The Road to Reality: Coming Home to Jesus from the Unreal World by K.P. Yohannan

Author:K.P. Yohannan [Yohannan, K.P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: GFA Books
Published: 2012-05-29T04:00:00+00:00

15

THE WORLD, THE FLESH, THE DEVIL

Prayer is not a new product to be marketed. Today we have prayer towers, prayer cloths, dial-a-prayer, live prayer lines, books, prayer letters, tapes, maps, diaries, prayer clocks, beads, charms and trinkets galore—but less real prayer than ever. There are endless seminars, workshops, retreats and courses on prayer. But the question must always be asked: Where is the Living God in the midst of these products and events?

It is not mere instruction and seminars that we need. Instead, we need men and women who will get on their knees and pray. Those who will do this, depending totally on the Living God, are the ones God will use to shake this generation. In his book Why Revival Tarries, Leonard Ravenhill cries out for reality in this critical area:

No man is greater than his prayer life. The pastor who is not praying is playing; the people who are not praying are straying. The pulpit can be a shop window to display one’s talents; the prayer closet allows no showing off.

Poverty-stricken as the Church is today in many things, she is most stricken here, in the place of prayer. We have many organizers, but few agonizers; many players and payers, few prayers; many singers, few clingers; lots of pastors, few wrestlers; many fears, few tears; much fashion, little passion; many interferers, few intercessors; many writers, but few fighters. Failing here, we fail everywhere.

We ... mistake action for unction, commotion for creation, and rattles for revivals.[1]

Too often, we equate learning about prayer with the real thing. For others, the promotion of prayer has eliminated prayer itself. What passes for prayer in these cases is more often the mindless activism that mistakes motion for life.

Prayer is not a management technique. The Christian calendar is crowded with so-called prayer meetings, 24-hour prayer chains, marches, vigils, nights-of-prayer, half-nights of prayer and a host of other prayer movements covertly designed to promote secondary causes.

Some of these are real. Others are merely used as a promotion technique by religious movements, sects and organizations.

Real prayer is spiritual warfare. It requires us to wrestle with the world, the flesh and the devil—overcoming in the power of His Spirit rather than in our own flesh and mind.

Therefore, the first requirement in prayer is that we come close to God. The more we sit at His feet and look into His eyes, the more our prayers will reflect His mind. Thus, the more we become like Him—the more reality there will be in our prayer lives. We must start to love the people and things He loves—and hate what He hates. As we go deeper into the heart of Jesus, we will pray according to His will because we will know His will.

How can we begin to cross this vital bridge to reality? How can we have a meaningful prayer life?

First, prayer must become priority one. Prayer always comes first in God’s timetable. We must reverse the process of modern thinking in order to discover spiritual reality.

In the natural, we begin with our needs and desires—the problems to be solved.

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