The Big Picture

This is the Truth Network.

Welcome to Running with Horses, a podcast devoted to inspire you, concerning a relationship with Almighty God that empowers you to accomplish things you never thought possible. Shirley Weaver wants to take you there. And now, here's today's episode. Hello, everyone. Welcome.

My name is Shirley Weaver. If you are... ...in a position of praying, needing answered prayer, actually in need of a miracle, today's message is especially for you because the point of today's episode is that there is a big picture prayer that is on the heart and mind of Almighty God, our Heavenly Father. And if you are praying to Him and remember the vastness of His overview, the incredible reach that He has, then you'd be encouraged more to pray big prayers to a very big God. And we've said many times on the podcast here how important it is to see God as He is to think in terms of not only answered prayer, but majorly answered prayer. And if you're hearing this for the first time, if you're a new believer, or maybe not even certain that you are a believer, probably the first hurdle will be whether you can pray, are qualified to pray, are eligible in any way, will God even hear you? And if that's even possible, what should you say? How limited or how humble should you be?

And on and on, it becomes very muddy. I'm sure you feel that way often. But here's the good news. Our Father is so much bigger. He is seeing your situation as it really is. And as we say frequently here, wherever you need to go, or wherever the answer to the prayer is, where that would land, He is already there. You don't have to fill Him in, no need to update Him, or be vexed by the possibility that He will not answer. Your job is to ask, and His portion is to answer. And it's very simple, that simple.

If you'll keep it simple, then you can move on from that place of wondering if you qualify at all. So today we are looking at this very thing, the power of big prayers, praying big prayers. Based on what? Based on God's Word, which if you're new to the things of the faith, that is the Bible. God's Word and God Himself are one, you cannot separate the two. If you have a Bible, then you have the thoughts of Almighty God. If you have a Bible, a copy of the Bible, then any verse that you find within the covers of that Bible will tell you, will inspire you, will lead you to think like He thinks, and therefore to be able to receive better or more accurately. And you know, if you're in this spirit, or let's just say that we want to position ourselves in the spirit of seeing as He sees and thinking as He thinks, because as we also often say here on our podcast, we have the mind of Christ. We know so because the Bible tells us so. In the verses of scripture we read, we have the mind of Christ.

And also this one, one of my favorites, let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. And for the person who asked, let him ask in faith, nothing doubting. So you see you're covered there. No need to be concerned about whether your thoughts qualify as long as you're thinking as He thinks. And so go for it.

You can just go for it. You can pray big prayers. He can handle it.

I assure you, He can. Another description of a big prayer, I call it a Deuteronomy 7 verse 9 prayer. So here again, the principle of drawing from the Bible, the very verse that speaks to the thing that we need, because you can pray the scriptures, you can say to God, say back to God what He has said to you in that written word on the pages of the Bible.

So this is a great example. Deuteronomy 7 verse 9, the New King James version. Here's the verse. Therefore know that the Lord your God, He is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments.

And another rendering in the New Living Translation goes this way. Understand therefore that the Lord your God is indeed God. He is the faithful God who keeps covenant for a thousand generations and lavishes His unfailing love on those who love Him and obey His commands. He lavishes His unfailing love on those who love Him and obey His commands.

So stop right there. Would you say that God knows that you love Him? And would you also say that you obey His commands or that you keep His commandments?

As these two renderings give us both of those phrases. Would you say that that is true of you? I find that many people do not feel that that is true of them. So see, how could they, why would they pray this verse back to the Lord?

They don't think that they qualify. Well, listen, you can take care of that right now. Here's how you do that. You pray this prayer. Father, my desire and my intention is to tell you and to show you that I love you. I want to love you. And because I love you and that is my intention, I want to obey your commands. I want to keep your commandments. I want to be identified with you.

That is my intention. And therefore I make that declaration today in your presence, Lord. And I ask you, Holy Spirit of God, help me to not only say these words but to live accordingly. I release my faith this way, asking you to help me, trusting you to help me.

And Father, I pray as one who loves you and is determined to obey your commands and keep your commandments. Amen. There, you're done.

You qualify. You see, with God, things are so much simpler than we would typically make them. It's not hard.

It's simple. And that way, every day, we might just start praying that prayer until it's more of a reality. You see what I'm saying?

You can do that with everything that's on your plate. Back to what we're saying, praying this big prayer. You've got to understand that God is a covenant-keeping God. And he is thinking of a thousand generations.

He's not thinking microsecond only, although the microseconds are included. He is thinking big picture, a thousand generations, and he loves it when you pray that way. When you pray a cyclical prayer compared to a linear prayer, what do I mean there? I mean a linear prayer moves you from point A to B to C to D, and you're responsible for picking up every little detail and making sure that by the time you get to the end of this linear perspective that you arrive where you need to arrive in the condition you need to arrive in. But God doesn't think that way.

He is a thousand generation kind of person. He is thinking that way about you and everything that you pray, those you love and pray for, including your family, your children, or your spouse, or let's say the children and the spouse that you want. That's really part of your prayer.

Whatever it is, sickness, a healed body, this is a cyclical thing. That means that those that have gone ahead of you, your parents, grandparents, those other members of your family, for a thousand generations, their prayers are before the Father right now. Their big prayers are affecting you now. If you only knew it, and you know you just don't know what you don't know, and I'm here to tell you, you can pray big prayers and expect big outcomes, not because you're worthy or that you qualify on some huge scale, but that you understand how great and vast God's love for you is. As we read in Deuteronomy 7 verse 9, He is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy to those who love Him and obey His command.

He pours out love because that's just who He is. Let's look at this overarching position that God has. Overarching, what do I mean? I mean comprehensive, all embracing, including all and everything. A synonym for overarching is comprehensive or complete, having every necessary or normal part or component or step.

See, it's included. Every necessary or normal part or component or step is included in His view, those tiny things. More synonyms for overarching are across the board, all embracing, all encompassing, all inclusive, like a blanket, broad, encompassing, extensive, panopic, sweeping, wide. Those are synonyms for the way God is viewing you, wherever you are, whatever your situation, whatever the vastness of the prayer that you need to pray, this is God's position toward you. I love that word panopic.

It means to have an aerial view, showing or seeing the whole as one view or at one view. And here's my point. If you pray myopically, then you must, actually it forces you to pray every little detail as though it's up to you to cover every little detail and to outline for the Lord as you pray what those details are in which we take over the conductor's one. When in fact, we have no way of stepping into the position of the conductor of the orchestra, we want God to do that. We want Him to conduct the orchestra. We want Him to know all the parts that have to be played, the sounds from the horns, the sounds from the percussion, you know, all of the sounds, the winds, all of those, excuse me, the woodwinds, all of those.

He knows how to conduct that orchestra. We do not. I assure you, you do not. And if you pray those details, it will come up short because you're limited. You're limited to a human view. But if you just allow Him to have that position, to think like He thinks, again, as He thinks, as He sees, having the mind of Christ, let Him take it over so that you're praying instead of linear prayers from point A to point B, you're praying in a circle, recurring so that what you pray today doesn't need necessarily to be repeated tomorrow and the next day and every hour and every minute in case, you know, God forgot or something like that. He forgot the detail.

And what happens in this is you become, it transforms and enlarges your heart to understand and to see that He has it. He has the details, small, large. He has the big picture.

He has the 10-year plan, the 50-year plan, the 100-year plan. It's not up to you to bury yourself to tunnel down into the tiny things. I feel like I'm contending. Do I sound like I'm kind of contending? Because I cannot tell you, in my experience of years with the Lord and being a part of different prayer movements, certainly part of different prayer groups, how much time is given to tiny, minuscule little details that may, in the big picture, not really have very much to do with the way God wants to do things, what is in His heart for the plan that will play out, and even more importantly, may even short-circuit His plan. If I think of all the details that have to be covered, the thoughts, the actions, the problems involved with the person or the situation that my appeal is for in behalf of, if I'm thinking of those things, I could totally misread it. I could totally upend the thing God wants to focus on. But if you just remember Deuteronomy 7, verse 9, God has in mind, because He is God and He is the faithful God, His full intention is to keep covenant and mercy with you, to keep covenant and mercy with you, all-inclusive, all-extensive and encompassing, sweeping, like a blanket, broad, He fully intends all of that. And the whole idea of mercy, you see, includes those tiny things, those little things you have to cover, those details that are really, and I think truthfully, we'd have to admit, they're really important to us. It's a source of worry, or fretting, you know, anguish that we have, and therefore we make the appeal.

But you don't have to. God's view is total faith toward you. He keeps covenant with you to show mercy, mercy, to pour it out on everything this concerned, everything concerning you, every part of the prayer that you pray. And so you see, Deuteronomy 7, verse 9, is a cyclical concept.

It represents a circle. It is a recurring theme. Over a thousand generations of covenant kept, mercy shown.

It takes in everything. And then the result for us is that we give more attention to the greatness of Almighty God who has heard us and who, and we know He's heard us because He loves us. Keep me in mind, those of you who are maybe new to the faith or maybe aren't even born again yet, listen, this is the way God, this is the way He is. He's not out to get you.

He doesn't have a list of rules that you have to jump to keep in line with. His love for you is all inclusive and you can learn every day more about how to walk with Him, more about how to do and to understand that you are part of a thousand generations. And there's bound to be somebody in your thousand generation bloodline that has loved God, has a history with God, has petitioned Him for the generations that are to come because that's what believers do. That is just how they pray. That's how they think because it's how God thinks. He inspires us to believe Him that way. So listen, strategically and tactically, this is where we are and this is what we want. We want to see Him as He really is and we want to say to Him what is in His heart for us to say and what He put those two together, who He is as He really is, what is in His heart for you to say to Him, put those two together and you can appeal to the Lord honestly, boldly, confidently, in a big way, no matter how big your prayer is.

And you don't have to be somebody special. He loves you just like you are and fully intends, fully intends for you to mature and grow and to experience Him more and more with each day so that you're more and more confident each day and you arrive at the destiny He has for you right on time. That is the plan. Actually, it is the prayer in His heart. You can depend on that. He is covenant keeping, meaning He doesn't break His word and He shows mercy to you for a thousand generations. Thanks again and we'll see you next time. Thank you.