Everywhere I go people are praying. And often people say how can I pray more efficiently? And often the problem is not prayer. You have to understand that when we pray, God does not hear our words, God hears our hearts. So choosing better words, or more efficient words would not make any difference in our prayers. God made prayer so easy a child could do it. You see, God hears our hearts when we pray and not the words of our mouths. You can say all the right words with your mouth, and have the wrong thing in your heart and God will hear your heart instead of your words.
Jesus said:
Matthew 15:8 These people draw near unto me with their mouth, and honor me with their lips; but their heart is far from me.
A change of heart, repentance, a purification of your priorities and love as your motive are a few of the ways to make your prayers more effective because these are the things that perfect and purify your heart. But even beyond prayer there are processes that we have to go through that helps us find God's provision in our life. Look at the life of Esther, her help from God started with fasting and prayer, and it was manifested through a process of events that eventually brought her before the KING to request a pardon for her life and the life of her people.
Prayer is the first step in receiving from God. The children of Israel cried out to God while they were in slavery and the Lord heard and sent them a deliverer, Moses. From their initial prayers to the crossing of the Red Sea all the way to the crossing of the Jordan River there were test and trials to walk through.
Moses went up on the mountain for 40 days. He went to hear from God. It was a time when they were entering into a rest. Those who wait upon the LORD will renew their strength. Moses went up the mountain with the two tablets. God spoke to him face to face. His face was transfigured and began to shine. He was having an experience with God. I don't imagine any of us would have wanted to come down off of that mountain if we had been Moses. Yet, there came a time when the Lord spoke to him to come down off the mountain, the people had sinned.
The LORD wanted to destroy them all, but Moses interceded, and God changed his mind. But what went wrong? Why did they make a golden calf and worship it?
Exodus 32: 1And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, who shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we know not what has become of him.
It was the delay. I want to ask you today what do you do when God delays? What do you do when God wants to take a Sabbath? What do you do when it is time to rest? What do you do when things are moving slower than you thought? What do you do when you wonder if you have been abandoned by God? What do you do when it looks like your time table is being broken by God's plan?
Do you rush past the delay and take matters into your own hand, like a plan B? Do you sit and worry and stir up anxiety and refuse to take a Sabbath? Do you refuse to rest and get up and plan and project and move right on with your golden calf? Do you try to speed things up by pushing for another direction and another plan? Moses was the leader, he went up on the mountain to enter into a rest, a Sabbath from leadership so he could hear from God, but what did the people do? They decided they would go on with the program. They had no interest in a rest. They had no interest in seeking God. Someone else rose up to lead them, someone that God had not appointed. They said "we don't know about Moses, what has happened to him?' This is what happens when people are going to rise up and do their own thing, first they cast shadows of doubt on the leadership that God instituted for their lives, and then they appoint someone else to rise up, who they readily follow.
Instead of this mountain experience being the greatest blessing of Moses life, a rest, an experience with God that made his face shine, a spiritual height, it turned out to be one of the most frustrating and emotionally disturbing times of Moses' life.
Prayer is more than just praying and then receiving. There is a process of faith, trust, waiting, rest, patience, obedience and many other actions that must take place to see the hand of God move in your life. I've been teaching on prayer for some time now, I've been trying to get people to look past the box and realize that prayer is only the first step in receiving your provision from God.
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