Applying Faith To Your Prayers

1. Come To God Believing:
The scriptures declare: “He who comes to God must believe that He Is, and that He is a Rewarding of those who diligently seek Him.” (Heb 11:6) The first portion of this scripture: “He who comes to God must believe that He Is” gives us a good starting point in learning the application of faith. We begin by coming to God as in prayers: We come singing, praising and giving thanks to Him so that we can enter into His presence (Psalms 100). Upon entering His presence, we begin to worship Him, and believe in Him: that He exists, and is real, and that He is the all powerful, all knowing, and all mighty God who is the source of all existence. As such, He is the only One who has power to grant our prayer requests. As we continue to worship Him, we deepen our believe to enable us become fully persuaded that He will reward us according to His promise in the second part of this scripture: “He is a Rewarding of those who diligently seek Him.”

2. Confess And Release Your Faith While Praying:
At this level of full persuasion, we notice that the presence of God that we feel remains constant, we feel strengthened, peaceful and bold. At this time, we release our faith into God by confessing our requests to Him. This confession is simply our prayer request to God, expressed in a way that reflects our persuasion that God is able and willing to grant our request. We do not prepare what to say. Rather, our mouth simply speaks as it is being driven by the persuasive force of the faith that has filled our heart; just as the scriptures declare that “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matt 12:34).Indeed, the more persuaded our heart is, the more convincing and powerful our confession is.
As an example, a Roman centurion heard about Jesus and became 100% persuaded that He has the power and the authority to heal his dying servant who was at home (Matt 8:5-11). So He came to Jesus and asked Him to heal the servant. When Jesus agreed to go with him, He made a powerful confession that acknowledged that Jesus has full power and authority over diseases and, therefore can heal a sick person at will. This how He said it.”Lord, I am not worthy that You should come under my roof. But only speak a word, and my servant will be healed” (read more in your bible). Jesus marveled at such a great confession of faith coming from an unsaved person, and spoke the word that healed the servant.
Another example is a non-Jewish woman who came to Jesus with a belief that obviously was not fully persuasive. Without spending time to worship Him so her faith can rise further, she immediately asked Jesus to heal her daughter; making a confession that did not reflect the great faith in her. Following Jewish traditions, Jesus ignored her, for He came to minister to only Jews, not Gentiles. But this woman was diligent in seeking the Lord, so she came and worshiped Him, which of course had the potential to deepen her believe in Jesus. However, she made a weak confession again(“Lord help me”), by asking Jesus for healing again before her believe was fully persuasive. As a result, Jesus rejected her request again; responding with words that most of us would regard as offensive. But instead of feeling offended, she turned around and did something marvelously faithful: She drew nearer and worshiped Him again, and finally, she made a confession reflecting the great depth of faith and persuasion that had built up in her heart. This time, Jesus marveled at such a great confession of faith, and spoke the word that healed her daughter.

3. Believe That You Are Receiving What You’re Asking For:
When Jesus thought His disciple how to apply their faith, He said to them: “whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.” (Mark 11:23-24). What this means is that whatever you asked for while confessing your faith, you must believe that you’re receiving them or have received them while you are still praying. The truth is that God has granted your prayers in the spirit realm, and it shall surely manifest for you in the natural realm at the right time if you believe it (see “Waiting For God To Answer”). I pray that these three tips shall help you harness your faith and extract more power for your daily power-living. Remain blessed.

4. Keep Believing After Prayers
In this issue, we consider what to do after the prayer: How to align our thinking, talking and actions to insure that His answers will manifest to us.
When God fulfills His answers to our prayers right away just like in the vast majority of the miracles that Jesus performed, then we don’t have to worry about what to do after the prayer: We simply receive the miracle with joy and thanksgiving.
But when He does not do so, then there is a waiting period during which we must conduct ourselves in certain ways to ensure that God’s answers will manifest sooner rather than later. These ways of conduct are:
I. Remain Fully Persuaded That God Has Answered Our Prayers
That is, we must not allow the great faith and the resulting persuasion that we reached in prayers to wane. Doing so invites premature disappointment leading to doubts and fear, which eventually kill our faith and thereby delay the fulfillment of God’s answers to our prayers. God will never withdraw His yes answer, but faithlessness on our part can delay the fulfillment of that answer.
2. Align Yourself With God
That is, during the waiting period you must:

• Think like God
• Talk like God and
• Act like God.

Think, Talk And Act Like God:
Let me use the story of Abraham to help us grasp how God does His things. God called Abraham and promised that through a descendant of his, He will redeem all the nations of the world. For this reason, God one day said to Abraham: “I have made you a father of many nations.” (This being spoken) in the presence of Him whom he believed, even God, who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did (Rom. 4:17-24).
But Abraham and his wife (Sarah), being more than 75 and 65 years old, respectively, were advanced in age; way past child-bearing age. In human frame of thinking, how were they going to fulfill such a promise; being too old to start a lineage that would lead to a descendant who would fulfill God’s promise? But because God promised it, it had to be true, and they will surely have a child. But the child, Issac, did not come right away: it took 25 years; a very long time for a couple that was already too old to have a child naturally.
So what was Abraham to do during these long years? He had to align Himself with the frame of God’s mind; thinking, talking and walking the way God does. In the Romans 4:17-24 scripture above, a universal statement about an attribute of God is made; God naturally”calls those things which do not exist as though they did.” In other words, God’s frame of mind is such that He calls things that do not exist in our world, as though they do. He said to Abraham “I have made you a father of many nations” even though it would take about 2000 years for the promise to be fulfilled.
In God’s world, Abraham was already a father of many nations in about 2000 BC, even though that did not start to happen in our world till about 33 AD. For when the scripture say; “…things that do not exist,” it means things that have not yet happened or manifested in our physical world. Nevertheless, these things exist in God’s world as soon as God speaks the answer to our prayers.
God is Spirit and lives in the realm of the Spirit. When He declares a thing or person to exist, that thing or person comes into being in His world; the Spirit realm. But in our physical world, the thing or person does not yet exist. Even so, we must by faith chose to disregard what our physical senses tell us; that it does not exist, and rather, believe and agree with God that it exists.
For we who are the new creation, redeemed and called children of God, and having the image and nature of God, have been endued with power to think, talk and act like God; thinking about, talking about and acting on those things that we pray for, as though they exist. For by this, we speak in total agreement with God, who has the power to fulfill our request in the physical world.
When we agree with God, He applies His power to fulfill His answers to our prayers, but when we disagree with God through unbelief, fear and doubt, we delay God from doing fulfilling His answers to our prayers.
Abraham Thought, Talked And Acted Like God.
By stitching together excerpts from verses 18-21 of Romans 4, we can say the following about Abraham’s thinking, talking and actions: He, “Contrary to hope, in hope (he) believed … what was spoken …… With great faith, he did not consider his own body, already dead (at 100 years old), and the Sarah’s died womb (at 90 years old). He did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith” so that he became fully persuaded that what God had promised He was also able to perform” (Rom. 4:18-24).
In other words, Abraham refused to believe the indication that he and Sarah were too old to have children for the upward fulfillment of God’s promise. Rather, he exercised great faith to believe God’s words; thinking, talking and acting like God until Sarah conceived and bore a son through whose descendant, Jesus Christ, that God later fulfilled his promise of making Abraham the Father of many nations. If we always emulate Abraham, none of our prayers will go unanswered.
3. Always Expect God’s Answer To Manifest
The third way that we should conduct ourselves is that we always should be expecting God to manifest His answers to our prayers. The expectation is the outward expression of our faith that God will surely manifest what He promised. Psalm 5:3 declares: “My voice You shall hear in the morning, O Lord; In the morning I will direct it to You, And I will look up. Here the psalmist is saying to God that he will pray to Him every morning, and afterwards shall expect His answers.
Remain blessed!