(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.
