I was in prayer yesterday afternoon. It seemed like my position was eroding rapidly. I felt like Peter sinking beneath the waves.

HELP! was the gist of my prayer, and desperation was the attitude behind it. But very quickly a funny thing happened – a veil was lifted and I saw that the whole thing was irrelevant, unworthy.

It’s not that I condemn desperate prayer at all – I’ll use it myself the very next time the need arises – but in my own situation I’ve been at this same point of distress many times now, and I sense that I really need to exercise more faith than in the early days. The purpose of crisis is to grow from faith to faith.

So I began to reason – if I were God, what kind of prayer would please Me? I saw immediately that, as God, I would certainly listen to prayers of desperation. But it would be prayers of bold and confident faith uttered from those same desperate situations that would really please Me.

The Father is pleased to give us the Kingdom and desires that we bear much fruit. Sometimes He grants requests in order to prime the faith pump, but most times He requires that we come up to a standard of faith before we receive.

This is how He draws us to Him! By affirming His sovereignty, power, and goodness, we focus our attention away from our problem and onto Him, away from our need and onto His infinite supply. And beholding Him as He is, we are changed into His likeness:

But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit. – 2 Co 3:18

Organic union, via our spiritual marriage to the Son, is exactly what God is after.

It’s a process of being drawn out and stretched. Just as with muscles, it takes persistent exercise to become flexible and strong.

The sooner we understand that God’s goal is to make us like Him, the sooner we will realize the kind of prayer that pleases Him. And the sooner we pray well, the sooner we see victory.

It all rests on realizing God’s worthiness and exalted purpose and then acknowledging that He deserves the best sacrifice of prayer that we can offer.

Add post title and link to your social media: