Pastor Jerry Sellers, OpenDoor Church, Burleson, TX
Wednesday, Aug. 17, 22
Proverbs 19:21 (NIV) – Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails
God is more concerned about His purpose than He is about our plans.
The word purpose defined in the Hebrew text is:
Purpose: “original intent” or the “will of a mind.” You could say that Purpose is the original reason something was created. Purpose would be the motivation for creation or the reason for existence.
If you don’t know why––the purpose of something––there is potential to abuse it or misuse it. How can you properly steward something you don’t know the purpose of?
I have personally been in a season of studying about the Kingdom. Reading, digging, listening, researching and actually practicing some “new-to-me” revelation concepts.
Tonight I want to share with you something that may seem a little out there according to what you have been taught and led to believe. It involves the subject of prayer.
Friday, we as a church body will come together and seek the Lord intentionally for 24 hours straight praying and fasting. And I feel Friday is a good time to tap into this new concept and fresh understanding of the purpose for Prayer I have been studying and practicing.
Would you agree that believers should pray?
Jesus said
Luke 18:1 – Then He spoke a parable to them, that men always ought to pray and not lose heart,
Matthew 6:5 – “And when you pray,”
“When” implies that you will do this.That prayer is a natural part of your life. Prayer according to our Lord is not a choice. It’s not an option. If you believe, you will pray.
Paul said,
1 Thessalonians 5:16-17 – Rejoice always, pray without ceasing,
Why is this not the normal lifestyle of believers? I mean how much of your day is spent praying? Oh, you say that is for intercessors. Well, the Bible doesn’t say intercessors should pray without ceasing.
TRUTH BOMB: The reason people don’t pray more is because their prayers don’t get results.
Let me throw out 3 logical questions concerning prayer…
1. If God is Sovereign, why pray?
If He is sovereign HE can do anything He wants to do. Right? So, why should we pray when He is going to do whatever He wants to anyhow.
2. If God is not influenced by us, why pray?
Sovereignty actually means that He is free from your influence. If I pray for something and He operates in His sovereignty then He can do the opposite. Why should I waste my time asking and begging and petitioning a God who will do what He fills like anyhow?
3. If God cannot be affected by what we say, why pray?
Let me share with you some thoughts to these questions…
God is as sovereign as His Word.
God is limited by His Word.
God will never violate His Word.
Why are these important? Can I encourage you to buckle up ask Holy Spirit as your guide to guide you into Truth even if it is hard to wrap your mind around.
Whatever God speaks or whatever God says becomes law. Not only to creation and mankind, but also it becomes law to God. God is sovereign until He speaks and creates Law.
As long as God doesn’t speak, He is sovereign and is not limited. But when He speaks, He becomes boxed in by what He says. Maybe this is why God doesn’t speak as much as we would like because He knows if He does then He has to do it.
God is limited by what He says. So when God speaks, His sovereignty becomes limited by His words. Prayer was created by the limitation of God’s Word.
Here is something that is interesting: the only thing the disciples asked Jesus for was to teach them how to pray. Man, I would have signed up for “How to Walk on Water” class, the “Raise the Dead”, “Giving Sight to the Blind” or making “Barren Wombs Fruitful” classes.
They only thing they asked the Lord was to how to pray.
Luke 11:1 – Now it came to pass, as He was praying in a certain place, when He ceased, that one of His disciples said to Him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.”
Why did they only ask Him to teach them to pray? Maybe because they caught on. They became smart after awhile. They finally observed enough to get it.
The Bible says, “early in the morning, rising up a great while before day Jesus got up and went alone to pray.”
A great while before day. My understanding that over in the middle east the day starts between 4:30 and 5 am when the sun comes up. He woke up a great while before day. He must of started His alone time around 3 am every day.
Jesus prayed 2, 3, maybe as much as 4 hours a day. Every time the disciples woke up, they caught him engaged in prayer.
When He got done praying, He said. “Let’s go to town.” They would go to town and he would do something crazy. He would walk up to a blind man and say, “What can I do for you?” The blind man would say, “I want to receive my sight,” and He would say to the blind man, “Then see,” and He would walk off. A fraction of a second he could see. Lepers, the lame, the demon possessed, the dead…
His disciples began to understand that He spent hours praying, but only seconds to heal. We spend hours trying to cast a demon out (I bind you! I loose you!) but only minutes with the Father.
The disciples’ conclusion was if you spend hours in prayer with God, you’ll only need to spend a minute with men in the day. They where logical. What do we do? We spend a very brief time with God, then hours during the day trying to solve a problem with men.
The priority of Jesus was not ministry to men and there’s our problem. Time in prayer is not time wasted. It’s time invested.
We need to be prepared for ministry. Remember the story when the disciples were trying to cast out a demon and could not? Jesus said, “This kind only comes out through prayer and fasting,” after you have spent some serious focused time with Him.
I believe we are in the season where God is fixing to do some serious business on this earth. But first, He is looking for some people to do some serious business with Him.
I want to finish this by presenting a different lens: a fresh viewpoint on prayer. Why did Jesus invest so much into prayer? Why was it a priority? He understood the beginning of prayer—the purpose.
Genesis 1:26 – Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
“Let them.” Remember, when God speaks His words become law. God said, “Let them have dominion over…”
Everybody say with me “LET THEM.”
It’s the most powerful statement concerning prayer you could ever learn. Let them have dominion. Let them dominate. If He would have said, “Let Us have dominion,” He would have included Himself. He didn’t. He said, “Let them.” Who is “them?” Man. What is man? A man is a strange creature.
In Genesis 1, God created man. In chapter 2, He made the body for man and then put the man inside the body. The word “man” is actually the name God gave to the spirit being. Then God gave an assignment that was physical to that man and the spirit cannot appreciate physical things. So. God had to create an earth suit for the spiritual man. God took the man (spirit) and put him inside the earth body in Genesis 2:8. Therefore, God made man a spirit first then placed him inside the earth body as a physical house.
A human. Human is two words put together: Humis and man. Humis meaning “earth” or “dirt” and man meaning “spirit.” You put Humis and man together and we call it Human. A human is a spirit inside a dirt body. It is an integration of spiritual and physical–supernatural and natural.
It is that creature God said, “Let them have dominion over all the Earth.” Therefore, the only creature who has legal authority on earth is a human. The only creature God said, “Have dominion. Dominate the earth,” was a Human. A spirit inside a dirt body. Any spirit without a body is illegal on planet earth. We call those demons.
Don’t let me lose you. Therefore, for God to get anything done on earth, He has to obey His own word. He has to obey what He has previously spoken.
The Bible says in Psalms 138:2 that God has placed His word above His name. The Hebrew word for “name” is “to be.” In Hebrew, the name of the thing is the thing. So, when he said, “I have placed my word above my name,” He was saying, “I place my word above myself.”
JESUS IS THE WORD WHO BECOME FLESH AND DWELT AMONG US.
He will not break His own word. He will not violate His own word; his very character. That’s what makes God faithful. He keeps His word not only to you, but to Himself.
So, here is the hook. God will not violate His own word, therefore God cannot come to this planet. God cannot interfere in what’s taking place on earth without a body. Not because He is weak. Not because He is not powerful. Not because He is not mighty, but because He is faithful to His word.
He will not break His word. That would make Him a liar and He would become untrustworthy. God will never come as a spirit to this earth without a body because He spoke and it became law.
Therefore, if anything is going to be done on earth legally it has to be done by a spirit within a body.
Example: Adam and Eve fixing to eat the fruit.
God could not interfere because God is Spirit. He couldn’t stop Eve. Why? Because if God would have come in as a Spirit without a body, He would have broken His own Word. He would have become untrustworthy.
Even Satan knew that to do business on earth, you need a body. There was no room for him in Adam and Eve so he went to serpent–a snake–and negotiated to use his dirt body. So God could not stop them only as a spirit then become a liar. We know God is not a liar.
God is so good. When Adam and Eve fell, God said to Satan in Genesis 3:15 (PJ version). He said, “Satan you know I can’t intervene right now cause you know my law and that I keep my word. I’ll make you a promise Lucifer. That same woman you used to steal dominion and authority is the same woman that I’m going to come into legally. She is going to give me a body legally and I will deal with you.”
“I’m going to use her to come to the earth legally. I’m going to crush your head legally.” Christmas was necessary because of God’s Word.
“In the fullness of time God sent forth His Son born of a woman.” Isaiah said, “You ain’t believed my report. I saw something. I saw a virgin with child and the name of the child was Emmanuel. Im means ‘In.’ Man means ‘mankind,’ and el means ‘Elohim.’ I saw God inside a man–a human body. I can’t understand it, but God is coming legally. He is going to take back the power legally.”
When God came to Mary, He said, “You’re highly favored.” She said, “Why?” He said, “Because I want to borrow your womb. I want to be legal.”
What God was saying in Genesis 3:15 to satan was that the woman would be his nightmare. When God designed Eve, He literally designed her for Him. “Satan, I gotcha. I made arrangements to come into the human race. That woman shall bear me a seed. And her seed will stomp your head.”
He said, “Mary, you shall call the child Jesus.”
Isaiah 9:6 – For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given; And the government shall be upon his shoulders
Now, the child was born, but the son wasn’t. Mary bore the child, but God gave the Son. Mary produced the body. but God gave the Spirit. Mary produced the house, but God provided the resident. In other words, Mary is the mother of Jesus, but she is not the mother of Christ.
Jesus is the body. Christ is God. That’s why He’s called “Jesus the Christ.” Jesus made Christ legal. That’s why Jesus could pray on earth He was legal.
What is prayer? Myles Munroe states it this way:
Prayer is man giving God license to interfere on planet earth. In all my reading and study, I haven’t found anywhere that God did something on earth that did not involve a human.
Abraham, Moses…
Could it be that God needs you to impact this city? Prayer is not an option; it’s a necessity.
Maybe this will now make sense. Jesus said, “I have given you the keys to the Kingdom. Whatever you bind on earth then heaven can bind and whatever you loose on earth then Heaven can loose.”
Your body is important to God. When your body stops working, you have to leave because you’re now illegal. God is so committed to your body, He has provided a program called healing. Just maybe healing is not for you to feel better. What if it’s for God to have a functioning body to do His work here on earth? Maybe it’s not about you but it’s about Him!
The dirt body is important to God. Christ is a Spirit and He is illegal on earth without a body. Now, don’t misinterpret what I am fixing to say. None of the gospels says Jesus died. Now, I know He did, but what it says is “He gave up His spirit” or “breathed His last.” In the Greek, the verbiage is “He expired.” He “blew,” he “released Christ.”
Jesus died. Christ didn’t. Only Jesus, the earth suit, died. The same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead shall raise your mortal bodies.
So, when Jesus died, He released Christ and Christ went down to Sheol, Hades, walked in the dungeons of darkness, kicked open the door, went up to Satan sitting on a throne reigning by bluff.
Christ walked up to Lucifer and says, “I come to get some things.”
Lucifer says, “You can’t come down here. You have to be dead to come down here.”
And Christ said, “Jesus is dead. His body is upstairs,” and he kept on walking.
Lucifer said, “You can’t come here. Only sin can kill a man.”
Christ said, That body up there has the sin of the whole world in it that’s what killed it. I have come for something.”
He walked up to Lucifer and put His hands on his belt. He pulled off 3 keys–Death, hell and the grave. Christ turned around and said, “I”ll be back.” Then he went and set the captives free.
“Come on Abraham. Come on Moses. Come on Noah. Come on David.” And He took them to Paradise.
Deposited them before the Father, and “I’m not finished yet I have to go back down to earth.”
I can see Gabriel telling Christ, “You can’t go back down without a body.” Christ said, “I got one on ice.” Christ came back down to earth, went inside the tomb, inside the body of Jesus. He came back alive. Kicked the stone from the entrance and walked out in resurrection power.
40 days after spending time with His disciples, He said, “Now I gotta go, but I will be back.”
“But Christ, you can’t come back. You got no body. You’ll be illegal.”
And Christ said, “I made arrangements. I got a body but this time its not two hands and its not two feet: it’s millions of hands and millions of feet. I still got a body. I’m still legal.” That why The church is never called the body of Jesus. It’s called the body of Christ. Believer, Christian, Church; He needs your body to be legal on earth.
Stand up and say I give you permission through my body, through my faith, to invade the nations, my country, my state, my city, family, my church, my life. That’s what prayer is all about….whatever you bind is bound in heaven. Whatever you loose is loosed in Heaven. Go after your healing. He needs your body to get some work done.