Subjectivism in Prayer

Subjectivism in Prayer

For many of you, the experience with prayer might be different, proving your effort worthless. You have prayed and prayed, but God has not answered. Shall we then presume that Jesus was untruthful, telling us to ask Him anything and He will do it (John 14:14)? No, our subjective perspective clouds our experience. We know very well what to ask, but do we know how to ask? Jesus tells us,

But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. (Matthew 6:33) 

If we seek the Kingdom of God first, we are in full compliance with the first commandment. 

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. (Deuteronomy 6:5)

We also fulfill Jesus' command to abide in Him (John 15:4). Placing God first not only creates a right attitude of heart for presenting petitions before Him, but according to God's Word, it evokes God's promises of great blessings in our lives (Deuteronomy 28). There is an essential condition for an answered prayer: 

If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. (John 15:7)

For an effective prayer life, we must abide in Christ, becoming EHAD with Him. The centrality of prayer is God and His kingdom. We pray because we want to see God and hear Him. We want to come closer to Him and experience His joy and love. In prayer, we approach God, and He approaches us. We know His will and participate in establishing it at that very moment and at the place He had positioned us. We participate in what He is doing in us, through us, and around us.

Deep Calls to Deep—Daily Practice of God's Presence

God is Spirit, and His worshipers must worship in spirit and truth (John 4:24b). 

Jesus set the appropriate conditions for approaching God: In spirit and truth. We must approach God in spirit because the realm of God is spiritual, and prayer is the language of communication within the spiritual realm. We enter into a "deep calls to deep" (Psalm 42:7) experience through prayer. This is a Spirit-to-spirit communication during which we reach the depth of God's heart and express the depths of our hearts in return. At this level, God reveals His wisdom to us by His Spirit because, 

The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. (1 Corinthians 2:10) 

We must approach God in truth because this is God's very nature. God is truth, and we are to come to Him stripped of our old selves, which defile our minds with thoughts and our hearts with desires other than those of Him and His kingdom. To approach God in truth means to become transparent. Hiding and concealing thoughts, deeds, and attitudes work for people, not for God. The kind of transparency God wants us to achieve is transparency for both God and people alike: What people see in me is who I am without putting on a mask, trying to appear happy, good, intelligent, righteous or knowledgeable. Jesus sternly warns that everyone who loves and practices falsehood is not allowed to enter through the gates of the city of God, the New Jerusalem (Revelation 22:15). 

When we worship God in spirit and truth, we allow Him to work in us and transform us into His likeness. A life transformed in the likeness of Christ has a transparent quality because the heart transformed in the likeness of Christ becomes transparently pure.

This Spirit-to-spirit communication in "transparent truth" is the foundation of the God-person relationship. Spiritual growth requires that we seek this kind of depth in communication with our God; everything else is "chasing after the wind" (Ecclesiastes 1:14). At this depth, we can experience God as our heavenly Father because we have recognized Him as such and have approached Him as His children. 

When the relationship of God-person reaches the depth of Spirit-to-spirit communication, we begin to truly experience and understand the depth of God's amazing love for us. It gently wraps around us, tenderly envelops us, and lovingly sings over us. One can grow "addicted" to the desire to experience God's love on this "deep calls to deep" level. This is the spiritual benefit of entering God's presence during prayer. The more one experiences it, the stronger one desires to have more of the same experience. This desire creates an inner longing that only Heaven can fully satisfy. Until then, we are called to enter His presence daily in prayer.  

The morning prayer time of a believer has an unmatchable beauty. Once you evoke His name, He is beside you, ready to listen and commune with you. As you enter His presence, you become filled with anticipation and engulfed in His love. For a time, you are encouraged to remain there—without words of thanks, thoughts, praise, or petitions—simply taking in sincerely the delight of your Father's presence. In the beauty of that moment, you empty yourself of anything that is yours and allow your heavenly Father to fill you with everything that is His. This is the moment when, on your own volition, you strip yourself from your old nature with its corrupt desires and practices of the flesh and infuse yourself with the beauty of Christ. The Apostle Paul describes the spiritual act of divine exchange. 

I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20)

This trading is a pure spiritual barter in which your spirit and God's Spirit testify to the factual transaction. You literary experience Heaven on Earth. This is an exhilarating flight of your spirit that rises towards the height of the Father's Spirit. You can hear Him singing His love song over you, and your soul delights, dancing under the sweet melody. After such an assurance of His love, there is no way that one can agonize over trifling daily matters. You know in your spirit that, before a need arises, your heavenly Father has already seen it and has taken special care to provide for it. You may even wonder at the many times when you were not even aware of an approaching need because His divine provision had come down to you as a blessing, not as a need. 

He who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will. (Romans 8:27) 

The subject of the next section is how to achieve this depth of Spirit-to-spirit communication