Pray

Pray like Jesus prayed

We have to pray the way Jesus and all the people of God prayed in the Bible if you want results. Don’t do things the way you were taught by people, do what the Bible says. Faith is very important, as I have written about in many previous posts on this blog.

Speak it out loud

Jesus is our example. He was 100% man and 100% God. Since he was completely man he was our example. Our goal is to be like him. He prayed quite a bit differently than most Christians today pray. The disciples prayed like he did, they spoke out a command and people were healed. The prophets in the Old Testament also prayed like this, they spoke commands. He taught all his followers to pray this way, including you and me.

Matthew 17:20 Jesus said: “Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” My note—it may take months to develop this kind of faith. Memorizing Bible verses on faith and repeating them daily helps a lot. I have written other blog posts on this topic.

Notice that Jesus said you must make a command and say “Move from here to there.”

Jesus healed a leper by saying “Be clean.” Luke 5:13. Jesus commanded the illness to leave. He spoke out a command.

Luke 4:39 Jesus spoke to the fever “So he bent over her and rebuked the fever, and it left her. She got up at once and began to wait on them.” Jesus was not talking to God, he was talking to the fever.

Luke 7:14 Jesus said “Young man get up!” and a man was healed. Notice Jesus spoke out a command, he was showing us how to pray for people. His followers did the same thing in the book of Acts.

In Luke 8:53 Jesus spoke a command to cause a child to come back to life. “They laughed at him, knowing that she was dead. ⁵⁴ But he took her by the hand and said, “My child, get up!”

Some prayers are just talking to God, but the kinds of prayers the followers of Jesus prayed for healing were not just talking to God. They gave a command that sickness leave the body of the person they were talking to. Acts 3:6 “In the name of Jesus, get up and walk!” Acts 14:10, Paul told a lame man “Stand up on your feet!”

Notice Peter spoke out a command in Acts 9:40 “Peter sent them all out of the room; then he got down on his knees and prayed. Turning toward the dead woman, he said, “Tabitha, get up.” She opened her eyes, and seeing Peter she sat up.”

The disciples spoke out a command and a man was struck blind to help him understand the power of God. Acts 13:11 “Now the hand of the Lord is against you. You are going to be blind for a time, not even able to see the light of the sun.”

Matthew 21:19 Seeing a fig tree by the road, he went up to it but found nothing on it except leaves. Then he said to it, “May you never bear fruit again!” Immediately the tree withered.

Jesus commanded a storm to subside. Luke 8:24 He got up and rebuked the wind and the raging waters; the storm subsided, and all was calm. Jesus spoke to the storm.

Be like Jesus, not people

God spoke the world into existence. The spoken word is very powerful. Jesus is our example, when we follow him, great things happen.

The word “Christian” means little Christ, we are to copy him. Jesus loved so we love. Jesus helped people, so we help people. As a Christian, our goal is to be like Christ, which means to do what he did, pray like he prayed.

James 5:17 “Elijah was a human being, even as we are. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years.” What this is saying is that Elijah was a person just like us, and so were the Apostles. What  this verse is saying is that we all have power in prayer. In fact, we have the Holy Spirit living in us even more than Elijah did, so we should be able to do more than he did.

John 14:12 Jesus said “I tell you the solemn truth, the person who believes in me will perform the miraculous deeds that I am doing, and will perform greater deeds than these, because I am going to the Father.” What Jesus is saying is that we should copy him and we will do what he was doing, if we have faith. To copy him means to pray as he told us to pray, and pray as he did.

Luke 11:2 Jesus is telling them to say “Your will be done on earth as in heaven” which is a command that God’s will be done here on earth. The KJV shows this very well. I always thought it was strange to make the two commands “Your kingdom come, your will be done” when I was a child. We are not commanding God to do anything, that is for sure. But even in the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus tells us to make commands.

God’s will

2 Cor 12:9 God may not answer all our prayers, if we pray for something God doesn’t want, it won’t happen. The term “thorn in the flesh” was used a number of times in the OT and every single time it was used, it meant bad people causing trouble to good people (certainly not sickness). Paul would use it the same way because he memorized much of the OT. So there will always be bad people being bad to good people. The problem is too many people give up and quit praying because they believe what they are asking for is not God’s will, but that may not be the case. God promised Abraham many descendants, but it too a long time for the promise to come about. Abraham could have decided children were not God’s will because it took so long to come about. Don’t give up when you pray! Luke 18:1 says that we should always pray and not give up.

Luke 22:42 So certainly we are supposed to ask or command only in God’s will. Jesus said earlier that he came to earth to die on the cross, so he knew God’s will. I am certainly not saying we should pray-declare anything against God’s will.

Phil 4:6, ‘Be anxious for nothing, but in everthing by prayer and *supplication*, with thanksgiving, make your *requests* known to God. Some might say that we only ask God for things in prayer, but when you read the four Gospels and Acts, you see this is not the case.Jesus taught all his followers to make commands in prayer, not just the 12 apostles. Even the 72 who were sent out were taught to pray this way, you can tell by what they said after they returned. I agree there are different kinds of prayers, sometimes we are asking God for things, that is for sure.

After visiting many different churches and seeing many different people pray, I have found that the declare-prayer gets much better results than saying “Lord if it is your will, will you heal somebody.”