Living Hope Fellowship Church

PRAYER OF FAITH (Part 1)

PRAYER OF FAITH (Part 1)

by Pastor Badgley

            There is a guarantee in the Word of God that if you hold fast, God will not allow the devil to overcome you.  Matthew 16:18 says, “. . . and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” 

That encourages me something fierce, because I know I am not working in a futile work.  1 Corinthians 15:58 says, “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.”

As the church travails in prayer, fasting, and seeking the Lord, revival and children shall come forth.  It doesn’t matter what the devil says.  I know our minds give us more trouble than the devil, so we need to take on more of the Word of God and the mind of Christ.  Roman 8:7 says, “Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.”

In John 6:63 Jesus said, “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.”  We take God’s Word into our soul, and begin to take on the mind of Christ, and we are transformed by the renewing of our minds. 

Romans 10:17 says, “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”  Jesus said in Matthew 21:22, “And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.”  You have to hear it, believe God, act on it, and then you will see it.  That is a simple explanation of what actually takes place and how prayer actually goes on in the spirit realm.  We need an open heart to cry out to the Lord to do for us what He has done for so many others.

Oh, but what if we had no other avenue but Jesus - no doctors, no counselors, no psychiatrists?  Those people give Christians an option for believing God.  It is time we awaken out of sleep and seek God.  Job 33:19 says, “He is chastened also with pain upon his bed, and the multitude of his bones with strong pain:”  God will allow pain to chasten us to wake us up.  It is so we will cry out to God, and say yes to the Lord, asking Him what we should do in order to be healed. 

Man can’t do anything but put a band aid on the trouble.  God delivers, saves, heals, and sets free and wants to do it for His people.  How can you declare you have been healed if you haven’t been sick?  In 1995 something hit me, and I believe it was kidney stones.  If you have ever tried to pass an anvil with barbed wired welded to it, you have a reasonable idea of what that felt like.  It was the greatest pain I have ever had.  I was saying, God, this is where I die.  I have everything under the blood, and I’m getting out of here.  If it is God’s will to kill me, I hope He hurries up, because I am hurting!  If it is not, then I shall prevail over this thing in the name of the Lord.  God shall liberate me, and He will declare “I am the LORD that healeth thee.” 

It was like daggers and fire in there all at once.  It began to swell, and then suddenly like at a snap of the finger it wrapped around me and felt like an inner tube with 10,000 pounds of pressure.  I wrestled with it for three solid hours in the wee hours of the morning. 

It hurt so bad I cried, and I prayed, God kill me, heal me, do something.  Hour after hour this thing hammered me, but suddenly I decided that I was going to believe God.  I knew if I held on to God, He would bring me out of it.  I felt some pain for weeks afterward, but I kept praising Jesus and telling the devil he was a liar.  You have to confront the devil and quit placating him and running from him.  GOD HEALED ME, and I praise Him for it.  We have to believe God will do just like He says in His Word! 

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