40 Days of Prayer and Fasting 2006 - Day 28

Focus: Praying According to God’s Will
By Andre Cronje, Anastasis

Scripture Reference:

“If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you” (John 15:7).

“You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions” (James 4:3).

Devotional:

Commenting on the above Scripture from James, Richard Foster in his classic book Celebration of Discipline writes the following:

“To ask ‘rightly’ involves transformed passions. In prayer, real prayer, we begin to think God’s thoughts after Him; to desire the things He desires, to love the things He loves, to will the things He wills. Progressively, we are taught to see things from His point of view.”

The most effective prayers are those that are birthed in the knowing of His will. To know God’s will, His Word needs to abide in us. His Word is the revelation of divine truth, so the more of His Word that abides in us, the more we know His will. It also involves listening to that still, small voice of the Holy Spirit. Soren Kierkegaard once observed, “A man prayed, and at first he thought prayer is talking to God. But he became more and more quiet until in the end he realized that prayer is listening to God.”

Knowing God’s will does not come naturally. It is a learning process through regular meditation on His Word and learning to recognize His voice clearly. It starts by having the faith that God truly desires to reveal His perfect will to us, if we are willing to seek it with all our hearts.

“I am the ground of thy beseeching; first, it is My will thou shalt have it; after, I make thee will it; and after I make thee to beseech it and thou beseechest it. How should it then be that thou shouldst not have thy beseeching?” —Juliana of Norwich

Prayer Points:
* Ask God to give us the grace and the faith to keep on growing in the knowledge of His will (for us personally, as well as corporately).

* Ask God to transform our passions in alignment with His passions

* Pray out Scripture over different aspects of the kingdom as you feel led—personal lives, Mercy Ships, etc.

* Pray now for those things (personal and corporate) that we are still trusting God for and that we know are truly His will.