if you pray...

“12'Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. 13'You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.” Jeremiah 29:12,13

This morning I was waiting upon the Lord and heard three phrases that I felt pertained to the prayer mandate before us as God’s people. The three phrases are not new, but they are of particular importance as it pertains to the transformation process we are asking for. They came to me as:

If you pray…, When you pray…, and Let us pray…

The prevailing struggles both personally and corporately for those of us who call Jesus our Lord and Savior never seem to change. If anything, they just get worse. Why? Shouldn’t we, who have the source of life, be able to move past certain issues and see a shift in both our spiritual and natural surroundings?

Well, not only do I think we can see a shift, but I believe we will see a shift. Below is a partial picture of just how that might formulate.

If you pray…

“14 if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” 2 Chron. 7:14

Contingency prayer has long been the clog in the drain of heavenly outpouring. When we see the word if, we understand that the following statement associated with that word is contingent upon other factors. So, if – something doesn’t happen the way we thought, it’s because such and such didn’t take place. Webster defines contingency as – “something liable to happen as an adjunct to or result of something else.”

The other day I had a pretty slow drain in the shower. I have this really powerful stuff that I put into the drain that actually burns away the gunk. I read the instructions, poured out the cleanser, and allowed it to do its work. I’ve used this product before and it really works. However, later that night when my wife used the shower – not only did the drain not work, but the clog was worse than before I used the drain cleaner. As a matter of fact, I now went from a slow drain to a shower with standing water in it. This can only mean that the stuff I thought would work, really didn’t work.
The problem with that assumption is that it leaves room for me to stop participating in the solution to a real problem. Trust me my wife won’t take too many showers with water up to her ankles for very long.
This is where shift number one takes place. Just because there’s water backed up doesn’t mean there isn’t an opening in our future. We do not serve a microwave God who moves at the snap of our prayerful fingers. Yet, if we pray once and feel like we mean it, we think that should move God to unclog our spiritual drains. Well the drain didn’t get clogged with one shower and the free flow of water back through it may take more than dumping some product down the drain.
Spiritually speaking, we often stop just short of our breakthrough when one more step, or one more effort toward the desired end is all we need.


When you pray…

“ 2And He said to them, "When you pray, say:
Father, hallowed be Your name.
Your kingdom come.
3'Give us each day our daily bread.
4'And forgive us our sins,
For we ourselves also forgive everyone who is indebted to us.
And lead us not into temptation.'"
5Then He said to them, "Suppose one of you has a friend, and goes to him at midnight and says to him, 'Friend, lend me three loaves; 6for a friend of mine has come to me from a journey, and I have nothing to set before him'; 7and from inside he answers and says, 'Do not bother me; the door has already been shut and my children and I are in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.'” Luke 11:2-7
I have to admit, I’m the lover of the quick fix. I hate having to have to deal with the small yet aggravating issues in my life. Hey, I’ve got plenty of other things to do, don’t you? I don’t want to be bothered. So, when I walked upstairs having dealt with the problem that morning and now the problem in my drain was even worse… well I wasn’t a happy camper.
You see – the implication with the verse from 2 Chronicles 7:14, is that the result is possible, but uncertain. However, the uncertainty isn’t because God is unable but because we ‘as the if people’ are unwilling to participate. Now for shift number two.
Jesus went from a contingency mindset to a juncture attitude.
The shift was a distinct as the difference between “if you pray” to “when you pray”. The word juncture is defined as an instance of joining, both the union of what we ask for and the connecting of where it fits. It’s this level of participation that I believe will bring the breakthrough all of us desire.
The juncture - joining is with God. It is an aligning ourselves to a heavenly vision as well as a earthly mandate. The reason I included verses 5 through 7 in the section from Luke 11 is because of the picture being communicated by the Lord. We’re not just joining the Lord in a type of prayer, we’re joining the Lord in a type of living. The moment we separate the spiritual from the natural is the moment the drain builds up a residue of gunk that leads to a hypocrisy and compromise clog. Jesus took things to another level when He not only showed them how to pray but also showed them how the results of prayer would touch their lives and the lives of others.
Here’s what the clog in our spiritual drains looks like –
We gather together in churches, at services and pray ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’. We ask for His Kingdom to come. We ask for our sins to be forgiven. We ask for our daily bread. Yet, the inconvenience of an untimely visit or a call just when I’ve sat down for a moment is like the friend described above who knocks on our door at midnight. It’s when we’re asked to open up of our lives and impart or share what we’ve just asked for ourselves; this is where the clog turns into ankle deep water.
I’ll be honest with you, I really wasn’t in the mood to find a tube to stick down that drain and poke and prod until it loosened up. I had just put in a decent days work. I wanted my own shower now. However, it was time to finish what I started. I went downstairs and brought up my trusty plunger and began to force air through that nasty drain. I pumped and pumped and pumped, until eventually the water receded and my drain was open once again.

Let us pray…

You see, Jesus didn’t just teach us to pray, He taught us that as we pray, as we align ourselves with His Kingdom, as we step in between Heaven and humanity that we too will be uniquely involved in the lives of others to the point of sacrifice and blessing. This is prayer. Prayer isn’t a cloistered holy huddle. Prayer is a life lived. Prayer is an application of what we believe and what we hope for and what we know and desire. Heaven and humanity needs a clean conduit in order for lives to be touched and ultimately transformed.


Blessings,

Patrick