Just Pray? Naw…. That’s Not Enough
I have a huge issue that I am currently working on in my walk with Christ.
I think I have a pretty healthy prayer life with my Creator. Daily I pray and ask God for direction in my life, in my business, in my love life, in my parenting etc.
My issue is, after I am done having a conversation with my Lord and Savior, I rarely move forward on what He instructed me to do.
For days, weeks, months and sometimes years I sit still in prayer AGAIN and AGAIN, asking God for more clarity on the instructions He has already given me.
My huge issue is procrastinating on what God told me to do while in prayer!
Procrastination is rooted in fear and doubt.
There has never been a time I have gone to God, asked Him to show me what to do next, and He hasn’t shown me in DETAIL what to do.
In my relationship with God I usually leave our conversations with a ton of instructions and details. But, guess who is guilty of just praying, and very rarely putting their faith to work? ME!
I’m sharing this with you on today because I know for sure that I am not the only person who is guilty of doing such a horrible thing. We have the faith to pray and ask God for guidance, but we lack the faith to move forward on what God has told us to do in prayer.
I know, walking out on what God is telling us to do is risky.
A higher level of accountability is attached to it, and we even risk looking crazy to other people. But, if we never move forward on what God is telling us to do, we are missing out on the true abundant life.
If we never walk in faith toward what God told us to do, we’ll never reach the people we are destined and designed to reach. Not moving forward on His instruction is a sin. There is no easy way around that truth. It is a sin, and we must stop making excuses.
There is a level of fulfillment we ONLY get to experience through following God’s instructions we received while in prayer.
Prayer is nothing more than a conversation with God.
Prayer is the vehicle we use to communicate with our Heavenly Father. Through prayer, reading the bible and meditating on God’s word, we cultivate our personal relationship with Him.
Understand that each of our relationships with God is unique to us. Christ is our personal Savior.
Accepting Christ as Savior and Lord is wonderful, but salvation does not stop there, we must continue to grow in Christ. Accepting Jesus is our launching pad into the abundant life He promised us in John 10:10.
To grow in Christ we have to know Him.
To know Him we have to open up the bible and read about Him. In our study of the word we learn the character of the Jesus of the bible, not the Jesus that the world portrays. Usually there is a huge difference. But, that’s another blog topic for another day.
Just recently I decided to be a little more consistent in spending time with God in prayer and in the word.
So, this morning I sat at my dining room table, opened up my bible and a devotional booklet I’ve been reading. I read the devotional, and surprisingly it was about consistency in prayer.
I began to pray about a few things God told me a few weeks ago while I was talking to Him. As clear as day I heard God say to me; “I’ve already given you clarity on that, just move forward on it”.
How many times have we gone to God about a matter, He has given us the instructions, yet we still went back asking God if He was sure?
That’s what we are basically asking God when we continue to go to Him in prayer about the same thing over and over again, when He has already given us an answer.
I know, we don’t like the answers He gives us most of the time.
It’s because His thoughts are higher than ours, and His ways are higher than our ways, Isaiah 55:8–9. This means, what God is usually telling us to do or not to do does not line up with what feels good at the time. It is what IS good for us, not what feels good to us.
God sees the end at the beginning. God knows how a thing will end even before it begins. SO why can’t we just trust Him when He tells us what to do?
It’s because we cannot see God, but we know even though we cannot see God, we can still trace God.
Just look at creation; “For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see His invisible qualities His eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God” Romans 1:20 NLT.
Open up the New Testament and look at Jesus; Christ is the “express image of His (God’s) person and the brightness of His (God’s) glory” as recorded in Hebrews 1:3.
So no, we cannot “see” God, but we can SEE God’s work and we can SEE God in the God Man, Jesus Christ.
We cannot just pray any longer! We have to get up once prayer is over, and make the necessary steps toward doing the will of God.
We pray “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”. But, we don’t move when God gives us kingdom strategy. That is an oxymoron!
If we don’t plan on stepping out on faith and doing what God told us to do, we ought not pray!
The world is in dire need of the sons and daughters of God! The bible tells us that “the earth is moaning and groaning in labor pains, waiting for the children of God to manifest”, Romans 8:19–22.
How much longer do we have to wait to move forward on what God told us to do?
Friends, I would suggest that we don’t have much time.
The clock is winding down. It is getting late in the evening and the tides are rising high.
Nation is rising against nation, and race against race. There are wars, and rumors of wars.
Swarms of locust in Africa and in the Middle East. Catastrophic weather events have taken place over the last few years, wild fires etc..
The earth is moaning and groaning, waiting for us to be revealed,
What are we doing? Waiting on God? NO!
God has given the instructions, He is now waiting on us!
Mordecai said it best to his cousin Esther; “For if you remain completely silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”
God placed us in the earth at this time for a specific reason, to do a specific task to advance His kingdom, and we have to do it!
If we don’t step out on faith and do it, yes, God can raise up another person to do it. But why should God have to raise up another person to advance His kingdom on earth, when He has given us the instructions to move on His behalf?
God called you! He called me!
He has given us strategy for our specific regions and we must without any further delay, MOVE in faith on what He deposited on the inside of us while we were in prayer!
What’s the point of having a relationship with God if we aren’t going to maximize the resources of heaven that are down on the inside of us?
Sometimes just prayer is enough, but more often than not God wants us to come to Him for instructions so that we can get up after prayer and be His change agents in this earth.
If Jesus is your Lord and Savior, you should have a prayer life and a working relationship with God through Him.
This enables us the supernatural ability to gain ground in the earth for the advancement of His kingdom.
Just pray? No!
We have to pray, say and DO!
We ought to be doers of the word and not hearers only, James 1:22–25. If we are only hearers and not doers, we are deceiving ourselves.
God has given you and I a word while we were in prayer. It is time to walk it out in faith, knowing that He who has promised is faithful and able to do what He said in His word and in our spirits while in prayer with Him.
I’m praying against every lie, every fear and every doubt that we have concerning what God told us to move forward on in prayer!
I’m rooting for us! I love us too much to watch us sit on the sideline just praying, when we should be praying, saying and DOING!
