For Christian Prayer

    This book is intended to help the church body find its true source of strength by learning to pray. Many opinions have complicated this subject, and the author seeks to simplify its understanding and apply the Bible to adoration—worshiping God, and supplication—praying for others.

    Prayer has a divine purpose, which could simply be stated as conversation with the divine One. God has established its plan, players, and its supernatural parts. It cannot be completely comprehended in this realm, yet it is as widely accepted as it is neglected. Prayer is personal and only sometimes public. Most of us incorrectly assume its usefulness is determined by the negative influences affecting our lives.

    That said, too many in Christendom do not get it, do not do it, and too often do not believe in it. We write about it because we are commanded to love God and to love our neighbors. These are relational issues requiring communication or prayer! Simply said, all prayer fits into two general categories: love God (worship, adoration) and love your neighbor (supplication). This book concerns the former, the “first things,” or loving God.

 

    Our subject, loving God first, is simply prayer between creature and Creator. Though the primary purpose of prayer is loving God, the impact of prayer upon one’s life and subsequently upon the world is without measure.

    The intended reader of this book is the Christian. Unless one is born again, prayer is a waste of time. Without Christ within and God’s Spirit of Holiness within and upon one’s life, God’s supernatural mechanisms for prayer lie dormant. Because prayer is communication, and communication is relational, one’s relationship with the divine One must meet the standard God Himself has established in the Bible.

    Though the target audience of this book is the church body, the primary focus is the prophetic community. This book is not a teaching tool as much as it is a prophetic declaration useful for teaching. Also included are encouragement, warnings, and announcements of judgment for the leading of others in loving what God loves. God loves spending time with His creatures; after all, He created us for fellowship.

 

    This book deals with prayer in its most practical biblical application for the reader. There will not be found in these pages the traditional manufactured rituals that may distance the creature from an energetic relationship with his Creator. This material is practical, and understanding its application is to recognize the perfect design by the Trinity for the Holy Spirit’s teachings of the Word of God. Prayer is not private, but it is done in private! The church needs to know that there is much work to be done in the area of getting alone with God in Christ Jesus.

    God’s plan for prayer has been illustrated in the Hebrew tabernacle. This was a bloody instrument for purifying the Jewish people, God’s first choice of the ones chosen to come before Him. In addition to the Jew, the Gentile nations, everyone not a Jew, are told that they too may come before God. An Old Testament prophet wrote of Gentiles, “Even them I will bring to My holy mountain, and make them joyful in My house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on My altar;

 

         For my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations” (Isaiah 56:6-7).

 

    In Moses’ day, blood sacrifice made things holy and provided people with an acceptable access to God. This was done by slaughtering innocent, spotless animals, and sprinkling their blood upon lamps, tables, altars, and priests within the tabernacle, or the temple of God. This was the law found in the first few books of the Bible including the judicial book of Leviticus.

    Today, blood sacrifice continues to cleanse the children of God, but it is Jesus Christ’s blood that does so. Part of the reason God gave mankind a tabernacle and a temple was to show us how to become clean to worship Him. Another reason God chose to have all of those animals slaughtered by Levitical priests was to show us how important His Son was to Him.

    Today, instead of an endless stream of slathered animals, Jesus Christ was that sacrifice. His blood may very well be sealed within each born again—born from above-Christian while cleansing them from within. God has heard the ones truly asking for this sealing to be placed within them whether they understand the dynamics of this process or not, and by God’s power He seals Christ within the heart of those trusting in His Son.

    Later in this book, we will learn how the tabernacle continues to function with blood, how prayer is illustrated in its various forms and purposes to draw you close to God through the ministry of the interior Christ.

 

    The esoteric nature of the following material has the appearance of going against popular prayer practices. Therefore it is necessary to appeal to the authority of the Holy Scripture. That process of returning to scripture is what this book attempts to accomplish.

    Because God’s ways are perfect and His teachings are timeless, timing is of great importance in the matter of reintroducing these truths to the world. Whenever we come to the time and place God is choosing to open our understanding to His will, His sheep know His voice, and they come “in and out” and find pasture.