PRAY: GREAT THINGS ARE AFOOT

Never stop praying. – 1Th 5:17 (GW)

Why should we Pray, Again?

Because No two prayers are the same, and no prayer is useless.

Contrary to popular perception, Heaven does not own a Voicemail; your past prayers are not in some storage device somewhere; they are before God’s very own eyes.

It also does not operate a switchboard; no angel is telling you to hold on while your prayer is being transferred. Your call goes directly to the Father.

Daniel was an Old Testament saint. Yet the Angel Gabriel told him, “At the very moment you started praying, I was sent to give you the answer.” (Dan 9:23 CEV). Why then should we, living under the New Covenant, imagine our prayers are just being filed away by some bureaucratic angels?

Prayer is the primary mechanism with which God uses to bring about change in our individual and corporate universe. Every time you pray, something happens. It’s like the constant chopping of the axe to a tree. It’s not the last swing that brings it down, it’s the accumulated force of all the previous blows.

The same is true of rain clouds. Ecclesiastes 11:3 says “If the clouds are full of rain, they empty themselves upon the earth:”

That’s why we need to Pray, Again. That tree must come down; that rain must fall. You don’t need to Perceive it to know it’s happening, Scripture only asks you to Believe it; (Mt 21:22).

Great things are afoot Beloved,

That turnaround is nigh,

That breakthrough is around the corner,

That miracle is about to burst upon your scene,

That challenge is about to be knocked down.

Let’s not give up now, let’s keep digging downwards with our knees; because in not many days hence, we shall descend into the goldmine of our expectations.

AMEN.

More Blessings await you today; you’ll not miss them in Jesus’ Name.

GREG ELKAN

KEEP THE FLAMES ALIGHT

Our Lord’s words, “Nevertheless when the Son of man comes, shall he find faith on the earth?” is often quoted in the context of Judgement Day or Rapture. However, it should interest us to know that Jesus said it with respect to Prayer!

The words are the end lines of the Parable of the Persistent Widow, (Lk 18:1-8), in which our Lord tells of a widow who harasses a judge until he decided to give her justice.

God is Omniscient. And the purpose of prayer is not to inform Him about your problem; it’s to stay and receive the solution to the problem.

Nevertheless, God’s not a short-order cook or a waiting butler; when He grants our requests He makes sure they’re all in line with His will, His Purpose and His timing for our lives and destinies. Sometimes it is we who need to be prepared for the miracle. And other times, the miracle is delayed by third parties: unyielding persons or even satanic interference.

What do we do in these waiting times? We keep the fire hot and the pressure on. In popular Pentecostal lingo, we P-U-S-H, i.e. we Pray Until Something Happens. We must keep the fire burning  because the solution is still coming.

 “Though it tarries,” declares Prophet Habakkuk, “wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not delay” (Hab 2:2). Observe, however, what Habakkuk teaches us as the appropriate response to the delay. He says, “I will stand upon my watch, and set myself upon the tower, and will watch to see what he will say unto me,” – Hab 2:1

That, beloved, is a picture of Prayer, (Our Lord equates prayer to “Watching”, e.g. Mt 26:40,41).

Therefore, no matter the amount of hours spent before in prayer, or the enormity of the challenge, keep the prayer flames alight; so that when your Master turns to you with your miracle, He’ll find you expectant, faith-filled, and READY.

AMEN.

Your June shall be filled with Testimonies in Jesus’ Name.

GREG ELKAN 

KEEP THE LINES CLEAR

Prayer is a very powerful tool in the hands of a Believer. It effectively brings the Omnipotence of Heaven to the realities of Earth. Our Lord describes the limitlessness of the scope of prayer when He declared, “ALL things, WHATSOEVER you shall ask in prayer, believing, you shall receive.” and earlier He said, “Everyone that asks receives”; (Mt 21:22; 7:8).

Unfortunately, we can’t really boast that that has always been our experience in prayer. While there are several reasons why prayers are unanswered or delayed one that bears note is the issue of forgiveness – the absence of it, that is.

In Mk 11:24 when our Lord said, “Whatever things you desire, when you pray, believe that you will receive them, and you shall have them,” He added a caveat:

And when you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against any.

Prayer is like a pipe that channels the power of Heaven down to us and supplies us with all that we desire in our lives. But when we hold grudges and withhold forgiveness to others while still praying, that pipe gets dirty and clogged up.

We see a similar situation in 1Peter 3:7 where the Apostle enjoins husbands to be respectful and understanding of their wives, “that your prayers be not hindered.”

Faith “works by love” (Gal 5:6), if we want to wield faith enough to move mountains, we must flush the pipes of all the impurities.

Apostle Paul’s charge to the Ephesian Brethren is just as valid to us today:

Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: And be you kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake has forgiven you. (Eph 4:31-32)

AMEN.

More Blessings await you today; you’ll not miss them in Jesus’ Name.

GREG ELKAN 

KEEP THE LINES OPEN

...What profit should we have, if we pray unto Him?” – Job 21:15

The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 is probably the closest humanity got to self destruction. It pitted the then two superpowers, the U.S. and the USSR, against each other over the instalment of nuclear missiles by the USSR on the island nation of Cuba, right at the doorsteps of the U.S. Through a series of miscalculations, missteps and miscommunications, both nations almost entered an all-out nuclear war where mutual destruction was the only outcome. 

Realising how dangerous non-communication was – even among enemies – both nations established what is now popularly called “the Red Hotline” – a direct communication link between the two world leaders that was to remain open at ALL times whether in peace or war.

Believers, too, in a petty, comical way, do have their seasons of hostility with God. We call it by several names: “backsliding”, “mood phase”, “season of dryness”, “wilderness experience”, etc. In all, it describes a time when the Believer – due to real or imagined issues – is offended at God and/or His people (the church). Of course, God is faithful and though we turn our backs on Him, He never turns His back on us (2Ti 2:13; 1Co 1:9).

Nevertheless, these seasons of isolation are dangerous times. The worst thing a Believer can do to themselves is to decide to stop talking to their Father in prayer. It may be because of an unimaginable loss, growing cynicism, depression, etc.; but whatever the reason is, cutting the line of communication is never the solution.

We do not live in a vacuum; whenever we take that course of action, the Tempter is given free rein to manipulate, harass and torment. Cut off from all spiritual nourishment, the ‘aggrieved” Believer will quickly dry up and become spiritually atrophied.

The Psalms should be our guide. They contain several ‘complaint prayers’ from the upset Psalmist to God. Rather than sit back and sulk, they took their grudges to Him in honest, frank prayers and praise.

Beloved, even 5 minutes of talk during your dry season will do more good than not talking at all. Don’t give the Enemy a chance to cause more destruction, Keep the Line Open.

AMEN.

More Blessings await you today; you’ll not miss them in Jesus’ Name.

GREG ELKAN 

LET US PRAY, AGAIN

And he prayed AGAIN, and the heavens gave rain, – Jas 5:18

If one were to poll the reason why Believers struggle to pray, the typical responses would be “carnality”, “laziness”, “sin”, “misplaced priorities”, “Social Media”, etc. Nevertheless, a cause for prayerlessness is one that doesn’t get mentioned a lot in Bible Study classes: i.e. Depression.

If the truth be told, not every Believer who skips Prayer Meetings is as carnal as we presume. Not every family that stops Morning Prayers do so because of the rush of modern life. And not every Believer who stifles a scoff when you said, “Let us pray” is backslidden.

It may surprise us that they probably were more prayerful than we are right now. Some were in the Church’s “Prayer Unit”, some had spent days in dry fastings, and others still had a reputation for praying for hours at a stretch by themselves.

But Life, cruel as it can sometimes be, has a way of dowsing the hottest flames. One loss here, a little disappointment there, a SUDDEN frustration that they’ve been praying for the same thing for years... and former Prayer Warrior becomes Cold Churchgoer.

Despondency happens to the best of us. It happened to Abraham, it happened to David, and it happened to Elijah. Nevertheless, whenever we find ourselves in such situation, we must do as they did. We must pray, AGAIN.

If Jesus’s prayer were answered the first time that He cried out in agony to God in Gethsemane, He wouldn’t have needed to pray again. But Mt 26:42 says He went away AGAIN THE SECOND TIME, AND PRAYED.

And even that was not sufficient enough, two verses later, He went away again, and PRAYED THE THIRD TIME, saying THE SAME WORDS.

Beloved, we have no other avenue of receiving spiritual grace, no other channel, no other route. If we presumed the solution to the problem was prayer back then, it is still the solution now. We mustn’t succumb to the lies and haunting pressures of the Devil.

Let us not be despondent. Let us Pray, AGAIN.

AMEN.

More Blessings await you today; you’ll not miss them in Jesus’ Name.

GREG ELKAN