“Afterward, when Jesus was alone in the house with His disciples, they asked Him, ‘Why couldn’t we cast out that evil spirit?’ Jesus replied, ‘This kind can be cast out only by prayer.” (Mark 9:28-29 NLT)
What do you consider the “greater work” of a Jesus follower? Casting out demons? Leading someone to the Savior? Healing the sick? Raising the dead? Speaking in an unknown language?
Each of those things demands faith, but is faith alone what fuels those activities of the Spirit? What grips the heart of God? What gets the Lord’s attention? Yes, of course, faith, but where does faith originate? According to Paul’s words in Ephesians 2:8 (NKJV): “For by grace you have been saved through faith.”
What does that mean? Grace is the unmerited favor of God, but grace alone doesn’t save us. Grace makes salvation available, but it must be activated by faith. What is faith? Faith is the exercising of our will to seek something that we deem valuable and worthwhile. But when it comes to faith in Christ, where does that faith originate? How is that faith activated? Appropriated?
There’s only one way: through believing, childlike prayer. God’s response to believing prayer casts out demons, enables someone to open their heart to Him, in essence, raising the dead to new life. Every faith-oriented goal of a believer originates and is launched through prayer.
No one is saved without prayer. No one is healed except through believing prayer. No one is sanctified without sacrificial and agonizing prayer. No one is called to Christian service, set apart for duty, save by the prayers of the righteous. No one stands (or should stand) behind the sacred desk to deliver God’s anointed messages to God’s people unless bathed in prayer.
As Oswald Chambers so rightly says: “Prayer does not fit us for the greater work; prayer is the greater work.“ Nothing of eternal value happens in the Kingdom of God unless and until it first originates in the heart of God and is accessed by believing prayer. We can spout words into the air day and night, but until our words align with the will and plans of God, we’ve babbled in vain.
Remember how Jesus prayed before Lazarus was raised from the dead: “Father, thank You for hearing Me. You always hear Me, but I said it out loud for the sake of all these people standing here, so that they will believe You sent Me.” (John 11:41b-42)
We want to believe that “we can ask anything in Jesus’ name” as we’re told in John 14:13, and we can, but unless that “anything” will bring glory to the Father, it’s empty and void of power. What brings glory to the Father? Faith activated by believing prayer, the kinds of prayers Jesus prayed.
The work of prayer is seeking the Father in quietness and solitude that the fruit of our relationship with the Him and the glory of His Holy Name can be made manifest in and through our lives. We don’t pray to get what we want; we pray to glorify the Father as He gives us what He wants. He wants to glorify His Son in and through our life the way He put His power on display so often in and through the life of His Son.
We can’t use prayer to make a name for ourselves, but only and always to exalt the Name that is above every name, the Name of our Lord Jesus. The work of prayer is bringing death to our old nature and allowing the resurrection of the new nature of our Savior to become preeminent in the ways we honor and glorify Him, not ourselves. Then when we pray, we’ll get what we really want – whatever the Lord wants for us!
Food for thought.
Blessings, Ed 😊
Walking With Jesus 