Why Pray?

What’s my authority in decision?

The LORD has an amazing plan for our individual lives.  Many believers search in bewilderment for years, waiting on an explicit direction about God’s “will” issued to them.  Surprisingly, the Christian life is not centered upon our talents and how we can use them for Jesus.  This is beneficial, but it is merely secondary.

The hope of our calling is found in intimacy with Jesus Christ, and the forthright path to the knowledge of God through His Son is by a lifestyle of prayer and worship (Matt 22:37-39; Eph 1:17-19).  Regardless of external circumstances, every individual was created to be a holy, passionate lover of Jesus and an intimate partner in executing His plans on the earth.  We believers govern or reign with God by intercession (asking through prayer), and from the place of our steadfast request, we receive what the LORD earnestly longs to give us (Jas 4:2; Isa 30:18-19).  God delights in listening to our cries and in fascinating our hearts through answering.

From Genesis to Revelation, God has chosen intercession as the primary means for mankind to rule with Him.  The best example is found in the Person of Christ, being the Son of God, yet humbling Himself in the form of a Man as the Son of David to be High Priest.  Everything Jesus has done, is doing now, and will do forever is in absolute submission to His Father and most always executed from the place of His intercession (Ps 2:8, 110:4; Heb 7:25; Jn 5:19, Jn 14:10).  This does not negate Jesus’ authority as the express image of God, but rather shows evidence of how God Himself has chosen to orchestrate His kingdom authority.  We must ask because God desires a voluntary partner!

In today’s American Church, many believers have attained a casual, false confidence in “trusting” that God will move and everything, whether great or small, will just happen to come to pass, regardless of the influence of our involvement.  In all meekness, I assert that this presumption is a non-Biblical paradigm of the operation of the kingdom of God.

From the foundation of the world, God has sworn partnership by giving humanity free will in the dominion over the earth (Gen 1:28, Psalm 8:5-6, 115:16). Therefore, man has the right to either delegate his authority to God or Satan.  Can man dethrone God?  Certainly not!   But when man exalts sin and disobedience by intentional choice in the natural, demonic angels are shifted in the heavenlies and are established in power (Lk 4:6, Jn 8:48).   When mankind partners in a corporate agreement with God’s righteousness and justice, the supremacy of the earth is given to His kingdom order (Matt 6:10, Ps 89:14).

No kingdom can be established without a welcoming, submitted body of support.  This life is not a practice game.  We cannot do God’s part, and He will not do our part.

God and Government

I have been advised on numerous occasions to never openly speak about religion or politics with another.  However, when considering the Lord’s deep enjoyment in partnership with humanity, I have inevitably changed my heart to a bold confidence in the earnest expectation of God’s eternal inheritance in us and vice versa.  I pray that my political perspectives do not damper anyone’s faith – but rather exhort us all to hope in the eternal reward through Jesus Christ.

GOD AND GOVERNMENT

God has forever intertwined government and intimacy.  Contrary to popular opinion today, I believe government cannot exist outside of communion with God.  My rationale is contextually simple and is thus summed in one sentence.  There is absolutely no good within man apart from God.  Humanity is inherently depraved and overtly sinful, decaying every succeeding generation and even their own land (Ps 16:2, Isa 54:6).  Despite countless, successive attempts, there can never be one, social institution with any sense of perfection in harmony (Justice) by removing sovereign God for the promotion of an imperfect man.  This helps to explain why God has historically wrestled to consecrate Israel (and all the other nations) as a prophetic kingdom and not a man-appointing political administration.  It’s not that God despises kings (1 Tim 6:15, Isa 33:22, Zec 14:9); He hates rebellion against Himself through ordained authority.

“Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah, and said to him, ‘…Now make us a king to judge us like all the nations.’ But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, ‘Give us a king to judge us.’ So Samuel prayed to the Lord. And the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Heed the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you; for they have rejected Me, that I should not reign over them.’ ” (1 Samuel 8:4-7)

At the beginning of Creation, the first assignment God gave Adam in the garden constituted the choice of how to rule the earth – whether by communion with God (intimacy through intercession) or by the consideration of knowledge (personal judgment of propriety).  With perfect leadership, God commanded all blessing and liberty while still presenting us a free alternative in how to exercise our ordained dominion, inasmuch as His decree decided not which choice we should make but that we should be permitted to make it.

“Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.’ ” (Genesis 2:15-17)

In all humility, it is my conviction that “we the people” have poorly judged to remove God by severing Church and State.  Six thousand years of humanity’s testimony showcases that all our labors apart from God is cursed with toil and fruitlessness.  Even today, claims are brought spitefully before national councils against our present values and future of dependency in the Lord.  When briefly examining our forefathers and the Anglican Church, I sincerely agree that the English citizens were wrongfully oppressed into bondage through the Church.  That is no dispute.  Any lawful infliction in the name of the Spirit of God will utterly destroy men’s hearts and fail social infrastructure because it voids God’s eternal decree of decision (Gal 2:3-5).  However, I more boldly assert that intimate fellowship, flowing from the place of encounter with Jesus and His law will produce loving, governmental justice in a corporate people.  We must cast off oppressive restraint and implement the law of fascination for the Son of God to the forefront of executive decision (Mt 22:27-40; Isa 11:3-5; Hag 2:7).  Until then, our cheapened humanitarian ideologies of freedom, excellence, and peace will contagiously stray an arising generation of young adults from Him who is Wonderful.

THE END OF THE STORY

As we witness the ever-increasing declination of morality, we each grievously question in our lives, “What man’s leadership is actually capable of accomplishing the feat of true, universal justice?” (Rev 5:4)  Yet from before the foundations of the world, God predestined in Himself the redemptive purpose for corrupted government.  God determined to become a Man.  With unrelenting desire, Jesus Christ marched valiantly unto the depths of the crossbeam and is now resurrected at the right hand of the Almighty, chiefly that His  beloved and redeemed might parade into the heights of kingship with Him from His eternal city Jerusalem.  The government of God is coming down to the earth in unhindered, manifold demonstration.  Every sphere of life both visible and invisible will be brought together as one in Him for all generations, as He is the embodiment of the centerpiece of human destiny (Isa 9:7, Mt. 6:10, Eph 1:8-9, Jn 1:51).

“And they sang a new song, saying: ‘You are worthy to take the scroll, and to open its seals; for You were slain, and have redeemed us to God by Your blood out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and have made us kings and priests to our God; And we shall reign on the earth,’ ” Revelation 5:9-10