What Do You Expect Out of Prayer?
By Don Gentry
When we pray we often ask God for things that we want or make suggestions about how we think it would best for Him to answer our prayers. Let me challenge you to think about your prayer and dependence upon the Holy Spirit in a little differently.
To get everything that we can out of following God, God must have your complete surrender, your complete obedience.
Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons. Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live! Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. 11 No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. “Make level paths for your feet,” so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed. Hebrews 12:7-13
I love this passage. To get all that we can out of being a Christ follower and be in tune with the Holy Spirit we must embrace this passage. Did you notice this phrase in the passage you read? It said, “How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits.”
Do you get it? The Holy Spirit is trying to get us to come into complete surrender to God. I used to think complete surrender was done through discipline, like hard work and discipline; rather, it is done through trust in God’s discipline. There is no discipline that seems pleasant, but when you can finally start embracing your discipline instead of fighting it, your life is going to radically change. God is going to allow you to face your fears as many times as He needs to until you learn to trust that His promises are true for you. Your fear is different than mine. But His promises are just as true for you as they are for Mother Teresa or me.
Once we learn to identify complete trust, we can identify our fears and apply God’s word more quickly. The Israelites spent years driving out their enemies from their lands. Over and over again, God tested their trust with His promises that He would be their deliverer—not their efforts.
This is the beauty of the Holy Spirit. He knows exactly what your spirit—your sixth sense—needs to go through to come into true surrender. The Holy Spirit has been walking with you and guiding you all the way to this point. He knows you intimately. He has traveled with you through every vile and evil thought you have ever had, and He has seen you in your most humble and righteous moments as well. He has been with you every step of the way, and He knows exactly how deeply rooted your pride, arrogance, lust, bitterness, anger, gluttony, or your ______ really is.
The beauty of prayer allows us to completely surrender to what the Holy Spirit is trying to say to us. I will suggest that if you aren’t getting answers to prayer, then there is a strong chance you are not regularly setting aside time to read the Word of God. The Holy Spirit speaks to us through the Scriptures! If you are reading the word and not getting answers, then that is another blog. Hope to see you all Sunday as we continue to discover all that the Holy Spirit has in store for our lives!