THERE CAN BE NO EXPERIENCE WHERE THERE HAS BEEN NO EXPECTATION
UNTIL THE SPIRITUAL IS IN ORDER, THE NATURAL WILL BE IN DISORDER
THERE ARE MANY PEOPLE TRYING TO ASK A GOD THEY’RE NOT IN TALKING TERMS WITH FOR THINGS
WHEN YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD IS STRONG, YOUR REQUEST BECOMES CHEAP
IF GOD DOES NOT HEAR YOUR VOICE IN TIMES OF PEACE, HE MAY NOT RESPOND TO IT IN TIMES OF CRISES
PRAYER IS NOT A PLACE WHERE YOU BRING YOUR OWN PLANS AND ASK GOD TO STAMP IT.
AT THE PLACE OF PRAYER, YOU SERVICE YOUR ALTAR OF RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD.
GOD WILL NEVER BLESS WHAT HE DIDN’T PLAN.
THE GREATEST LEVEL OF SUCCESS ON EARTH IS ACHIEVING WHAT GOD WANTS YOU TO ACHIEVE WITH YOUR LIFE.
PRAYER WILL KEEP YOU FROM SIN AND SIN WILL KEEP YOU FROM PRAYING.
THE PLACE OF PRAYER IS A PLACE OF SPIRITUAL SERVICING OF OUR LIVES.
- Dr. Pastor Paul Enenche on “THE PRAYER ALTAR” || Midweek Power Communion Service || Dunamis International Gospel Centre || The Glory Dome, Abuja.
Hallelujah! I welcome everyone here to this third day of the fast and it’s also midweek service. I believe the Lord will perfect His plans for our lives today in Jesus’ precious name. Amen. Matthew 6:9-13.
This evening, I’d like to quickly speak on “THE PRAYER ALTAR”. Our objective is to understand the prayer altar. That is, understanding what we try to achieve at the altar of prayer. Church Gist. What are we endeavouring to achieve? What are we expecting to see? This is very important because for many people, prayer is a meaningless, religious ritual or activity. There are some religions where, “I’ve just said my prayers”, the phrase. For other people, prayer is something to do to pacify the conscience – “so that it doesn’t look like I’m not spiritual, I’m not talking to God at all” and yet, for others, a third group, prayer is what to do in times of urgencies, emergencies and pressure. Church Gist. But for all of these reasons mentioned, the result of prayer is very minimal, if any, because for most of them, the prayer is prayed without expectation. Except the one of rushing to God in urgent times. When it’s done as a religious ritual, it’s prayed without expectation. When it’s done to pacify the conscience, it’s prayed without expectation. Church Gist. And truth or the matter is, there can be no experience where there has been no expectation. What we expect determines what we experience.
Having said all of that, what are we trying to achieve at the prayer altar? Church Gist. What do we endeavour to achieve at the place of prayer? Or rather, this is what we do at prayer.
- Servicing our altar of relationship with God.
At the place of prayer, we service our altar of relationship with God. It is the place for the maintenance of vibrant, buoyant and lively relationship with God. Church Gist. That is the first and the most important aim of prayer. Matthew 6:9. The servicing of our prayer altar. Church Gist. You know the spiritual controls the natural. Until the spiritual is in order, the natural will be in disorder. So, we service our altar of relationship.
You know, there are many people who want result where there has been no relationship. If my wife asks me for something, easy. My children asks, easy. Church Gist. But if I see a total stranger on the road trying to ask me for something, I have to investigate him. “Who are you? What do you want? Are you a fraud? Are you crook?” Relationship is the basis of request. Church Gist. The more vibrant the relationship, the more confident the request. When the relationship is strong, the request is cheap. There are many people trying to ask a God they’re not in talking terms with for things. They’re not in talking terms with him. They only come to him when there’s an issue. Church Gist. If God does not hear your voice in times of peace, He may not respond to it in times of crises. That is, He doesn’t hear your voice, He doesn’t recognize your voice in times of peace, He may not respond to that voice in tomes of crises. Church Gist. So, the next time prayer comes to your mind, the first thing that should come to your mind is the servicing of your altar of relationship with God. So, the major bulk of prayer is the prayer where you come and you didn’t ask for anything. It’s prayer where you came to know God and God knows you. Church Gist. It’s the prayer where you are servicing your intimacy and relationship with God. That’s our number one profit of prayer – servicing our altar of relationship with God.
Beloved brother and sisters, the major bulk of our prayers is number one, fasting for seven days, not to ask for anything but just to be tighter with God. Church Gist. There’s something we call a consecrational fast, once a week, twice a week, you’re not there to ask for anything, you’re just tightening up your grip with God.
- Enforcing the plan and will of God for our lives and in the Earth.
Matthew 6:10. The place of prayer is the place where you come to access the will of God for your life. “Lord, what is your plan for my life? What do you want me to do with my life? What is your plan for our nation?” So, it’s the place to access and enforce. Habakkuk 2:1. This is very exciting. Prayer is not a place where you necessarily bring your own plans and ask God to stamp it. There are many people who bring their plans to God for a stamping. Church Gist. They bring their agenda for God to stamp it. They want God to cooperate with them in what is not His will. “Lord, I must do real estate business.” He says: “No! What I have in mind for you is something else.” Maybe it’s agriculture. You say: “What! Agriculture like how? I should be a farmer?” He says: “There are billionaire farmers on earth, billionaire farmers on earth.” You say: “I don’t understand. Lord, bless this real estate business, I must start it. Is it not in Abuja?” He will experience massive frustration because God will never bless what He didn’t plan.
Listen! The will of God is answered prayer that is waiting to be prayed. When we say this is the will of God it means this is what God wants and He’s looking for somebody to pray it to happen. This is very exciting! The place of prayer is not necessarily where you go and push things on God, it’s where you go and find out – discover: “What are you saying? Church Gist. What are your plans for my life? What do you want? What do you want me to do with my life? As we travel around the World in ministration, the Lord made it clear to me that more important than anything else, is to reconnect the people to Himself. Is to kindle in them the fire of passion after their Maker. It’s heavier than even healing and miracles. The healings, the miracles will flow effortlessly.
Let me say this as I move to the next point. So the place of prayer, you service your altar of relationship with God. At the place of prayer! Let’s say accessing and enforcing. You access and enforce the plan and the will of God for your life and in the Earth. Let me say this: No matter how beautiful your plans are, it will never be as wonderful as the plans of God. The plan of man may appear beautiful but it is the plan of God that is absolutely wonderful. Yours may look beautiful to you but it is wonderful only when it is the plan of God. It is full of wonders, amazement. You can give yourself a beautiful wife with your eyes but you need a wonderful marriage. Let God lead you, guide you. Not necessarily that He will give you any ugly because nobody is ugly in God anyway, He made all things beautiful.
Let me say this finally as I move, the greatest level of success on earth is achieving what God wants you to achieve with your life. The greatest level of success is not how much money you have in the bank. It’s not how many places you have travelled to in the World. It is achieving what God wants you to accomplish with your life and that is what it is, very important! “Lord! I am not trying to become anything. I just want to become what You want me to become. Church Gist. I just want to accomplish what You want me to accomplish. I just want you to reach where You want me to reach. “What You are not giving me, may I not have it. Where You are not taking me, may I not go there. What You are not doing for me, may it never be done.” Pray such dangerous prayers. May no money enter my hands that God has not given me. That is number two! You can see that prayer is a bit different from what people think. Many people do many things but these (are the) things we are talking about now.
- What are we doing at the place of prayer? Renewing our consecration and sanctification in God.
At the place of prayer, we renew our consecration, we renew our sanctification because as we journey through life we encounter temptations, we encounter distractions. As you travel the journey of life, dust settles, dust! On the garment, our spiritual garment. We come into His presence like the disciples where He washed their feet. Church Gist. We come into His presence for a cleansing. We come into His presence to ask for help and mercy first where we have erred and (ask for) help and mercy to do the right things. That was what He meant: “Forgive us our debt.” That’s prayer altar. Matthew 6:12. “Forgive me my trespasses.” “Teach me how to live in uprightness and teach me how to walk in love.” That is why prayer will keep you from sin and sin will keep you from praying. The life of prayer.
How many of you have seen unbelievers in Church before? When it is time to worship or time to sing, they are lost. They are just moping and wondering, what are they doing? Because it’s not in his nature. His lifestyle makes the presence of God strange. It’s our altar of consecration. The place of prayer is our return back to Bethel, where the thing you told God to help you not to do, you come to reaffirm; where the help and the grace you are asking for, you come to affirm the help and the grace so that you can continue on your journey. Church Gist. That is why if you were fasting 3 days dry or 3 days or 7 days once in a month 21 years ago. Don’t think you can stop that kind of exercise today and see the results of yesterday. It’s a continuous journey. And so the place of prayer is where we come to… You can see that it is not a place of permanent begging for things. It’s more like a place of spiritual servicing, a workshop, a spiritual workshop for the servicing of our lives.
- It’s a place for accessing our supplies and allocation in God.
Naturally, this should have been number 3 but I don’t know how the Holy Ghost positioned it in number 4 in this teaching. I’m sure it’s like order of priorities. The place of accessing our supplies and allocation in God. Matthew 6:11. “I know You have a bread for me daily, I know You have a supply for me daily. I have come to connect it.” Beloved, understand that God is a great father, a great provider. He will never allow His own to be stranded or despised. Great father! Great provider! And there’s something I will tell you, two things I will say to you, you will never forget. One, the Bible said: “Don’t pray like the heathen pray and make vain repetitions, for Your Heavenly Father knoweth the things you have need of before you ask.” If He knows what we need before we ask, then what is the aim of the asking? Simple.
First, He does not want to assume your needs. He wants to confirm your needs. You confirm it with your mouth.
Secondly, He enjoys being depended upon by His children. He wants to deliver us from the plague of self sufficiency, self dependency. The plague of independence of God. Church Gist. That was what troubled Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden when the serpent told them “You can be like God. You don’t need God in your life” God enjoys…it’s just like my children come and say “Daddy, please I read this passage. Can you interpret it for me?” I remember one of my children, very young in those days, like 3 or 4 years. He said “Daddy, who planted the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil?” I said, “It is God”. “Who said they should not eat it?” “It is God” “If He didn’t want them to eat it, why did He plant it?” How many of you know that that is a very tricky question, very, very tricky and the Holy Ghost gave me the answer on the spot. Church Gist. I said “God wants to use something to test their obedience. If there is nothing to show whether they can obey God or disobey God on their own will, it means they’ll only be obeying God by force. There is something that needs to show whether if they have a choice, they’ll obey or disobey and once they had the choice, they disobeyed” “Okay. Daddy, wake me up by 3 am” “Oh, I’ll do it for you gladly” Parents want to be depended…God is a typical parent. He wants to be depended upon. “Lord, your Word says this and I receive it off your hands.
Another thing to note before we leave that point is, there is no delivery without demands in the world of the spirit. Where the demand is not made, the delivery is not confirmed. Also know that in this life, we don’t necessarily get what we deserve. There are many things many people deserve that they don’t get. We get what we demand. Church Gist. We don’t necessarily get what we deserve because we have a demonic power that is fighting it, you get what you demand. So the place of prayer is the place to place the demand on what God has freely given to you that maybe the enemy is trying to interfere with. It’s the place to place the demand. It’s the place to access your portion and to access your allocation.
- Somebody, say a loud Amen!
5: Intercepting and frustrating the agenda and activities of the enemy in our lives and land. Matthew 6:13. Church Gist. It’s the place to interrupt, intercept the activities of the devil. It’s the place to interfere with what the enemy is planning or what the enemy is doing
- Somebody, say a loud Amen!
The place of prayer is the place of preemptive attacks on the camp of darkness. The place of prayer is the place where we remain on the offensive, not the defensive. Church Gist. Not waiting for the devil to strike, then you respond, no. It’s the place where while they’re in the planning session, you bomb them. You bomb both them and their bomb manufacturing factory.
- Somebody, say a loud Amen!
I remember the prayer we prayed when they said there was a lot of flood in Kenya and our Crusade was going to be…2 weeks to the time, it was still flooding and the Forecaster forecasted that flooding was going to continue and it just kept on and we stood in agreement with them over there and here and everywhere. Agreed from the Commanding the Day Midnight Prayer, said “Rain is a blessing, not a curse” Hundreds had already died by the flood. Church Gist. “The Bible made it clear that rain is a blessing, not a curse. This one that is becoming a curse can’t be of God. We declare it arrested” and the cloud cleared. When we landed at Nairobi Airport, the Woman who received us at the Airport, she said “Thank you for praying for our country. The sky has been clear for almost 2 weeks now” Hallelujah! and then, prayed Sunday night, hurricane commenced in Texas, Houston and before it could have the power to stretch its hand and relax, we prayed here on Monday evening by 6 pm, it would be equal to 12 in the afternoon there. Church Gist. So, it started in the evening of Sunday, before it could reach mid day of the next day, it was already confronted, arrested by the power of God. Light went out everywhere. In under one hour, light had started being restored. The sun came out. Somebody sent me a message from Texas today, he said the relation was saying that “this hurricane in this place behaves as if it has bipolar disorder. Church Gist. Just now they saw no sun, the sky was covered, the wind was terrible, the roads were deserted, everybody was warned to remain inside and then under one hour sun came out” Intercepting the agenda.
- In your life tonight, the agenda of the devil shall be intercepted.
- Whatever the devil is planning for the second half of the year for your life and for your family, today, they are scattered!
- If you’re saying Amen, say a louder Amen!
This number 5 is what we’re dealing with tonight. That’s what we’re anchoring on tonight. Church Gist. We’re intercepting, interfering, interrupting the agenda of the enemy for the balance of the year.
-Somebody, say Amen!
Finally, before we start praying, how do we pray?
1: You pray with light. This kind of light and revelation. Psalm 43:3. We pray with light, revelation, insight, knowing that our prayer is servicing our altars with God. Church Gist. Our prayer is establishing the plan of God and arresting the plan of the enemy, renewing our consecration, connecting us with our portion in God and intercepting the agenda of the enemy. We pray with light.
2: You pray with faith. “He that cometh to God must believe” I’m not wasting my time, I am not doing religion here. Church Gist. This is reality. God is a prayer answering God. There are too many testimonies to confirm. Hebrews 11:6.
- Somebody, say a loud Amen!
We believe that God is a Rewarder. Was it Brother Endurance whose testimony we took yesterday, the University Medical Student? His classmate confirmed in one of the messages he sent this afternoon that the testimony of the guy is real. Church Gist. Intractable Brain Hemorrhage, on a wheelchair, movement affected, everything affected. The power of God landed on him (I’m sure we have the clips of that) and he was on his feet.
- That same God is going to visit somebody here today.
- I see somebody’s spiritual life moving to the next level.
(Referring to an image) That’s the young man right there and that’s him after the prayer session, then he has a video where he’s dancing.
- I prophesy to you today, the plan of God and the will of God for your life shall be made available, it shall be made clear to you.
- I prophesy today, help to live right, help to fulfill the purpose of God, help to do the will of God is released upon you in the name of Jesus!
- I prophesy supernatural supplies.
- Your portion in God, no devil shall tamper with it and I declare interception, interruption with the agenda of hell for the second half of the year.
—Prayers—
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