the structure of the Lords prayer part 1
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“I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”
John 14:6
“ Enter into His gates with thanks giving, and into His courts with praise.” Psalm 100:4
THE STUCTURE OF THE LORD’S PRAYER
“Our Father in heaven,
Hallowed be Your name.
Your Kingdom come
Your will be done.
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
As we forgive our debtors.
And do not lead us into temptation,
But deliver us from the evil one.
For Yours is the kingdom and the power
And the glory forever. Amen.”
Matthew 6:9-13
THE STRUCTURE OF THE LORD’S PRAYER
CONTENTS
1. PROCLAMATION
2. INTRODUCTION
3. THE LORD’S PRAYER
4. THE STRUCTURE OF THE LORD’S PRAYER
5. THE PATERNAL NEED
6. GOD’S PRESENCE
7. GOD’S KINGDOM
8. SUMMARY
THE STRUCTURE OF THE LORD’S PRAYER.
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Unless otherwise noted, all scripture quotations are taken from the Good News Bible, Today’s English Version, Bible Society of South Africa. Copyright@ third South African edition 1993 published by the Bible Society of South Africa.
All royalties for this book have been assigned to Joseph Morakile Lebooa Ministries.
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THE STRUCTURE OF THE LORD’S PRAYER
Welcome to this program “Today with Joseph Lebooa. It is “harvest time”, “ke nako ya kotulo”. The seed was planted 2000 years ago and the crop has been ready for harvest for a while now. We are gathering workers for the harvest, in this kingdom there is no unemployment, actually we are running short of laborers. The harvest is in danger of getting spoiled or being stolen by the devil because of the shortage of laborers. Remember! The time is not on our side. We need you to join the harvest soonest.
Today as usual we shall resume our study with a proclamation of the word of God. Our proclamation this time comes from the GOSPEL of John 1:12-13 and it reads thus:
1. PROCLAMATION
“But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name:
who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”
2. INTRODUCTION
Today we resume our study number 10 and the title of our study is the structure of the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus Christ prayed frequently during His ministry on earth and in addition He taught His disciples to pray and He prescribed to them a certain manner of prayer. To pray is to communicate with God, I am very much convinced that there is no other way to communicate with God other than to pray. Some people may read and talk the word of God or even set themselves apart for a fast. But if they do not pray, they will not be able to access the promises of God. Prayer is the only thing that makes God to issue the instruction to help you and to give you that which you want. God is not going to respond to you unless you pray and unless you pray the correct way. Our study today dwells into what we call the prescribed manner of prayer.
3. THE LORD’S PRAYER
We have already used the Lord’s Prayer as one of our proclamations before when we studied the power of forgiveness. However, at that time we were only looking at only one sentence of the whole prayer. Today we are going to study the full Structure of the prayer that the Lord gave to His disciples and recommended as a prayer they must pray every day.
Before Jesus gave the Lord’s Prayer He made some very important comments about the way we should pray in terms of our attitude. Jesus said the following about prayer:
“ And when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward.
But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your father who sees in secret will reward you openly.
And when you pray do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do. For they think that they will be heard for their many words.
Therefore do not be like them. For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him.” Matthew 6:5-8
The above scripture makes it very clear that one sure way to loose your prayer is to show off when you pray. God wants to make sure that when you pray you are earnestly talking to Him and not just showing off and trying to impress someone. This is why Jesus recommends that when you pray you must go into your room and shut the door behind you so that you can talk to God without anyone interfering. Prayer is a personal relationship between you and your Father and it concerns only the two of you.
I have previously been in situation where some people would use prayer as an instrument to attack others, this happens normally in some public gatherings and it has also happened in some funerals I have attended before. People tend to abuse prayer and use it to express their grudges against other people and sometimes to even curse other people. I am normally sensitive when people pray for me and on a number of occasions I have felt like stopping the person praying and continue with the rest of the prayer myself. When some people pray for you it is important to be watchful because you may end up with more troubles than you intended.
God makes this matter very clear in His Word when He tells us to pray relentlessly but also to be watchful. This you can find in the book of Ephesians 6:18.
Jesus Goes further to give us the exact manner in which we must pray through what has become known as the Lord’s Prayer. This prayer can be found in the book of Matthew 6:9-13 and it reads thus:
“Our Father in heaven,
Hallowed be Your name.
Your Kingdom come
Your will be done.
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
As we forgive our debtors.
And do not lead us into temptation,
But deliver us from the evil one.
For Yours is the kingdom and the power
And the glory forever. Amen.”
Matthew 6:9-13
One important thing to note about the Lord’s prayer is that it is a manner of prayer and therefore it must be adjusted to suite the specific conditions of Prayer that corresponds to our requirements. The Lords prayer is an example for us in format, in attitude and in subject, it is a prayer outline we all must follow as we pray. Some people have taken this outline and have made it their day-to-day prayer without ever adjusting it to their circumstances.
What we all need to bear in mind is that to pray is to communicate with God our Father and when you communicate with your Father you do not come to Him and say the same thing every day. Those of us who have earthly Fathers will agree that you do not come to your father every day to say the same things. What ever it is that you want to tell to your Father you need to adjust it to the specific circumstances in your life at that moment. One time you could come to your father to ask for money but on a different occasion you could come to tell him that you love him. The are millions of reasons why you would like to communicate with your earthly father and therefore, you cannot come everyday into the presence of your father just to say exactly the same things.
To pray the Lord’s Prayer everyday in the exact format that Jesus gave it in the Bible is a good start for those who are still learning how to pray so long as you bear in mind that the Lord’s prayer is a manner of prayer, a format, and outline in both attitude and in subject. The Lord’s Prayer is like a skeleton that still needs to be clothed with flesh; it is like a structure that needs to be clothed with substance. The Lord’s Prayer is a guideline, which allows us to keep within permissible borders when we pray. Finally, the Lord’s Prayer is a structure of prayer that pleases God.
4. THE STRUCTURE OF THE LORD’S PRAYER
The Lord’s Prayer is a prayer outline with seven major topics, each representing a basic human need. The major topics of the outline of the Lords prayer are the following:
1. The Paternal Need – Our Father
2. God’s presence – Hallowed be your Name
3. God’s priorities – Your Kingdom come
4. God’s priorities - Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven
5. God’s provision- Give us this day our daily bread
6. God’s Forgiveness – And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.
7. Power of Satan – And do not lead us into temptation but deliver us from the evil one.
8. Devine Partnership – For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.
We are now going to study each and every major topic of the Lord’s Prayer separately.
5. THE PATERNAL NEED
When we pray and say “Our Father in heaven,” We are reflecting a paternal need, a need for a Father. It is important to realize that when you pray, you are actually praying to the Father who is in heaven. The key here is that God is a father – your Father. You see, when you talk to God you are not talking to a colleague or to a stranger, you are talking to your Father. If God is not your Father, then you do not qualify to pray the Lord’s Prayer.
An important thing to realize is that the reason God is your Father is simply because you are His son. Your Father is someone who gives birth to you or who adopts you and gives you rights as a son. In our case we have not been adopted, but God Himself has given birth to us by His Spirit. This point is made clear by the scripture in John 1:12 which also happens to be our proclamation and it reads thus:
“But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God. To those who believe in His Name:
Who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”
The above scripture draws a clear line as to who is a child of God and who is not a child of God. The children of God are those who have received our Lord Jesus Christ and to them the scripture says that He gave them the right to become children of God. Only these that believe in His Name qualify to call God their Father. If you have not accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and savoir then you do not qualify to call God your Father and as a result, this prayer is not for you.
The important thing to realise is that the basis for praying or communicating with God is Jesus Christ. We pray to God in the name of Jesus. Therefore, without Jesus there is no Father and without the Father there is no need to pray. In other words, you are only accepted by God the Father if it is through Jesus Christ. On your own and by yourself, God has no business talking to you. Outside Jesus it is totally impossible to communicate with God. Jesus Himself makes this point very clear when He says:
“I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” John 14:6
Note also that the Bible does not just stop there but goes on further to say that those who are God’s children also have a distinctive feature i.e. they were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. The emphasis here is that God Himself and not man is their father. Did you know that God could be your direct father by virtue of Him giving birth to you? God is a Father, not an uncle, not a grandfather but a father because He caused you to be birthed directly by placing His spirit on you and giving you a new birth and life.
To be born of God means not to be born of the blood, it also means not to be born of the human flesh or of the will of man. To be born of God means that you become a God yourself. I have said this before and lets face it, a child of an animal is an animal, and a child of a human being is a human being. A child of a dog is a dog and so a child of God is God. When you are born of God you undergo a new birth as a child of God and you become an air with Christ Jesus to the entire Kingdom of God. Jesus Christ Himself becomes your elder brother.
Remember that what makes you a child of God is that you receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and saviour. You see, some people refuse to receive Jesus Christ as their Lord and saviour and think of Him as some prophet who once existed and died on the cross. Some people are not willing to accept that Jesus Christ is not only just a man, the son of a carpenter, but that He is also God, the son of God. At the same time, some people even today still do not believe that after Jesus Christ died and was buried, He was resurrected after three days and then rose to sit at the right hand of the Majesty in Heaven.
If you will not confess the divinity of Jesus and believe in His resurrection you cannot qualify to become a son of God – a son of the God of Abraham, the God Isaac and the God of Jacob. And if you are not a son of the Almighty God you do not qualify to use Him as your Father. God the Father requires that you become His son and then you can earn some rights to communicate with Him through the Lord’s Prayer.
So when you pray and call God your Father, this must not be out of tradition, but out of the conviction that as a saint, God is your true Father and that he truly exist. Remember that the Bible tells us that God wants those who seek Him to believe that He exists and that He rewards them.
“ But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.” Hebrews 11:6
As a son you know that when you pray you will have an answer and therefore you pray with boldness believing that you have received what you prayed for even before you receive it.
As a Son of God you are also His righteousness and therefore you have the right standing with God. This means that you can move with boldness into the thrown room of God and into His presence with any petition and at anytime. My own son often comes into my bedroom even without knocking; he just bounces in there and when I ask him why he did not knock at the door before coming in he says to me, its because he wants me to give him some money. I know that my beloved listener may have issues with this matter, but what you need to understand about my son is that He can do it because he has a right standing with me, He is a son – my son. You see, if a neighbor’s son were to come into my bedroom without knocking that would be a different story.
So it is important to understand that when you have a right standing with God, He becomes your father and as your Father God then becomes your provider, your healer, your peace and your strength. When God is your father then you can personalize this relationship and call Him Papa, daddy, father or my father. If you are praying alone you are communicating alone with God and it does not always make sense to call Him our Father. Try calling Him Father for a change. When we are talking about God it may be appropriate to call Him our Father but when we have a direct encounter with Him we need to addresses Him like you would address a person you are confronting face to face.
You see, the Pharisees had a problem with Jesus when He called God “My Father”. They were not used to God as a Father but rather as a slave master or a mighty liberator. So when Jesus called God His Father, they accused Him of blasphemy and they also took Him to the cross. Do you see God as your real Father or do you see Him as someone who has a large stick in His hand and is waiting for you to make some mistake so that He may punish you. If you have accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior God will be revealed to you as the Father – your Father.
6. GOD’S PRESENCE
When we pray the words “Hallowed be Your name.” We are actually talking about been in God’s presence. You see, you cannot pray the Lord’s Prayer effectively and not be in His presence. This is something that most people take for granted. The Lord’s Prayer is a format, you cannot say Hallowed be your name and simply cause God’s presence to come to you. That is not how it works. To be able to say Hallowed be your name and then cause God’s presence into your life you need much more than just those words. There are specific and special requirements that are necessary to cause God’s presence in our life.
You do not just march into God’s presence any how you like, in other words you do not just hallow God. Remember that God is a king and I am sure that you all know that in order to get into the presence of a king there are some procedures and even sometimes some processes that you have got to undergo. If you want to see a king like king Mswati of Swaziland, or Queen Elizabeth of Britain, I am sure that at least you have to make some appointment with them by writing a letter or calling their functionaries or secretaries. Even when the appointment has been granted to you, there are still some requirements that you have to fulfil such as completing the security clearance, waiting in His boardroom and finally coming into the king’s presence.
The same principles apply to God, if you want to come into the presence of God you need to go through the whole process of hallowing Him. So to hallow God consist in a series of practical activities, which you must indulge in or perform. So you cannot hallow God by just saying, “hallowed be your name”. You have to get your act together and do your theatrical performance. To get to God’s presence you have got to really want to, it cannot be by chance. Let us now see how this hallowed story works.
The word “hallowed” means to make Holy and to respect greatly, to set apart or consecrate, to make sacred and to revere. So to hallow is to take some action to honour God and respect Him greatly for His Holiness. It is to set apart a time to revere the almighty God. To hallow God is to take action, to decide to glorify God for what He has done for you, for who He is and for His Holiness. Therefore, to hallow the name of God is to glorify His name and seek His presence.
The Bible has a lot to say about seeking the presence of God. There is actually a prescription in the Bible instructing you of the procedure to seek God’s presence. This procedure is best explained in the book of Psalm 100:4
“ Enter into His gates with thanks giving, and into His courts with praise.”
So the procedure to enter into God’s presence is very simple, all you have to do is to thank Him and to Praise Him. This is what we mean when we say “Hallowed be your Name”. To thank God is to gain access to His Gates and to praise Him is to gain access to the courts of His presence and finally, to be in His very presence is to worship Him.
To put this matter into perspective we can say that in order for you to reach the presence of God you need to do three things:
1. Give thanks to God
2. Praise God
3. Worship God
TO GIVE THANKS TO GOD
We must give thanks to God for what He has done for us. In the first place God brought us into existence and continues to sustain us by His will. We were subjects of God’s wrath through sin but He forgave us and decided to sacrifice His only Son Jesus Christ so that we may be saved. What a good reason to thank God for. Thanking God is something that you do through your mouth by saying the word with your lips. You cannot thank God through your heart or by your mind through imagination or feelings. If you are going to thank God you will have to utter some audible words from your mouth, you will have to move your lips and speak something audible and which the human ear can hear.
The problem with some people is that they feel and think about thanking God but they never get to do it. You cannot get into God’s presence without thanking Him. How possible is it that you can get into my house without going through the gates? Thanking God gives you access to His gates. If you do not thank God when you pray, you are like someone trying to jump His fence and walls and gain unauthorised entry into His presence. Beware, the Spirit of God, which is His Holy Spirit, electrifies the fence and if you are not careful you may get shocked. No burglar can sneak into the presence of God.
If you do not thank God when you pray, you are like someone shouting God from the street and asking Him to stop His divine business and come to attend to your insignificant and stupid problem. God is no man that you should disrespect Him in that way. For your information, God’s House is sealed from interference and He cannot hear you and is not committed to hear you unless you come through His gates.
So the next time you pray it is important that you start your prayer by thanking God for what He has done for you. Think of your own life and the lives of your beloved ones and pick out those things that God has done for you. Thank God for your beautiful wife or husband, thank Him for your children, Thank Him for the April elections and the peace in this country. Thank Him for your job, your house and your bicycle. Thank Him for the blood of Jesus on the cross, thank Him for anything. I am very much convinced that you can never run short of what to thank God for. When you pray without thanking God you are not praying in the will of God and therefore God is not committed to hear your prayers.
TO PRAISE GOD
A second requirement to hallow God and for your prayer to be heard is that after you had gained access to the gates of God’s presence, you should now enter the courts of His presence. The appointed way to enter the courts of God’s presence is through praise. Remember that we praise God because of who He is. You see, no matter what your circumstances are, God does not change; He is always the almighty, He is always righteous, He is always the provider, He is always your healer, He is always your peace. God is the same today, yesterday and forever.
To praise God is a decision and not a feeling. In other words, even if you don’t feel very good you are still required to praise God because He is the same God whether your are happy or sad. God will not hear your prayers if you do not praise Him. If you do not praise God when you pray, you are like someone who managed to go through the gates of God’s house and then decided to camp outside the house illegally without asking for permission from the owner of the house. If you do not give God His due praise, you are like a squatter who has taken illegal occupation of the land that does not belong to him. The painful thing about being a religious squatter is that you are so close to God’s presence and yet God cannot hear you and is not committed to hearing you. You are like six inches from your treasure but you are not going to have it because you don’t know how close you are.
To praise God requires once again your mouth. You need to open your mouth and talk about God’s strength, His provision, His love, His mercy and His faithfulness. Very often we sing songs of glory when we praise God. The Bible says in Psalm 100: 1-2
“Make a joyful shout to the Lord all you lands!
Serve the Lord with Gladness;
Come before His presence with singing.”
When last did you make a joyful noise to the Lord? Did you serve the Lord with gladness or maybe you are just in it in case it works? When last did you sing a song when you prayed? You see, God demands that you sing a song and shout when you come into His presence. Let me tell you my brother and sister, if all you do in church is to have a dry prayer without a voluntary joyful shout and a song, then you are wasting your time, God is not committed to hear your prayers if you cant shout. Some people still think that it is funny to shout in church.
Praise leads you into the presence of God. So when you pray you need to thank God and praise Him so that you can come into His presence. Remember that it is in the presence of God that there is fullness of Joy. It is in the presence of God that there is strength and protection; it is in the presence of God that there is victory and fulfilment. So when you pray first, thank God for what He has done for you and second praise Him for who He is and finally, before you put your request to God concerning those things that you need or whatever you intend to ask God, worship Him first in the beauty of Holiness.
WORSHIP GOD
Once you are in the presence of God the worship begins. The reason we worship God is because of His Holiness. God is Holy and there is a beauty about Holines, which requires worship. The worship is expressed through your attitude and most often through your body. The act of kneeling down or raising you hands in surrender, or the crying and the sneezing through the nose and the falling under the Spirit of God is worship. God has designed each one of us in such a way that we have to worship. The only difference is that God has given us the will power to worship whom we chose.
I think it is worthy to say that no matter what your ideology is whether you are a religious person, an atheist, a Marxist or a Maoist, whether you are an idealist or a materialist and irrespective of your intellectual and socio political affiliation, you are created to worship and whatever you worship is your choice. During my school years, I spend a number of years in some communist countries where in those days most people were atheists. One thing I noticed was that although the majority of people did not worship God because they did not believe that God exists, they however worshipped man.
You see my brother and sister, no matter how intelligent you are if you do not worship God the almighty, you will end up worshipping something much inferior. You are likely going to end up worshiping some man, some animal or some tree, some natural object or the stars and the moon. The danger of not believing in God is that you end up always believing in the devil. This aspect we shall address later when we deal with the kingdom of God.
Worship is the primary activity of heaven, there are creatures and elders in heaven who do not rest day and night and all they do is to worship God. This you can find in the book of Revelation chapter four from verse 4- 11. Therefore worship gets God’s attention and makes Him want to listen to your petition and request. If you can get God to listen to you, then you have an answer to your prayer.
To summarise this part I have to say that when we pray, “hallowed be your name” we mean to thank God, to praise Him and to worship Him. This is why I must encourage you not only to say it but also to do it. I believe that it is not going to help you much if you say “hallowed be your name” and then you don’t start to thank Him and sing some good song and give a joyful sound. Some people I have never seen give a joyful shout to the lord, even when they shout it is questionable if there is joy in their voice. Other people you can hardly even hear their voice even when they are singing. Remember that God requires you to hallow His name even if you were down in spirit.
When you pray don’t just throw all your garbage to God before you hallow Him. Some people pray something like this: God, I am hungry, I have not eaten for three days and I have no place to sleep. Please help me. Amen. Another one will pray the following prayer: God, I am unemployed and I desperately need a job. Please help me God, have mercy on me. Amen. I hope by now you will be in a position to understand that God is not going to answer the two above prayers. God is not willing to answer prayers that are not in line with the Lord’s Prayer. God only answers what He promised to answer and not what you want Him to answer. If what you want God to answer coincides with what He promised to answer, then God will answer your prayers.
Praying wisely is a good investment because it assures you an answer. Remember that praying is communicating with God and is the will of God for you and me. The next time you pray the Lord’s prayer pause briefly after you read the second sentence and ask yourself this question, “ When am I going to start doing what it says”. If we are going to be obedient to the word of God we are not just going to go to the third sentence but we are going to stop right there to thank, praise and worship the almighty God.
9. GOD’S KINGDOM
We have now explained the first two sentences of the Lord’s Prayer which reads “ Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be your name.” Now we are going to study the third sentence of the Lord’s Prayer, which reads “Your kingdom come.” Next week we shall finalise the study of the rest of the Lord’s Prayer. Today in the remaining time I intend to deal thoroughly with this third sentence only.
The first thing to ask yourself is what is it that you are really saying when you pray this third sentence and when you say “ Your kingdom come”. Most people may not be aware that there are two kingdoms out there, the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the devil. These kingdoms are at war and we are caught up somewhere in between. What you don’t know is that you were born in a battlefield and that you belong to one of the sides of this battlefield, you are either with the devil or with God.
God’s main objective is to bring about His kingdom to us humans that the devil stole from Adam and eve in the Garden of Eden. So when you pray it is important that your prayer should contribute to bringing that kingdom into existence. Your prayer can cause God to do things that will administer defeat to the devil and therefore expand the kingdom of God on earth. Let us quickly look at the structure of both kingdoms and find out how through your prayer you could bring about the kingdom of God speedily.
The book of Ephesians gives us some picture about the kingdom of the devil when it describes the spiritual warfare that we are involved in. It reads thus:
“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” Ephesians 6:12
The above scripture gives you an idea of how the satanic kingdom is structured. As you can see this is a kingdom with a definite hierarchy of powers. The first group in the power structure are the principalities, then followed by powers and then the rulers and finally the spiritual hosts of wickedness, which I believe to be demons. Notice also that these forces are spiritual and are not made up of flesh and blood and this means that the war we fight is not a physical war or what we call a carnal war. The war we fight is a spiritual war and the weapons we use are also spiritual.
When Adam sinned in the Garden of Eden what he really did was that he handed over dominion that God gave him over the earth to the devil. In this way the devil became the prince of this world in which we live and God lost control and dominion over this earth in that way. Since then a struggle has ensued between the two kingdoms for dominion. God has decided to make us part of that struggle and the way He does it is that He uses our prayers to destroy the kingdom of the devil.
Before we go deep into this matter, I would also like you to realise that there are in total three heavens. The first heaven is made up of our planet and universe; the second heaven is somewhere between the first and the third heaven and is the devil’s headquarters and his official dwelling place. The third heaven is the heaven of heavens and is precisely the kingdom of the almighty God.
So when you pray to God in the correct manner (and remember that the correct manner for you to pray is that you thank, praise and worship God before you tell Him about your needs), So when you pray the scriptural way, and God receives your petitions and requests, He instructs an angel or a group of angels to fly out of heaven and come to earth to make your request and petition possible. The problem with this process is that sometimes the angels may delay on their way from heaven to earth and therefore it may take a while before you see an answer to your prayers. In some other instances the delays may be minimum and in such cases your prayers may be answered almost immediately.
The reason why there are delays between the times you pray and when you receive an answer is because for the angel of God to fly from the third heaven to earth he has to pass through the second heaven. Whilst passing through the second heaven, the principalities and powers of the devil fight with him and try to block his way to earth. Sometimes the angel of the Lord has to solicit help from the archangels Michael and Gabriel in order to pass and bring a response to your prayer. We shall now see a scriptural passage to illustrate this matter.
To give you a little bid of background, during the time when the people of Judah were in captivity under the Babylonian empire, which was led by king Nebucardnezar. There was a man called Daniel who also was a slave from Judah but had been promoted to become the second highest-ranking man in the Babylonian empire. Daniel was a God fearing man and he knew from the writings of the prophet Jeremiah that the captivity of Judah by the Babylonians was only supposed to last for only seventy years. However, when Daniel realised that his own people were still unrepentant and that the seventy years were approaching, he decided to fast and seek understanding from God regarding the freedom and forgiveness of the people of Judah. After 21 days of prayer and fasting the Bible tells us that an angel of the Lord appeared to Him and said the following:
“ … Do not fear Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart to understand, and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard; and I have come because of your words.” Daniel 10:12
It is very significant from this passage to note that the angel of the Lord tells Daniel that God heard his prayer from the very first day he started praying. In addition, the angel was send the very same day to answer Daniels prayers. So if you pray the correct way, God will hear your prayers the very moment you start praying and will send and angel to answer your prayers.
The above scripture continues in verse 13.
“But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty one days: and behold, Michael, one of the chief princes came to help me, for I had been left alone there with the kings of Persia.”
And in verse 20 and 21 the scripture reads.
“… Do you know why I have come to you? And now I must return to fight with the prince of Persia; and when I have gone forth, indeed the prince of Greece will come.
But I will tell you what is noted in the scripture of truth. No one upholds me against these, except Michael your prince.”
So the above scripture tells us that when the angel of the Lord came to answer Daniel’s prayer, the satanic angels held him back for 21 days until Michael the archangel came to help. The angel of the Lord also tell Daniel that when he returns to heaven he still has to fight with the devil in order to be able to get to heaven. However the angel of the Lord states that Michael is waiting to help with the passage through the kingdom of the devil.
The prayer of Daniel helps us to see what really happens when we pray the correct way. When we do pray the correct way we cause spiritual warfare to happen in the heavenly places. A warfare is initiated between the forces of God in heaven and the forces of the devil in the second heaven. After a fierce war the angels of God defeat the angels of the devil and the answer to your prayers come through. The fact that you are producing fruit in your life is because God is answering your prayers and for those prayers to be answered God must be glorified through His victory over the devil. Did you ever imagine that your prayers could start a war in heaven?
Every victory of God over the forces of the devil expands the kingdom of God on earth. God has designed everything in such a way that if you don’t pray for His kingdom to come the devil would stay much longer without punishment. What you need to understand is that you are an essential part of the war that is raging between God and the devil. God uses your prayers as weapons against the devil and in that way, the more you pray, the more victories God registers against the devil. The less you pray, the less victories God registers against the devil.
Brothers and sisters, if we want to hasten the coming of Jesus Christ we need to pray in earnest and cause God to shorten the lifespan of the devil. The kingdom of God comes into our lives right now on earth if we stay obedient to the word of God and pray as required. The reason the devil wants to destroy you is because of your potential power to pray. You see, every time you pray, you inflict damage and destruction into the kingdom of the devil. Wouldn’t you love to see the devil destroyed? I definitely would.
SUMMARY
1. The Lord’s Prayer is a manner of prayer, a structure and format in attitude and in subject.
2. The only way you can qualify to pray the Lord’s Prayer is if you pray it in the name of Jesus.
3. Without Jesus the Lord’s Prayer will not produce results
4. To hallow God is to respect Him exceedingly because of His holiness
5. To hallow God requires thanking God, Praising Him and worshipping Him
6. To bring forth God’s kingdom we need to pray
7. There are two kingdoms out there at war and we are all in the middle of that war.
8. Our war is not physical or carnal but mighty in power to the removing of strong holds.
9. Our weapons of war are spiritual
10. This war is taking place in the heavenlies.
SINNERS PRAYER
Father God
I pray to you in the name of Jesus
Thank you for the blood of Jesus
I now have hope for eternal life
You are a faithful God
Because you stand by your word.
Lord forgive me my trespases
Today I confess with my mouth
That Jesus Christ is my Lord
I know in my heart
that You raised Him from the dead
Thank you God for saving me
Thank you Jesus for Loving me
Amen.
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