Praying God's Word [Part 2]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. Let it be unto me according to your Word. Let the whole scope of my life come into alignment with the promises that you have just made before me, and let every bit of this revelation be applied personally into my life. I fully accept it.

Let it be according to your Word. That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear today's message in the series called Praying with Power as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now. It can be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries.

As you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you today's special offer. Contact us at PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org, or call 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. More on that later in the program. But right now, let's get started with today's teaching in the series Praying with Power.

Here is Alan Wright. There are a number of ways in which you can have spiritual prayer. There's a thing in which the Holy Spirit prays in and through you, Paul says, with groans that are too deep for words. There's a way in which the Holy Spirit connects up with you and gives you revelation as you pray, and then you're praying things that are led therefore by a God-illumined mind. I mean, if you can learn to hook up to what God is saying, it has a prophetic kind of quality to it then, because now you're praying where you didn't know how to pray, but God is praying through you for specific things and specific ways and that's powerful. Praying in an unknown language, the spiritual language, what tongues is really is just spiritual language. That's one form of praying in the Spirit. And I know there's a lot of controversy about tongues and there's some that think that that ceased and this and that, but there's just nothing in the Bible that, you know, give evidence to that.

It's a good gift and it's one of the good gifts. But some people are confused and think it's the only way that you can pray in the Spirit. And they say, well, you know, some people have said to me, well, I want the gift of tongues and I haven't received it yet. Does that mean I can't pray in the Spirit?

No, of course not. There are many ways that you can hook up with God's Spirit. It's just to say that when Paul says pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kind of requests, he's saying, please don't let your prayer life just be fleshly. Don't let it just be something you just conjure up out of your own mind, something that's just soulish. See, the soulish prayer life is ineffective and at some points it's offensive, isn't it? I think I laughed a couple weeks ago. I said, you know, where it gets worse is where you're praying with somebody and they're just so into their own agenda and it just starts coming out, you know, that's just, Lord, just help my precious wife to clean up the house better than she is.

It's really been getting there. Not my wife, but I... It's just a soulish prayer. Can I just tell you, as long as we're just chatting, as long as we're just being honest, okay?

As long as we're just chatting. Can I just tell you another kind of prayer please don't do around me? And that's where you pray and you start telling the testimony while you're praying.

You know, that's not really... If somebody comes up to you and they've got a prayer need and then you start praying, Lord, please bless Frankie and just let him know that one time in my life I went through a similar thing. If you want to talk to me, just talk to me. But let's don't use our prayer life to just simply express our emotions or simply express our agenda of our own thoughts. It's not to say that it's not a place for just simply bringing what's on your heart and on your mind, just bring it to God.

You know, it's okay. But it's just if you want to hook into real prayer that's effective, then it's a spiritual prayer. Now, one of the best ways that you can pray in the Spirit is to take God's Word that the Bible itself says of God's Word, it says this in Timothy that all Scripture is God-breathed. In other words, all Scripture is filled with God's Spirit. When God speaks, now this is just metaphorically because God is Spirit and He doesn't have flesh like we do, but when we speak, breath comes out of our mouth and words are formed.

In the beginning God said let there be light and the Spirit of God was hovering over the deep. Everything that God does as He speaks, it is infused fully with His own Spirit. We don't understand about the power of words.

Oh, if we understood about the power of words. That words are filled with your breath. There's something of your Spirit that comes out into the words. You understand the word breath and Spirit are the same word in the Bible in both Old Testament and New Testament. In Hebrew and Greek, they're interchangeable and sometimes it's hard to tell how it should be translated. Should it be said breath? Should it be Spirit?

Because the analogy is so similar. So all of everything that God says is filled with His Spirit. So if you want to start by just, you've got plenty right here that you could pray and to pray a spiritual prayer. Because if you pray the Scripture, what you're doing is you're hooking up to God's own heart. You're hooking up your heart to God's own heart that's already been declared. He's already declared His Word and it's full of His Spirit. So I think it's one of those ways. Now I just want to point you there after one of the greatest prayers that's ever been prayed in Luke chapter 1.

I hadn't read it yet, have I? Okay. I'll tell you, you preach three sermons in a weekend, you can't remember after a while. You're just like, I don't know.

All right. Luke chapter 1 and verse 30, the angel Gabriel has come and now he says, Luke 1 verse 30, Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You'll be with child and give birth to a son and you're to give him the name Jesus. He'll be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever. His kingdom will never end.

How will this be? Mary asked the angel, since I'm a virgin. The angel answered, the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God.

Even Elizabeth, your relative, is going to have a child in her old age and she who is said to be barren is in her sixth month, for nothing is impossible with God. And then here's her prayer. I am the Lord's servant, Mary answered, may it be to me as you have said.

Literally, let it be unto me according to your word. Now, what has happened here is that Mary has encountered this vast, infinite, glorious presence and revelation of God through an angel that has appeared to her and announced to her that which she could have never imagined on her own. See, the Bible says that God is able to do exceedingly, abundantly, above and beyond all that you would ask or imagine. This is one of the reasons, again, Mary has encountered this vast, infinite, you would ask or imagine.

This is one of the reasons to get hooked up in spiritual prayer, because in your own mind, you will never dream up something as good as what God has already laid up for you. So if all you ever relied on was what you could think up, you're going to never hook up completely with what God's purposes are. You know that this Nazarene peasant girl was not going around praying and just hoping that maybe she'd be the mother of the Messiah.

No, she's just minding her business in Nazareth, collecting water with the other young girls, doing the daily things, and here comes this angel and announces this glorious revelation. Now, the first thing that happened was that her mind had a conflict with this, and that is the first thing that happens, especially when you're just young and starting to learn to hear from God. Your mind conflicts with it.

It doesn't make sense to your mind. How could this possibly be? How could this possibly be?

I'm not married. How could this be? So, God is patient, and he answers her soulish question. My mind doesn't understand this.

Now, just watch this. Isn't it interesting that, think about this, the response that she gets. Her mind, she's saying, my mind wants to make sense of this. And so the angel says, okay, I'll tell you what's going to happen, is the Most High God is going to overshadow you.

What's that mean? And then the Holy Spirit's going to come upon you. Well, how's that happen? And you're going to conceive a child in a supernatural way. Well, what, how's that going to happen? And this child will be the Son of God.

Well, thank you for clarifying that for me. It now all makes sense to me. She couldn't have had any more sense of what was going to happen after she heard all that. All the angel has done is just said, well, you want to know something about it? I'm going to tell you some kind of glorious miracle.

I'm going to rock your world right now. This is a revelation. There's no way you could comprehend what is getting ready to happen to you. And there was something inside of Mary. Maybe this is why he chose her. I don't, but there was something inside of Mary that she said, okay, enough with those kinds of questions. She said, I'm your servant.

That's Alan Wright. And we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Prayer as a Christian, you know, it's important and you want to make it a priority, but if you're like most, your prayer life can slip so easily into routine, lacking fervor and passion. Maybe you're wondering what is the key to praying with real power?

In Ephesians chapter six, the apostle Paul has a clear answer. Pray in the spirit. But what does it mean to pray in the spirit?

Some would say that Paul is referring only to the spiritual gift of a supernatural prayer language. But in Alan Wright's unique series, Praying with Power, Pastor Alan reveals five different ways of praying in the spirit. Discover how praying God's word is praying in the spirit. Learn how to listen to the spirit as you pray. Come to see Jesus as your prayer partner. It's practical.

It's powerful. Get Pastor Alan Wright's Praying with Power and discover the power of praying in the spirit. Change your prayer life and you'll change the world. When you make your gift to Alan Wright Ministries today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's messages through digital download as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support.

When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. I realize that I am in the presence of holiness. I realize I'm in the presence of the living God. And there is only one thing for me to do, and that is to yield myself to you. I'm your servant.

See, the person that learns to pray in the spirit learns to submit to God's presence. Let it be. I could have never in a million years dreamt up something like that. You are above and beyond and greater than anything I could ever have imagined. I wouldn't have even suggested to put those words in your mouth, God, but you have said them. And since you've said them, and here I am, I'll take it. Let it be unto me according to your word. Let the whole scope of my life come into alignment with the promises that you have just made before me. And let every bit of this revelation be applied personally into my life.

I fully accept it. Let it be according to your word. What I'm suggesting to you is, do you see how powerful it is to simply agree with God and connect up with His heart for what He already wants to do, and then to participate with Him in prayer by saying, yes, let it be. And that's the way God works in His world. You say, well, if God already wants to do it, what's my role in this thing?

Well, these things you can only understand by analogy and relationships. One of the first things that happens when you really get to know God is the Holy Spirit starts calling out Father through you to God. Because you start realizing, you know, He's not a spiritual force field that I just sometimes plug into when I need it. He's not a slot machine that I drop my tithe into and hope that I get something good. He's not just some ordering principles that you can put into a list of 10 things to do or not do.

He's a person. And He's my Father. And as my Father, I relate to Him. So if you think of the way children relate to their fathers, you know, the first thing they say is children are amazing at how they can claim promises to their parents. You don't have to teach a child to say, but you promised, do you?

It's just in them. And the reason that it is is because the child understands that he or she is powerless except for your promise. Come on, you see what I'm saying? It's like the only way, because I got no money, I can't drive a car, I got no influence here except to say you promised we were going to have ice cream. And I'm moved. I'm moved by that. Sinful earthly parent as I am, with all my moments of lack of integrity and not matching up my actions to my words, I am moved by a little eight-year-old girl that says, but you promised.

Now, how this thing works is very interesting because you think, why do we need to ask God to do something if it's already in His Word or in His heart to do? Well, things work like that. So Abigail, our eight-year-old, she loves animals. And we've got a beagle, and she's the main one that loves on that beagle. And of course my wife would claim that Abigail loves the beagle, but my wife claims she takes care of the beagle.

But it's not altogether true. There are just certain things that I don't do with the beagle. I don't put drops in the ears.

But anyway, there's certain lotions that have to be applied to occasional times I don't apply to certain places. But I help with the beagle. Abigail loves the beagle, but she wants something else that she can just really snuggle with, you know. And so it came up sometime back that she discovered, and when I was little I had guinea pigs.

The reason I say that in a plural is because one after the other got slaughtered by the dachshund that lived up the street, and so I had fluff one, fluff two, puff one, and puff two. And she found out about this. And so she started saying, Daddy, could I have a guinea pig?

And I know Ann's answer to that is no, we're not getting another animal in here that I have to take care of and clean his cage. And so now Abigail likes maybe more than anything else to get her daddy time. And so on a Monday morning when I'm sleeping in and she'll usually come in and tap me on things, well, snuggle, can we have some snuggle time? And what she means is when you come back over, sit in my bed and let's look at some books together and just kind of snuggle up and just, you know, have this long uninterrupted time.

Well, the main thing that she likes to snuggle with over the past year is the snuggle, but she also has an ulterior motive. She has got a guinea pig book that she likes to bring up and we look at. We have pored over that guinea pig book. We have looked at the pictures of the different guinea pigs to a point I've got them memorized as to what page the brown one's on and what, you know, and then I'll take her back and say, now, Abby, you look over here, care and maintenance of guinea pigs.

And, you know, we read this and you have to totally care for it. And she said, please, can I have a guinea pig? Can I please have a guinea pig? And I'm like, you know, Abby, I just don't know. And you know, mom doesn't want a guinea pig.

And I just don't know about this. So all in all, this goes on for, you know, the better part of a year about guinea pigs. But this is where the day where it all hit me, where she's in there and she says, please, daddy, you know how much I want you to care. And finally, in her desperation, she said, daddy, do you want me to get a guinea pig?

And that was the perfect question, wasn't it? Because what she realized was that, you know, if you want me to get a guinea pig, I have seen how things operate around here. And if you want me to get a guinea pig, what she's saying is, if I said, well, I want you to get a guinea pig, she would not cease asking me for that guinea pig until the guinea pig came to live in our house.

Because she knew, no, then she is going to get it. But the asking for it is part of the getting of the guinea pig. I mean, you see, there are so many aren't there things parents that it is within your heart, it is within your will towards your children, a desire towards them, but they do not appropriate except for they ask for it. And there's something in there asking for that when that connects up with something that's already in your good intentions towards them, it releases it in a way that would not have happened otherwise. I know one of the things that God's called me to do in my life right now is that as is he leads, and as the occasion is right, and so forth, that given priority, the first things first, but I know I'm supposed to go other places and share the gospel message of how God heals shame. I know this season, my life, I'm supposed to do that some, but I've got a family, I've got a full time job here. And so I'm gonna have to take my time off to do that. And I'm going to be selective about it.

And I have to be careful, make sure I hear from God about. So there's a lady that wrote me a while back, and she's from a place in Texas. And she said she heads up the counseling ministry at their church. And would I come could I consider coming? Well, I said, Oh, you know, I might consider coming? Well, then she writes back, she said, I'm gonna be in Winston Salem. And can I sit down and talk to you for a few minutes?

I said, Well, sure, I'd love to meet you. So here's what I want to do. This is what I already know what I want to do. I want to if I'm going to go share and spend that kind of time, I want to share out of the experience, the rich experience of God's healing presence in my life, I want to share those truths that I know that I know that I know and leave some lasting impartation there. And what I really want to do is I want to be able to do it on a Friday night and do it on the Saturday morning.

So then I can get back on the plane and be back here on Saturday night. That's what I really want to do. So she comes in and she sits down and she says, we'd like to do this event, have you come on a Friday night and then a Saturday morning and then you could go back home and we want you to do this about, you know, lasting impartation about shame off you. And so she's asking me, she said, would you consider doing that? I'm saying, sure, I'll consider doing that. Yeah, I'd like to do that. If we can find the right date, we'll do that. Now, what I'm saying is that was already in my, that's my will.

That is already my desire to do that, right? But I would not go to Texas except she was asking me to come. In other words, she is appropriating what is already my heart's desire, but the asking is part of it. We do that with everything. I mean, everything in the Christian life is a partnership with God.

That's what the deal is. You know, I mean to say, well, if God already knows what we want before we ask and it's already in his heart and in his will, why didn't he just do it? I don't know. But I mean, it's just like saying, well, you know, if the Lord wants us, which I believe he does, to be learning right now about spiritual prayer so that your personal prayer life can, can go to a whole new level.

So the congregational prayer life and go to a whole new level that if he wants us to learn and that's his will for us right now is to be learning about that, right? Then why didn't he just do that? I don't know. He said, and you go talk about it, go preach about it, go speak about it. And you might say, well, that person over there, does God want them to be saved? And if he does, why doesn't he just go over there and just save them?

I don't know. He said, you go witness to them and that person walking down there and they're hungry and God wants them to be fed. And God's saying, well, you go feed them. He has invited us in to a partnership to be co-laborers with Christ, Alan Wright, and today's teaching on praying God's word prayer. As a Christian, you know, it's important and you want to make it a priority, but if you're like most, your prayer life can slip so easily into routine, lacking fervor and passion. Maybe you're wondering what is the key to praying with real power. In Ephesians chapter six, the apostle Paul has a clear answer, pray in the spirit. But what does it mean to pray in the spirit? Some would say that Paul is referring only to the spiritual gift of a supernatural prayer language, but in Alan Wright's unique series, praying with power, pastor Alan reveals five different ways of praying in the spirit. Discover how praying God's word is praying in the spirit. Learn how to listen to the spirit as you pray. Come to see Jesus as your prayer partner. It's practical.

It's powerful. Get pastor Alan Wright's praying with power and discover the power of praying in the spirit. Change your prayer life and you'll change the world. When you make your gift to Alan Wright Ministries today, we'll send you pastor Alan's messages through digital download as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries.

Call us at 877-544-4860. That's 877-544-4860 or come to our website, pastor Alan.org. So Alan, we're people who are looking for next action steps, something we can do and take away from the message. And are you saying read God's word more or are you saying pray more or both? What this is an invitation to is to let your prayer life become powerful by letting your expression of your desire be linked in with what God has already said. So one of the best thing you can ever do to God is just talk to him the way a child talks to a father. And that is essentially, but you promised and you said this and therefore I'm asking this you say. And so knowing God's word therefore becomes not only spiritually nourishing to us as disciples, but it becomes the real fabric of our prayer life. So the answer is yes, more prayer, more Bible. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Alan Wright Ministries.