Pray Effective Prayers

The first thing we have to do that the bible tells us to do is we’ve got to know the will of God. If we pray and ask anything in his name and it’s his will, it’s going to be answered. It might not be answered today, I’ve had prayers that have been answered in one day, I’ve had prayers that haven’t been answered for 15, 20 years but I’m going to tell you something now, they will be and I believe it because it’s the will of God. I may not be ready, the church people may not be ready that I pastor, Joy Stones fellowship. I’m going to tell you one of the best way to know whether you’re getting closer to understanding the will of God is really to write your prayers done. Let me show you a sheet here. This is a sheet that I have written my prayers on and you see the red ink and the red ink, I always cross out what has been answered. Some of you can see that there’s so nos on there. If there’s no and they’re never answered then I was not praying the will of God.

You can also see, I’ll flip it over to the other page, that there are many prayers that have been answered and these are not small prayers, everyday prayers, these are big prayers. I have over 400 of these and I’ve been doing this for a long time. Look at these, that’s what you want. You want to write down every major prayer that you’re praying, you want to write it down. When you do, you’re going to know whether you’re hearing the will of God. I want to explain prayer to you. A way to look at you is like prayer is like the way the kingdom operates and that is you plant a seed. You pray. Let’s look at the seed as prayer, then you water it, you make sure the weeds are taken care of, then you go to bed and wake up and do the same thing the next day and you water it and you make sure the weeds are taken care of. Eventually, you’re going to have a crop. You’re going to have corn. You’re going to have whatever you planted. If you plant potatoes, you’re going to have potatoes. If you plant corn, you’re going to have corn. But you’re going to cap it.

One of the things that some people do when they pray is they immediately or soon after when the prayer doesn’t happen right away, they go and dig up their seed and see if it’s okay. That will kill the seed. What we need to do is we need to recognize I can’t kill the seed so what do I do? How do I water? How do I water my prayers? The way you water your prayers is you speak out your prayers because when you pray, God heard you. It may not be the exact timing that he wants to answer your prayer, but if you know it’s God’s will and you are certain or pretty certain that it’s God’s will then what you need to do is speak it out. Say thank you God for you’re going to make my car payment, thank you God that my need is met. You thank him every day. You don’t thank him just once in awhile, you thank him everyday. Why? Because you want to water your seed. As it starts to come up you want to keep water.

What you can do though is you can have a problem and the problem can be is, you know what can happen? What can happen is that you can get shaky. What most of the time happens, not all the time, but most of the time happens is that Satan knows if you get your prayer answered, you’re going to tell somebody about it. You’re going to want to share the goodness of God, the grace of God, what God did for you and that’s going to be a testimony. He knows that we overcome him by the blood of the lamb and the word of our testimony. Our testimonies are very powerful. He wants to stop our testimony. How does he do that? He throws up circumstances, situations, circumstances and tries to prove to us we’re not going to have what we prayed for.

What we need to do is say no, I have what I prayed for. Why? Because God heard me and when he heard me, if it’s his will and I believe it is, I’m going to have it. Now we know about Peter, Peter walked on the water and he got out of the boat and walked on the water. He was doing great. Peter was really doing great until he looked at the circumstances. You’ll be doing great until you look at the circumstances if you’re not ready for circumstances being the opposite of your prayer. Can circumstances last? No. Jesus said speak to the mountain in Matthew 23, 24. 11:23-24. Speak to the mountain and it will be removed, it will be cast into the sea. The mountain is what? Your circumstances. They’re your circumstance. Peter looked at the circumstances and fell. Jesus had to save him. If you look at the circumstances then you may not have your prayer answered. God can still sovereignly decide to answer your prayer but that is not how the kingdom operates.

We need to realize that Satan is a destroyer. He wants to kill, steal, and destroy. So what do we do? We fight him with weapons. The weapons of our warfare according to 2 Corinthians 10:4 are not physical, they are spiritual and we do what? We take every thought captive. That’s what we do. We say that if a thought comes that I’m not going to have my need met, then we say no, I don’t take that thought. We speak to it, literally capture it, bring it into the obedience of Christ because it’s exhalting itself against what? Against my prayer and so the knowledge of God. My prayer, so I take authority over it, I bring it into captivity. I do not let those thoughts cause me to say I’m not going to have what I pray. Never. I really work at that and it’s vitally important.

We know that the 2 key things in our fight with Satan, the most powerful forces on the face of earth are the name of Jesus because at that name it says in Philippians 2:10 that at that name every knee must bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. The other thing that’s critically important is to know the power in the blood. Know the power in the blood. Revelations 12:11 says the verse I quoted there. They overcame him by the blood of the lamb, by the blood of the lamb and the word of their testimony. We overcome him with the blood so we pray a bloodline hedge of protection around our prayer, around the people in our lives. We don’t do it with our prayers, I try to pray every day over my wife, my family, my kids, over my house, my cars, computers, everything that I own because I want good results with the life that I’m living as a Christian. Satan is trying to steal from me and I don’t want him stealing. I pray a bloodline hedge of protection. You should pray a bloodline hedge of protection also. If you want more information on the power in the blood, please give me your email and I’ll send you more information because that is a big deal. I teach everybody in our church how to pray a bloodline hedge of protection. It is critical.

Let me tell you something that will stop your prayers cold and that is strife and offense. If you get in strife, the bible says that in James 3:16, where there’s strife there’s confusion in every evil work. We don’t want that. Why? Because we don’t want strife in our life. If you get in strife, you’re likely to be offended. If you’re offended, then you’re going to be taking captive, 2 Timothy 2:26 says if you stay in offense, if you get in unforgiveness, or bitterness, or hatred you’ll be taken captive by Satan and do his will. If you’re taken captive by Satan, you can’t have your prayers answered. Please, please, please make it a number 1 thing. Keep short accounts with people. When something happens to me and I get offended, I try to within 30 seconds to a minute to 2 minutes say they didn’t know what they were doing, I forgive them, and I cut the power of unforgiveness, I cut the power, I wipe out offense, I put it under the blood. You’ve got to do that too because that will stop your prayers cold. Absolutely will stop God from being able to answer your prayers. Remember Jesus said we’ve got to forgive, 70 times said that.

He also said don’t hold on to unforgiveness because then you will not be forgiven. You can see why we need to forgive. The other thing is that Satan can not just do whatever he wants. He’s got to have our agreement to do what he gets done in our lives. We need to recognize that Satan can’t do whatever he wants. We empower him with our words. The power of life and death is in the tongue. We’ve got to keep our mouth operating with what we want, not what we don’t want. Strife and unforgiveness will cause us real problems. Here let me say this because this is vitally important. If we don’t have our prayers answered, it’s not God’s fault. It’s always our fault. It’s not God’s fault, it’s always our fault. Why? Because God said that he would give us the petitions we asked for. He said if we ask anything in Jesus name, God will do it if it’s his will and we do all the other things. It’s critical we recognize it’s never God’s fault.

Today, we really want you to know, I want you to know, that you have an opportunity to have every prayer answered. You can have every prayer answered, but you may take some time. Don’t be surprised. If you pray something like I pray which is I wanted to help the people in the body of Christ in their spirit, in their soul, in their body, relationally and financial by they way that’s on our website, you may want to go to that and just recognize that you may want to prosper in all of those 5 areas. That’s what I want. I believe that’s the abundant life. If I can prosper, if I can have great results in my relationships, great results in my emotional healing, great results in my relationship with God, great results in my body, and great results in my finances, I’m doing pretty good. Prayer is the bottom line key to getting those results, but we can’t get those results unless we know what to do. That’s why I’ve taken the time today to help you to know what to do so that every prayer can get answered.

Give me your email, tell me when you send me an email I want more information about the blood, I want more information about the power of our forgiveness, I want more information about having every prayer answered. I’ll send it to you. If you are seeing this video on Vimeo or Youtube then please come to joystone.org that’s our website. If you are recognizing by now that you’re going to joystone.org and it’s not up, recognize it’s under construction. I’m hoping to have it launched by the end of August and we’re excited about that. We’re going to be available to help you. I’ll be back on the radio in the weeks to come. I’ll let you know when the website’s launched and you’ll have a great opportunity to have every prayer answered. I love it when I have red marks that tell me those prayers are being answered.

We need to know what to do and how to do it because it’s going to be a key to us having that abundant life. It’s going to be a key for us to be able to have all that God wants for us. God wants for us great things and so he wants for us. Jesus went to that cross so that we can have that abundant life. Remember John 10:10 says the thief comes but to steal, kill, and destroy. I have come to give you life and life more abundantly. We want the abundant life and we’re going to have the abundant life when we know how to pray.