must always be spiritually on fire. But at the same time, we must have our heart open to all people with enough empathy and understanding toward them. Even when shaman or fortune tellers approach us, we must have the ability to naturally preach Jesus to them.

 Before we begin our prayer, God has already given us what He desires in our heart (What He desires now becomes our desire). When we pray, the process to receive our answers is already in process. Depending on the person’s quality of faith and quantity, the answer will come differently for those who pray without giving up and enduring to the end.

It is only natural that we will have people dropping out while they wait in prayer.
   God said, “So don’t you think God will surely give justice to his chosen people who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? 8 I tell you, he will grant justice to them quickly!”  What does “Quickly” means? This means, ‘Imagine that your prayer has been answered! I will soon answer!’
  Whenever you and I pray, we MUST believe that He will surely give justice to us by using spiritual authority.

What is spiritual authority? Whenever you pray and cry out to God, your guardian angels that are in charge of finance, the angels in charge of taking care of the sick, and etc will come around us. These angels and our prayer will become our shields. God activate spiritual authority by sowing our prayers with the angels.

When we BOLDLY PROCLAIM with OUR FAITH, the angels will move around actively. The guardian angel moves according to your word. This is God’s will.

But you still have to patiently wait upon God’s method and time. Because, He will answer your prayer when the time is most appropriate.

Ecclesiastes 7:14: “14In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity consider..”                                                                                                            

We must have more of a persistent mind then the unjust judge. We must have the mind to match and we must continuously cling on with persistency.

 You must also know how to handle rejection. We must know how to overcome even when we became the subject of people’s dispute. If our heart swiftly moves this and that way, how can God use us to advance His Kingdom? You must put everything down. If you desire to be used by God big time, you must put everything down.

In our church (The Lord’s church), the problems of all individuals are exposed and corrected. Whenever this occurs, we must be very thankful to God. We must pray, “Please help me fix all the problems within me”

 God does not use us because of our good personality. We must know how to overcome the unjust judge who is given to every individual. In order for us to be used by God, we have so much to overcome within us.

 We must learn to overcome so that our spirituality, faith and even our circumstances will be promoted. Think about how much that widow must have persistently harassed the unjust judge that he had to grant her answer. (she cried out DAY and NIGHT!).

We must know how to overcome embarrassment, being a laughing stock, being ridiculed etc. You must seriously face your mountains.

Do you still ponder in distress knowing the problems you have? You must keep praying even though the answer may not be quickly coming. This will make your prayer life stronger as you patiently wait in prayer.

In order to have victory, you must first accept that you have problems and acknowledge it. In order for you to take care of your problems specifically, you must first figure out your problems. We must properly know what our problems are. We must know for what reason we desire to have our prayers answered and the answer(s) we seek must be reasonable. In the physical, when people reject our requests, we must prepare ourselves and dig in to prepare for the long drawn war. Prayer itself is a long drawn war. Most of the times, the answers do not come promptly.

The widow described in the scripture was not in a hurry. You must pray day and night like as this widow prayed. Do not be in such a hurry. She had always gone before the judge day and night.We pray to resolve our problems but many of us ruin things for we are in so much in a hurry. We are so impatient at times.

 We must have a unique experience between God and you. What is the condition of getting our prayers answered? In Jeremiah 33:3 God said, “Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.” When we pray, we must pray with all our heart by engraving this verse in our heart!

Do not be impatient when you pray.  You must constantly come before God. When we constantly go to the person to draw His attention, we will eventually obtain the person’s attention. The heart of the person will be opened as well. Heaven is for people who violently take it by force. Just cry out.

Heaven is like a mother who gives milk to babies that cry out. As you pray more and more, you will fill in the spaces and gaps. I pray that today, you will go before God and pray deeply with your heart. Amen.