THE RESPONSIBILITY OF PRAYER

My husband and I read an interesting statement during our devotions the other evening. E.W. Kenyon, author of "The Two Kinds of Faith" says, "It seems that God is limited by our prayer life, that He can do nothing for humanity unless someone asks Him to do it."

Don't discount that statement until you mull it over for a while. If that is true, it certainly puts a tremendous responsibility upon us as believers and as His children.

Maybe Isaiah 45:26 helps us understand that statement a little better. Speaking prophetically, Isaiah has the Lord saying, "Put me in remembrance; let us plead together: set thou forth thy cause, that thou mayest be justified." That indicates God wants us to remind Him of His promises, not that He has forgotten about them. It honors Him when He knows we trust Him, and He wants us to come to Him with our questions, our needs, our problems, our petitions. When we "set forth our cause," it's as though we're standing before the throne like a lawyer and presenting, or pleading our case, our cause, or the thing we want God to do.

The last part of the 11th verse of the same chapter, Isaiah 45, adds still more meaning to this profound statement. "(C)oncerning the work of my hands, command ye me." Did you know we can command God? I didn't say it -- the Bible says it!

This agrees with John 15:7: "If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you." I've read many, many times that the word "ask" in that verse means "command." That doesn't mean we approach God in an arrogant manner; far from it. We approach Him as a partner and, like a lawyer, as we mentioned, we lay our case before Him.

All great men and women who have been mighty in prayer have reminded God of His promises and laid their causes before Him legally. Most of us today are living beneath our legal spiritual privileges in God in Christ Jesus.

Let's determine we are not going to limit God by our prayer life.

Preacher's Kid