Prayer - Jennifer Kennedy Dean
My sister Sandy sent me this and I have been reading it slowly - it’s just too too too good. Every single one of us should take this deeply to heart————
Live a Praying Life, by Jennifer Kennedy Dean
What God wants to do on the earth, He will do through intercessors. Prayer releases the will of God, bringing His will out of the spiritual realm and causing it to take effect in the material realm. Prayer opens the way for God to do what He longs to do. When God wants to change the course events will take on their own, He calls out an intercessor.
Prayer does not change God, but prayer does change the circumstances of earth. If we approach prayer as if God’s mind needed to be changed, then aren’t we starting out with the supposition that God is about to make a mistake? But if we understand that every thought and intention in the mind of God is good and righteous, then we will enthusiastically cooperate with Him, praying His power and provision onto the earth.
Prayer is an ongoing interaction between the material world and the spiritual world.
The purpose of prayer is to release the power of God to accomplish the purposes of God; to discover God’s will, not obligate Him to do ours; to reflect God’s mind, not change it. God’s splendor will be displayed on earth as it is in heaven as we open our lives to His power and provision.
Prayer is simply opening our lives to God, acknowledging our total dependence on Him. It is an attitude of receptivity and openness which permeates our lives and to which God responds eagerly. The primary goal of prayer is not to tell God what is on our minds, but to listen to what is on His –to understand the heart of God and cooperate with the purposes of God.
In every circumstance, the Holy Spirit, Who knows the mind of God, will teach us to pray as we ought, will shape our prayers, will pray through us. Little by little, under His loving tutelage, we will find our prayers reflecting God’s Will. The lesson to be learned in prayer is how to love and enjoy God, how to know Him by experience.
Although prayer does not change God’s Will, it does activate God’s Will. As intercessors, we stand in the gap linking heaven’s plan and earth’s circumstances. God’s Will is already done in heaven.
Through prayer the decrees of God, forever established in heaven, flow to earth. Prayer begins in heaven, where God’s plan is in full effect. When you pray, God does not begin at that moment to search for a solution. He begins at that moment to release the solution already fully developed in heaven.
God waits for our prayers – Jeremiah 33:3; Psalm 91:15; Matthew 7:7; John 14:13
Why does He wait for our prayers? He wants relationship. We were created for friendship and fellowship with Him. God wants us to be participants in His kingdom, not observers. He makes the decisions and we implement them through prayer.
As God’s heart is reproduced in us, the Holy Spirit directs our prayers so that we are praying for what God wants to give.
O. Hallesby in his book, Prayer: “To pray is to let Jesus glorify His name in the midst of our needs”. Prayer is simply opening our lives to God, acknowledging our total dependence on Him.
The truth is that God longs to do His work on earth in response to prayer. Prayer is His idea. God thought up prayer, not humans.
Prayer is the means by which you will be freed from your earthbound, timebound thinking to participate in eternity. True prayer releases His power so that His power can accomplish immeasurably more than we can ask or even imagine Ephesians 3:20
God has ordained that prayer will be the conduit through which His intervening, earth-changing power flows from heaven to earth. Prayer is what sets God’s will in motion on the earth.
Although prayer does not change God’s will, it does activate God’s will. Prayer releases the power of God to accomplish the will of God in situations and in the lives of people. Prayer is the channel through which God’s will is brought to earth. He has a veritable flood of mercies dammed up because there is no prayer to open the floodgates. O Hallesby says, “Prayer is the conduit through which power from heaven is brought to earth.”
God, in His sovereignty, set up the cosmos to work as He decided it should work. His sovereign decree is that His specific, intervening will in any situation will be released onto the earth by means of prayer. Prayer is the avenue that God has established for how His finished work comes from the spiritual realm and changes the earth.


Comments
Jul 22, 2009 at 10:51 PM
Wow! If we could only grasp every word of this! That is why we are in constant communion with Him, to bring His will into this world, to open the floodgates! Wow!
Aug 14, 2009 at 07:18 PM
I had to copy this one! I wonder what could happen around the world if we would just comprehend this?
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