If I could teach you how to pray for you to really get answered, would you do it? I already perceive that this is a praying house, praying people. But I don't think we ever learned enough about prayer and its principles. And many, many people never pray very much because they're used to being not rewarded for prayer. They're more used to being disappointed in not getting any real answers than they are getting answers.
And if I can teach you something about prayer today and that you would be willing to make a commitment to do it, I guarantee it will change your life. I listen to people pray and much of their praying is self-oriented, self-centered. It has the gimme gimme gimme gimme, gimme, gimme effect. Do for me, do for me. Help me, help me.
And it has a lot of boo-boo in it. Well, the boo-boo is all right if it's not you crying because Jesus said, “I do not receive the testimony of man." Remember reading that? The Father does not receive the testimony of you. The Father only receives the testimony of Christ Jesus in you. Because Jesus said, “You've got to lose yourself so that I Myself can be formed in you.”
And I'm gonna be teaching you how to do that how to cooperate with God to lose yourself. You'd be surprised how much you are in the way.
We have an estimated 7000 promises in the Bible. 7000 promises. I never counted. The Scripture says that He has given us all things, all things, all things that pertain to divine life and godliness. He's given us, exceeding great and precious promises. By them, you can become a partaker of the divine nature. And then this next statement, escaping the corruption that comes in your life because of lust.
2 Peter 1:3-4 According as his divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that has called us to glory and virtue: 4 Whereby are given to us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these you might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
2000 years no one has ever laid hold of the promises. Very few.
And Jesus cannot and will not return until there is a remnant of believers that literally not only lay hold of them but experience all the promises into their whole being, spirit, soul, and body.
John 10:10 says the thief has come to steal and destroy and kill. Jesus said that. But He said, I've come that you might have life that you might have it abundantly.
Christians have been stupidly, ignorantly, passively, repeatedly letting the first part of that scripture be their inheritance. The thief has come to steal, destroy and kill. Don't take any effort at all. The devil just gladly steals your life, rob your life, kill your life. Or you end up dead. But Jesus said I have come that you might have life, you might have an abundance. No one's ever entered into appropriating what Jesus gave.
Yet right here in this room today, there is the omnipresence of God and all the provisions of all His life, all the promises, the substance of the promises are right here. And the omnipresent Holy Spirit is right in this room today. And I'm going to teach you how to learn to get into this omnipresent realm that's all around you. Reach in, get a hold of a promise and act upon it with faith that He will give and the need that you had won't be a need any longer.
Okay, we shake hands on that.
Just briefly, this scripture says that you might have life and have it abundantly. Life is the extreme opposite of death. Now life is all-inclusive; it does not have any form of death in it. Death, no matter how it is in any form is death. And it all resides in the self of those who are for themselves. Death is the outcome. You don't have to let your life be robbed by him, killed by him. The outcome that you might have life, the word life is Zoe. It's Theos’ physical life. Theos means God. So it's God's physical life. And its present tense, possession alienated from the fall by the work of the cross.
Isn't that amazing? It's right here now, right here in this room. I'll go a little deeper. It's even in your spirit in you if you're born of God, for all things that are of God, already resonant in substance in your spirit. And all you need to learn is how to become aware of how much divine substance is in your spirit. So this is huffing and panting after that good stuff. I'll take it.
So you just speak it and possess it once you become aware of your spirit, but you will never possess it until you become aware of it in your spirit. I'm gonna teach you how to develop an awareness of your spirit as something different than your mind. Is that all right? It's so simple, it's ridiculous. Any knucklehead can do it.
The unbelievers can't do it. The uncommitted can't do it. The uneducated can't do it. The lazy can't do it. The passive can't do it. The unconcerned can't do it. You'll have to make some decisions, you'll have to make some hard decisions. I guarantee you will never be the same, and you'll never give the excuse anymore, that you do not know the way on how to do the word. Be doers of the word not only hearers of the word. Be doers of the word, lest you deceive yourself.
And that's where Christianity has been for 2000 years. They've believed the word. But they've not known how to mix faith with the word. They've not known how to do the word. And because they have not known how to do the word, they've automatically qualified for self-deception. They've died in faith without receiving the promises.
I'm going to teach you how not to die in faith. And to receive the promises. Is that alright? I guarantee I'll teach you. I am not only telling you what to do, I'll show you how to do it and demonstrate it for you. Is that all right? Always going to be good stuff.
I'd encourage you to make every sacrifice to come to every service. I'd encourage you to reschedule a lot of demands on your life. And come to these services. I'll quit every night by 10 o'clock and go home to bed. If I can't get something to you by 10 o'clock I just would never get to you at all.
I'll be ministering to you prophetically. I hope is like a gift to all of you. I will prophesy over you. I'll tell you what God wants from you. Tell you about your gifts of the Holy Spirit that God has already predestined for you. Tell you about your office ministries, your ministry that you are to walk in. Tell you about your destinies in the Lord. Conditional upon one thing that you are not skeptical, unbelieving, critical, judgmental, passive, indifferent, unconcerned, lazy, that you are humble. In your heart, you are saying, "I want Jesus more than I want my next breath." Conditional upon all those things, okay. Because the gift I have is not mine, it's ours. It's all here. You have a responsibility. from your heart, really wanting reality.
I have a responsibility of hearing this voice, telling you the time, and telling you His will for your life. Let's come together. To be humble together, to be teachable together. To be desirous to join Jesus. He'll walk here in our midst in these days. He might even show Himself alive by many infallible proofs. Because He said, "Where two or three are assembled together in My name I'm there in your midst." And He meant that.
I will teach you how to how to develop your spiritual senses so that you can see Jesus, so that you can hear Jesus, so that Jesus can appear to you because He's no respecter of persons.
I will teach you to see visions, teach you how to walk in the Spirit, how to discern your spirit, how to open your spirit, how to exercise your spirit, how to operate with your spirit. Teach all these things. I hope. Wonderful, wonderful thing to walk with God.
You as a believer, are not born of God, we're not drawn by the Holy Spirit to be born of God, to live as good a Christian life as you can and die and go to heaven. You as a believer were born of God to grow up into the full major, the full stature, the full likeness, the full exactness of Jesus Christ while you're alive. And it doesn't take years to do this.
When I pastored young men like this, they come in under the ministry and in less than two years, they walked as real prophets of the Lord. Some of them would do it in less than a year. Because they had a hard commitment to be taught and then just do it. It was wonderful. I just marveled at it. You tell them something, and they go do it. I had to watch them sometimes because they thought God was not doing fast enough and I was much afraid they're gonna hurt their body. I had to get them off there fast. So they stopped listening to me.
There has to be a practical way to literally walk with God so that He's literally real, that is not a figment of your imagination. But Jesus Christ is God Almighty, this very moment. He is God Almighty, He is the fullness of the Godhead bodily. And there has to be a way for you to grow up so you can walk with Him and talk with Him. And it could be a two-way conversation. Just not a one-way thing you talk to Him and never have any communication back. There has to be a practical way in which the promises of this book can be fulfilled in your life, experienced in your life.
2000 years no one has done it. Less than that time we'll probably find men and women who totally fully walked with God. Exactly, precisely completely as fully as Jesus walked with the Father when He walked on the earth. This decade will probably find these men and women on the face of the earth. And I'm giving you an invitation to be part of that glorious rank remnant of people.
You have the privilege of growing up into Christ Jesus in every aspect. There's been no ministries or few ministries ever told you how. They told you what but they don't tell you how. They didn't know how. I'm gonna tell you how. So clear and so plain that you won't even be able to miss it. A child can do that.
1 John 3:21-24 Beloved, if our heart condemns us not, then have we confidence toward God. 22 And whatever we ask, we receive of Him, because we keep His commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in His sight. 23 And this is His commandment, That we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as He gave us commandment. 24 And he that keeps His commandments dwells in Him and He in him. And hereby we know that He stays in us, by the Spirit which He has given us.
There's not one Christian who does not walk in one degree or more of condemnation all the time. Probably because they don't know how to please Him. Without condemnation and they wonder why they don't get answers. Guard your heart for all of it come all the issues of life.
Now turn to James 4:3 You ask, and receive not, because you ask amiss, that you may consume it on your lusts.
You ask and do not receive because you ask with wrong motives. So that you can spend it on your own gratification. God is not going to give you anything for your self-interest that can keep the self-strength, the self-life alive. He'll only give you things where you yourself have got to deny yourself because Jesus said, "Except a man deny himself he will not find life."
Now who is self? The self is you. The self is your mind your emotions, your will. Self is all your id man, your ego man. You got to lose your mind. If you ever want to have the answers, you got to give up your desires, your pleasures. Can you handle this? Lose your leisures. If you really want to succeed, gotta give that up to God to deny yourself that. This gospel here, oh, God wants you to have good things. Yes, He does. But you notice how you get them good things, you, you secretly grab it for your self-interest, self-gratification and Jesus is not getting any glory out of it.
But if He gives you things and you receive it so indifferently that it's totally unimportant to your heart. Be blessed by it. But use it to be a channel to bring Christ Jesus to others. Okay? If you're not willing to make a commitment and a dedication to developing a praying life daily, then you have no right to be here. But if you're not willing, you can pray this prayer, “Lord, I'm not willing to do that do all the demands and commands that You have but I'm willing to be made willing. And I don't know how You can do that.”
I used to be worth a million and a half dollars for real estate property. I was this kind of a wealthy man. And I thought about that because now I wonder if God ever going to require that at my hand. I secretly hoped He never bothers me. Guess what? He did. It was very painful for me to just walk away from it. In fact, I gave it away. I couldn't sell it. I gave it away.
And I said, “Lord, I'm not willing. But I'm willing to be made willing, but I don't know how You can do that.” I had God right where I want it, I thought. Well, behold two, three weeks later, I woke up one morning, all of my possessions, my inheritance was out of my life. I gave it away, and no regrets. Now, I got no more worries. I don't have to try to keep anything. Isn’t that great?
I want to share it about a man in my meeting. He was new there. He waited and waited and waited until all the others were all gone. And he was the last man. I was so grateful because I was exhausted.
“What can I do for you, son?”
He said, “I don't have much relationship with God and wonder if you can help me.”
“Sure I can help you. But first, I want to ask you some questions. Do you have a daily praying life?”
“Not much. Not sure.”
“Do you have a daily reading of the Scripture life?”
“No.”
“Then I can't help you. And God Himself can't help you.”
Really shocking.
If you're not committed, if you're not self-motivated to have a daily praying life. I don't even propose a spasmodic, sporadic praying life. If you're not committed to develop that and make it as important as you're committed to eating physical food every day, to keep alive. You better get a hold of the word to eat every day to keep alive. But that's not enough, you better learn how to pray every day. So that the food you ate, can be quickened by God, to give you divine life. Nothing increases in your life without an effective praying life. Nothing. You will increase nowhere. You will have faith for nothing.
Jesus Christ cannot impart any of His faith to you if you will not be committed to having a habitual, daily, constant, praying life. You're wasting your time. Don't waste God's time because He's not in time. But you're wasting your life. And you will die in faith and never received the promise.
Even preachers, ministries, they will study and meditate in the word for hours. Still have no power of life in their life. Because they use that as an excuse to neglect the requirement upon their life that they have got to pray. And it's prayer, living prayer that is going to get and cause that relationship with you and Jesus Christ, that's going to enable Him to become formed in your life. And to the degree that you pray daily habitually, to that degree, He will form Himself in you.
You have to make the decision that above everything that you do today, once you get up, you're gonna have a time of prayer. Even if you never read the word, you can have a praying life and succeed.
I know a man who never had a Bible in his life. Never read the word. Never had any promises, never knew one word out of what is written. And he so totally succeeded that he was caught up to God and was not anymore. You might know who that was. The name was Enoch. He didn't have a promise, he didn't have the Bible. He didn't have any principles, anything to learn that he could just educate himself that he walked with God and was not for God took him for he had this testimony he pleased God.
What in the world did he do that Christians got all these 7000 promises haven't done? What did he do to please God? Not only what did he do, how did he do it? I'm going to teach you some of the secrets. I don't know what he did. But how he did it. This requires a tremendous, irrevocable commitment to do something towards God.
Turn with me to First Thessalonians 5. Big scripture here. Now, I don't want anybody answering me from now on. Even though I come up with nasty questions, keep silent. I might embarrass you. How many of you think you are doers of the word here? Don't raise your hand. Are you a doer of the word in such a way that you have Jesus Christ’s success?
Look at First Thessalonians 5:17 Pray without ceasing.
Does anyone know how to do that? I'm talking about how to do that. Do you know how to do that? Pray without ceasing. Did you ever let that word talk to you?
The people tell me, "I never get anything out of the word."
I get so much out of the word that it is terrible, terrible tormenting thing to me. I never read it. Always let it talk to me. Talk to my heart. I imagine that Jesus Christ is talking to me. And He's saying to me, “Royal, I want you to pray without ceasing.”
“But Lord, I got this and that to do. I haven't got time.”
No Royal, I want you to pray without ceasing.”
“But, but, but, but... Excuses, excuses, excuses. All this other demand.”
I got a book called Practicing His Presence written by Brother Lawrence and Frank Laubach. He is dead now. He teaches in that how he learned to practice the presence of God, developing our conscious awareness of every moment of every minute of every hour of every day. And yet he was a businessman in the world. He was the one man in this century that caused the world to become literate in every nation. That's how busy he was. And he said, I decided to learn to practice His presence. And I don't know how I did it. But after I began to work on giving the first priority of practicing, I found myself able to do my responsibilities and demands with a divine efficiency that I never had before. Isn’t that marvelous?
NEXT : How Repetitions Increase Prayer Part 2
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