Blessings of peace and joy be upon you and all that pertains to you! This morning as I walked and prayed I thought about peace and joy in your life. Righteousness, peace and joy are your inheritance in Christ. As a disciple you believe and walk in the truth and those very things become your reality. I want to share a little about that process.
For the last two months I have taught the series, New Covenant Prayer: How to Set Your life in Order. If you watched the weekly programs you know that instead of being a place where we go to beg God to do things for us, prayer is the place where we connect to God personally and intimately, then out of the “fellowship” we bind or loose, allow or disallow what can happen in our lives.
For years we have been taught to speak with authority and, just as Jesus taught, if you speak to a situation and believe in your heart that what you say will happen, it will happen. It seems we get the formula about speaking to situations, but we omit the “believe in your heart” part of the equation.
You have often heard me talk about Jesus feeding the 5000. When He looked out on the crowd and then looked at His meager resources He was momentarily tempted to doubt. How do I know that? Two ways! First, He was tempted in every way just as we are. If I were in that situation I would be tempted to doubt.
We all face the same situation over and over again. The need is greater than our resources; what we see with our eyes overwhelms our mind and emotions. If we do not follow Jesus’ example we will become double-minded, shifting from one position to another until we reach total unbelief!
But Jesus did something that is not obvious in the King James language although the principle is obvious in His actions. He looked to Heaven, blessed and broke the loaves, gave them to the disciples to distribute and the need was met!
The original language implies that He looked up to recover sight. This is the exact same phrase used in Luke 4 about recovering sight to the blind. If He had to recover sight He obviously had momentarily lost sight. When we compare our resources to the need we very often come up short. But when we return to God’s perspective we see the need in light of God’s resources. This is the evidence we need to recover sight… it is only found in intimately connecting to God in our heart! At that moment we don’t need to read another book, hear another sermon or find someone to pray for us; we need to be intimately connected and experiencing God in our own heart!
Once you have recovered sight by reconnecting to God you can speak with authority to bind or loose with complete confidence of the outcome. This is what prayer is all about. The word “pray” means, “to judge (evaluate) and reconcile.” When we evaluate or judge what is going on in our life and find it is not what God promised, we must connect to God, declare it unlawful, and send it away. When we judge, i.e. evaluate that our life is not as good as it should be we need to connect to God and pronounce the promises upon our life. But the one part you cannot leave out is “connecting to God.”
Jesus taught us to connect to God, connect to His perspective and then from that place bind or loose those things that are not up to what He promised. Deal with our personal attitudes that are setting us up to stumble and fall and set ourselves free.
I hope you will recover your prayer life if it is lacking. I pray that if you have a prayer life it will become more robust and effective. But I want you to know “the ball is in your court.” There is no need to ask God to do what He has already done in Jesus and there is no need to attempt to use your authority until you have recovered sight and can see things from God’s perspective.
I am including a testimony from Operation One Billion. I want you to know and speak blessings over all that is happening around the world!
Blessings,
Jim Richards