Prayer for Personal Revival (3)

“Only by Prayer”

He replied, “This kind can come out only by prayer.”

Mark 9:29

The context of this verse is a distressed boy who the disciples of Jesus could not help. And when they asked Jesus why, he gave two answers that may be the same thing. In Matthew he says they couldn’t help the boy because of their unbelief. Give them some credit, they believed enough to try and deliver this boy from the demonic that was distressing him. In the same story Mark records Jesus saying, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer”.

Are we desperate enough to listen to Jesus and pray, when we seem ineffective at helping people come into the glorious freedom of the gospel of Jesus Christ? This is the challenge of the Holy Spirit to my heart. Do you really want to see people come into freedom; will you give yourself to prayer?

Jesus is reminding us that our hope is not in our strength. We can’t beat this truth, we will either submit to it or be frustrated and disillusioned by it. And remember truth is always true or its not truth. My hope is not in my strength, nor my skill, nor any crowd I’ve gathered, or resource I’ve accumulated. The Holy Spirit is clear all through scripture in saying; “Paul, your hope is in Christ in you”.

The anointing of Christ in me, is my one hope. Prayer is activating this hope, leaning into this hope, and clinging onto this hope. Maybe there’s a relationship between our faith in the hope of Christ within us and our personal prayer. As I spend time in prayer Jesus Christ grows in me as my hope, and as hope grows within me so does faith, and as faith grows, I pray.

Prayer is denying myself and taking up the cross of Jesus. This means denying my flesh leadership over my choices and my practices. Prayer is meeting with Jesus in the Holy Spirit and growing up in him as one with him. Prayer is letting him make me lie down in his green pasture of hope and lead me to drink at his still waters of word of God, which is my breath of life. Prayer is the place where he restores my soul. Much of prayer is remembering and rejoicing in the salvation we have in Christ, and fellowshipping with Him.

In prayer we work with Jesus; we pray for what is in heaven to come on earth. As we surrender to the truth that this kind only come out by prayer, we discipline ourselves to pray. We do this because we love Jesus, and we love seeing people discover the peace and joy we have in Jesus for themselves.

Prayer is all we have

Truly, truly I say to myself, prayer is all I have, and in prayer I have every blessing the Father has prepared for me in Christ. Prayer has many attributes, it’s a house with many treasures. The Holy Spirit is the leader and teacher of prayer, he wants to pray. My flesh often doesn’t want to pray and questions the efficacy of prayer. Sometimes I wonder when my flesh will shut-up. But, even if it never shut-up I can choose to listen to the Spirit and not to myself. My flesh’s weakness is not an excuse to not pray. When I allow it to stop me praying, I am in unbelief not faith in God.

We can be sure that Satan is actively trying to rob us of prayer, because he knows he is driven out by our prayer not by our good intentions. We might want him to go but he won’t go until we begin to press into Jesus in prayer, and then he can’t stay.

It’s our enemy, Satan, he’s the one robbing God’s people of faith and prayer. He keeps us harassed and preoccupied by this world, so we feel overwhelmed, relegating God from the urgent and critical to the convenient, then to the casual and the occasional. Leaving us with just enough “God’ to feel like we aren’t completely lost. We are being duped by lies. Many of God’s children have become like the boy in Mark 9, we self-harm our faith and new life in Christ, believing it’s not dangerous to not pray.

Has an unbelieving prayerless generation of christians made way for the spirit of death to torment our own children?

‘Only be prayer’ is a statement that is full of hope. I may have no strength, no skill, no people, no resource, no knowledge but I always have prayer. I wonder if a loving Father would strip away everything else but faith in Jesus Christ so we would believe and pray.
My prayer is ‘Father clean my life from all unbelief that makes excuses not to pray so I will be the person of prayer you see me as. So I can pray and see people set free.’

I pray for timid casual believers to awaken and put on Christ and pray. That many will stop believing the lies of Satan that keep them from prayer. I pray that when they hear the words prayer meeting, they will listen to the Spirit within them and not their flesh.

Amen