Prayer Warrior

2. God's Will

Once I established the inescapable fact that God's Word is true and that I now belonged to Him by virtue of my repentance and belief that God's Son died in my place to pay for my sins, I recognized that along with His many blessings came obligations. If I am committed to following Jesus as my Lord, there are certain expectations that come along with that relationship.

Prayer is the chief means by which we access God's throne of grace. He prepares our hearts and minds for our eternal citizenship in His kingdom. As I have shared in the Prayer Card section of this book, the kingdom of heaven is the reign of God in a person's life. This kingdom life has already started in the heart of every believer. We have immediate and continual access to God's heart and ear, to both receive His incredible wisdom and love, as well as the privilege to bow before Abba Father and pour out our hearts and needs before Him.

But there are very distinct guidelines regarding this prayer life, just as there are for nearly every other aspect of our walk with Him. In 1 John 5:14 we read, "And this is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us." Did you catch that? What in the world does "according to His will" mean? If God's Word is His love letter to us, and it is true; and it is our obligation before Him to "pray without ceasing" (1 Thessalonians 5:17), then apparently our Dad is trying to teach us something important here. Prayer has rules and He gets to set them!

How, I wondered, do I know whether my prayers are according to His will? Here is where this journey gets exciting. God is pleased to give us all the wisdom necessary to follow Him in obedience. So if I wanted to know how to pray according to His will, I needed to ask Him! This may sound silly or even hyper-spiritual, but over the course of three plus decades, I have learned to hear God's still quiet voice in my spirit. Usually, it is confirmed by His Word. This is crucial because the sad truth is that we are seriously flawed. "The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it" (Jeremiah 17:9)? Why would I trust my own heart to determine God's will?

He directed my attention to Jesus' strange interaction with Satan as described in Matthew 4. Jesus had been baptized by His cousin John and was directed by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. That particular event could take a whole year to study all by itself. However, what God directed me to notice was Jesus' strategy in resisting the temptation. Satan is a deceiver and the father of lies, so it is no surprise that he tried to misuse Scripture to cause Jesus to commit presumptuous sin. Presumptuous sin is committed deliberately, willfully and is born of pride and self-confidence. Satan even promised Jesus the world if He would worship him. Jesus could have called down angels, He could have petitioned His heavenly Father but He did something even more startling. He quoted Scripture to Satan! God's wisdom for victory over the devil's lies is found in the living Word. It sounds so simple, but what was the result?

"Then Jesus said to him, "Begone, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and serve Him only.’” Then the devil left Him; and behold, angels came and began to minister to Him" (Matthew 4:10-11).

There it is! The foolproof strategy for determining the will of God is to find the relevant Scripture and pray it back to our Heavenly Father. Whether the issue is spiritual warfare, confusion over important decisions, a health crisis, or a relationship that is about to implode, the answer is to follow Jesus’ model. Why is this so necessary? It is absolutely necessary because we are too flawed to have God’s perspective on our circumstances.

As you read through this book, I will discuss the balance between praying Scripture back to God and praying as David did, a man after God's own heart (Acts 13:22). My experience is that researching and using these Prayer Cards on a regular basis brings God's perspective to my worship as well as my prayer time and gives me peace in the storms of life.