The main reason for prayer is intimacy – let’s not miss that. Prayer is also important for alignment and agreement. Prayer is a technology by which we agree with what God has predestined in our lives, and it gives God the legitimacy to align us for its manifestation. Let me tell you a story: My boss issued the printer on Friday, but the lights were out, and the printer was off. When I came to work on Monday and turned on the printer, guess what? The command was issued, and the printouts came. Then I caught the revelation.
I can submit my requests before God, no matter the season. When the set time comes and the gates are opened, my requests will become a reality. It doesn’t matter how long it takes…as long as that command has been issued, it will come to pass. Just as printers are so stubborn that once you issue the command, it will continue to print even while you try to stop it, that answer to your prayer cannot be stopped.
My dear, no prayer made according to the Will of God goes to waste. You made a petition to an Eternal God who remains the same generation after generation. This is the Kindness of God. He gives us more than we ask for, and gives us all that we ask for in His Name so that we lack no good thing. This technology is not only for things. It is for everything in God. Anything God can give by His Omnibenelovence, you can ask according to His Will.
In Revelation 6, we see martyrs in Heaven reminding God of their prayers. No prayer according to His Will falls to the ground. It may not come to pass while you’re alive, but it shall all surely come to pass. The LORD told me, “There comes a season where every seed you have sown in prayer will bear fruit in its season. Sow more seedlings“. Let God send His angels ahead of you; pray for your children’s children. Pray for your future. Pray for your children’s marriage. Be proactive in prayer; don’t wait for something to go wrong or be missing before you react in prayer.
If I had known that prayer had this technology, I would have started praying at the age of 3. It’s not too late. Pray ahead. Let your prayers go ahead of you. Pray for your children’s workplaces. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have children now. Pray for your retirement. You can pray ahead of time. Every effectual fervent prayer of the righteous shall come to pass. Every single one of them. Agree with God with what He wants done in your life and in the earth, and behold His faithfulness in answering when you call.
You may not know this but you’re walking in the prayers of old. About one-fifth of the Bible is prayer. Many if not all directly apply to you. You can take it as a receipt, send it before God and cash out. After that, you put in as many requests as possible so you can continually cash out always at all times. In fact, the measure of the supernatural in your life is directly proportional to your prayer input.
Before we move on to corporate altars, there is the need to realise the need for continuous prayer.
Praying Regardless of Seasons
If you pray only when there are problems, problems become the reason why you pray fervently. At a point, the enemy will realise and will now make sure you have no pressing problems. That has been the end of many people’s need for God. God is not relevant because there are problems. God is relevant because He created us and we depend on Him for everything.
Attend to your altar. Whether you’re full or hungry, fit or tired, strong or sick, in good times or in bad times, one thing that shouldn’t change is your prayer. When we wait for problems to overwhelm us before we become serious in prayer, our prayer life will be seasonal. Whenever you’re full, pray. When you’re prospering, pray. Whether you break through, pray. When you make it, pray.
Whereas there are people who give up on God when there are good times, some also give up on God when things become overwhelmingly hard. However, the one who yields to the training of the Holy Spirit will soon become immovable and unshakable throughout the ups, downs, twists and turns of life. If you stop praying, the anxieties will come back; you’ll doubt God; you’ll fall into sin afresh; your life will be stagnant; your relationship with God will dwindle; your life will feel miserable even if you prosper.
Consecration in the Midst of Corruption
We live in a foreign world where bad apples corrupt good apples but good apples cannot turn bad apples good. If a leper touches you, you become unclean. Thus, consecration in the Levitical order was to make sure one is not defiled by any indulgence with evil. I ask myself how Daniel could survive Babylon. Daniel prayed three times; 9am during the morning sacrifice, 12 noon and 3pm during the evening sacrifice. That is practically how he was able to remain blameless in the midst of evil Babylon. We are talking about someone living in the Old Testament.
This is a cold world. It’s like being in a fridge. It’s only a matter of time until you become cold by conforming to the systems of this world. However, the technology of prayer practically connects our minds and realities to God, the One to whom we belong. It’s like being connected to an electric stove while still in the fridge. Although we are in the world, we are not of this world. Therefore, we don’t look to the world, nor do we conform to it. Soon, the fire on our altar begins to affect the temperature of the fridge.
When Jesus came on the scene, He could touch lepers and make them whole. Instead of He becoming corrupted, the corrupted rather became whole. It was by prayer before dawn that He performed miracles during the day. There was never a day Jesus started without having prayed. Prayer is making effective use of the fellowship with the Father. It is by prayer that we download spiritual realities into physical possibilities. By prayer, we remain hot in a cold world. Show me a prayerless Christian, and I’ll show you that that one is no different from a carnal Christian.
Praying God’s Agenda
As you pray, you begin to download prayer points. I know at the beginning, you really have to fight off distractions that come in the form of imaginations. How we deal with that is by being fully involved in the prayer. Put your focus, your attention, your heart, your mind into the prayer. That’s the fervency. Any prayer that doesn’t move you will not move anything. Putting your mouth on autopilot while you allow your imagination to roam all over the place is not fervent prayer. If you forget that you’re even praying, although your mouth is moving and making sounds, you’re not involving yourself.
Once you’re able to fully engage, the imaginations don’t go away. Rather, God begins to use your imaginations to draw your attention on what to pray about. Allow the Spirit to move, and pray in all those directions. If you come to God with your issue, God will use you to deal with many other issues and still answer you in the end so don’t worry. Don’t play stubborn with God and rather bow to your situation. Don’t insist on what you want to do with God and rather allow your circumstances to have its way. God is not your problem so please don’t treat Him as such.
You Cannot Control God
Don’t give God timelines. Don’t command God. If you want to be angry, be angry at the problem. Insist that your situation changes. In your mind, you want to pray for 3 days and everything will change. Meanwhile, God is looking at the bigger picture and wants to solve problems you’re not even aware of. Be flexible with God. Abraham waited 25 years. Joseph waited 13 years. David waited 15 years to be king. Jesus waited 30 years to start His ministry. God already has His own way. As for God, His Way is perfect. If you surrender to His Way, He will make your way perfect.
At the beginning, you can set your own time for prayer. You can even choose how long you want to pray. However, with time, the Holy Spirit would want you to do certain things His way. Don’t insist on yours. If He wakes you up at night to pray, don’t say you can pray in the morning. When He tells you to make the 3-day fast 5 days, don’t say He should have said it earlier. If He wants you to break the fast at 3pm rather than the 12pm you planned, please listen. Every prayerful person receives instructions. Usually, it’s simple simple instructions. If you don’t obey, your prayer will not promote you.
It’s not about taking pride in how long you pray. It’s about loving God and obeying His commandments. As you attend to your altar, it is by that same altar that you’ll receive feedback from Heaven. It doesn’t have to be dramatic but it has to be taken seriously. Whatever little assignment you receive, you will be given enough grace to perform it. That is how God builds us and removes all the insufficiencies of our soul, hasty desires of our flesh and conforms us to the Image of His Son. Enjoy the process. There’s no destination. It is an eternal exercise.
Today, we are going to go through the practical ways for thy Kingdom to come into a territory so that the Will of the LORD will be done just as it is in Heaven. Last week, we fully got to understand that God has a role to play and we have ours to play. Such an understanding can cause a major shift in our prayer lives because when it comes to areas where we can take action, we will rather pray to God for instructions instead of praying for Him to do it.
Is there witchcraft in your family? Is occultism taking over your territory? Perhaps, you’re abroad and the place is so dark you barely even find another person in the Kingdom of Light. There is a technology to uproot darkness from the land, so Light will rest on the land. There are so many examples in the Scriptures already. I have discussed this under the Gideon Strategy and also the Deborah Strategy. For today, I am going to lay the entire process bare so that with God, what looks impossible will become possible. You’re not small at all. You alone can light up the world.
Personal Altar
The first thing to do is to set up your personal altar. This is why many believers lose contentions and lose grounds. They come with blood sacrifice and you come with the Blood of Jesus. They come in the name of their gods like Goliath, but you come in the Name of the LORD of Heaven’s Armies like David did. However, when it’s now altar vs altar, the Christian has no altar. Ow! In the Tabernacle of Moses, there were two altars. The bronze altar at the outer court is the Altar of the Cross, which gives you access into courts of God in the first place. However, the priest has a personal altar in the Holy Place.
This altar was not for blood. The priests performed all the blood sacrifices on the bronze altar. Hebrews 9:12-14 informs us that the Blood of Christ is the best and that we need no other blood. Our personal altar is for incense. Not physical incense like in the Old Testament. Revelations 5:8 makes us understand that our prayers are the incense. Psalm 141:2 confirms that. I know you pray. However, there’s a way to attend to the altar. One is the fact that the altar needs to be serviced daily. Also, there are specific times it needs to be serviced.
Prayer Watches
God taught the priesthood He established in Leviticus to keep the fire on the altar burning continually forever. Also, there were times in the day when it was serviced. That’s what the Bible calls watches. See, when Jesus said “watch and pray”, He wasn’t only saying watch as in look. I know you pray, but praying only when you feel like it is dangerous. That means when you don’t feel like it, you won’t pray. Praying only when it’s a corporate meeting is also dangerous. That means you have no personal altar. To pray continually on your personal altar, have specific times you have intentionally set aside to pray. Pray at the watches. What are the watches? There are 4 watches in the day and 4 watches in the night. 12am, 3am, 6am, 9am, 12pm, 3pm, 6pm and 9pm. These were the watches from the Old Testament into the New.
6am – Mark 1:35, Psalm 55:17
9am – Acts 2:15, Mark 15:25
12pm – Acts 10:9, Psalm 91:6, Acts 22:6, John 4:6
3pm – Acts 3:1, Acts 10:30, Luke 23:44-46, Mark 15:34
One thing you’ll realise in these verses too, is that these are mostly the times God makes an intervention in the earth. These are the times marked for encounters for many also. If you don’t keep watch, you can easily miss seasons. It is a powerful thing to wake up at midnight to pray, for instance. Now that you know this, set an alarm and pray at these times. Start small and stay consistent. If you happen to be at school or work during your set time, pray within you. So you see how there’s no excuse to pray? You can pray for an hour everyday by simply praying for 10 minutes at 6 prayer watches. With time, the burden to pray will increase and you will pray till you are released. For now, start small.
What will you pray about? Speak in tongues. If you need prayer points, then pray Scripture-based prayers only, for now. Once you are consistent and Heaven knows they can rely on you for your quota, you will be given assignments as an intercessor. You will begin to pray for people who don’t even know you. Be sure to study Scriptures daily too, otherwise your prayers won’t change you. Every priest lives a consecrated life. Your life will literally be shaped by the altar as you dedicate yourself to attending the secret place of the Most High.
Next week, we will talk about how, with time, God will promote you to service your family altar and uproot many carcasses in your family practically. For now, don’t put aside what you have just realised. Act upon it. I will encourage you to read the Bible verses for the prayer watches. Don’t wait to set everything right first. Start today! Having a personal relationship with God and a personal prayer life is a must for every believer. It’s not for pastors alone. Start small and build. Before you realise, hearing God’s Voice, casting out devils and living an abundant life will become your new normal. For a Christian, the supernatural is our natural life.
