Understanding the Impact of Prayer

Dr. Tony Evans reminds us that prayer is a vital part of God’s will and highlights its significance in accessing what God wants to do. Join him for this look at the importance of prayer as a means of bringing heaven into earthly circumstances.

The goal of prayer is to draw from heaven into history, to get eternity to make a statement in time.
It is to make heaven visible on earth. It is to get god to touch humanity.
The goal of prayer is that up there might do something, fix something, or change something down here.
Before a major sporting event, they will often play the national anthem Now the national anthem has absolutely nothing to do with what’s getting ready to happen on the field.
It doesn’t affect the football game. It doesn’t affect the baseball game.
It doesn’t affect point scored in the basketball game, but It is put there as a place of national honor, but totally unrelated to what you came there for.
You don’t go there for the national anthem. That’s an add on.
For many of us, prayer is like the National Anthem before a sporting event.
It gets us started, but has absolutely no connection to what’s happening in our lives.
We do it because it’s tradition.
We’re supposed to It’s paying homage while being totally disconnected from the field of play of our lives.
And yet, it is one of the dominant themes of scripture And as you saw, when I read each verse in this passage, it is the dominant theme of James.
In verses 13 through 18, you see the word pray or prayer in every verse.
So for James, this is a big deal.
I hope to explain to us today why god has a conditional will and an unconditional will.
God’s will is what he determines to happen, but it can happen in 1 of 2 ways.
It can happen unconditionally or conditionally.
God’s unconditional will is when he determines what will happen, irrespective of what anybody else does.
That is it’s not conditioned on us or anybody else because he’s gonna decide that it happens and he’s gonna cause it to happen without any human involvement.
That is his unconditional will.
It’s not conditioned on our actions or non actions because he’s the sovereign he sovereignly decided to make it come to pass all by himself.
That is his unconditional will. But god’s conditional will is different.
There are many things he’s decided to not let happen until he gets cooperation from Earth.
There are many things that he’s decided.
He will not bring from heaven into history unless there is human cooperation with his desire and design.
For example, The Bible says god desires all men to be saved.
Yet men only get saved when they believe on the lord Jesus Christ for salvation.
So he has a will, but it’s tied to a condition.
Many things in your life and my life are tied to god’s conditional will.
So things happen or don’t happen based not on god’s decision, but on our cooperation, or lack thereof.
One of the primary mechanisms that god has established to determine much of what he does on earth.
And in your life and in my life, is conditioned by the absence or presence of prayer.
James says in chapter 1 versus 1, chapter 4, versus 1 to 3, you have not because you asked not.
Or when you asked, you asked with wrong motives.
He says, I wanted to give it to you, but you never came to me for it so you don’t have it.
It wasn’t because I didn’t want to give it it was because you didn’t cooperate with getting it because it was part of my conditional will.
Prayer is relational communication with god.
And the goal of prayer is to draw from heaven into history.
The gold prayer is to get eternity to make a statement in time.
It is to make heaven visible on earth. It is to get god to touch humanity.
The goal of prayer is that up there might do something, fix something, or change something down here.
When god makes a big deal about prayer, which he does throughout all of scripture, We are asking god to release his will from heaven to earth.
We’re giving him an okay because we’re cooperating because it it’s part of his conditional will.
Now the problem is you don’t always know what’s conditional and what’s unconditional.
Some things are clear, but other things you’re not sure.
That’s why Paul says in 1st thessalonians, 517, you better pray without ceasing.
You better bring it all to god so you won’t miss nothing because all the time, it’s not clear which way god is operating from.
In the b mind of the Bible, prayer is a lifestyle and not nearly an event.
If I were to say that you breathe without ceasing, you would understand what I meant because if you cease breathing, you’d cease.
So if I said, breathe without ceasing, you know, that’s that’s gotta be how you roll.
That’s gotta be how you roll.
So when Paul says pray without ceasing, He’s talking about this is how you roll.
This is how you roll that it is a lifestyle, not merely an event.
When you go into another country, they’re going to ask you to show a passport.
The passport gives you permission.
To go into this new realm, this new locality, this new country. It is permission.
God has given every believer a toll free number. You got a 800 number.
It’s toll free. And it is designed to give you permission to leave Earth and enter the sphere of heaven through the mechanism of prayer.
So prayer is not just saying some word. It’s changing locations.
When you pray, as we will describe in a moment, you leave the physical and you have now entered the spiritual.
Without prayer, you become limited to the physical.
But the only reason you pray is to get the spiritual god to enter into the physical, the passport to leave the physical and enter the spiritual is in one word in scripture, and that word is prayer.
Now let me explain prayer does not get god to do something he doesn’t wanna do because you can’t make god do something.
But what prayer does is access what he already wants to do that he has conditioned on your participation and mine.
I love Isaiah 65 verse 24.
Isaiah 6524 says, before you call, I have answered. Oh, did you follow that?
Before you prayed, I have already answered the prayer.
So you are not praying to get god to do something, but to pull down something he’s already predetermined to do.
Because if he’s already done it before you ask for it, then why don’t I have it?
Because it has to be pulled down.
Pulled from heaven into history, and that is done through prayer.
This concept of prayer is distributing eternity in the time.
You remember when the disciples were asked by Jesus, how are we gonna feed 5000 men, not counting women and children, 15 to 20,000 people.
And they said, we don’t know, but they found a little boy with 2 fish, 5 barley loaves of bread, they brought them to Jesus because there’s a problem.
How we’re gonna feed all these people? The Bible says Jesus looked up to heaven, and he prayed.
And he invited god into the problem.
When everybody open up their eyes, Moby Dick is laying on the beach, or could a killer whale.
Somehow, that was supernatural vision so that the scripture says everybody ate till the till they were full and there were 12 baskets filled lay uh-uh 12 baskets filled with, uh, leftovers for them.
And the disciples distributed the food to all that were gathered.
Jesus Christ got heaven to enter history but he prayed for that to take place, which answered the problem, and all men did was distribute what the supernatural had provided.
So help me out if Jesus had to pray.
To get his heavenly father to do something up there to change something down here, how much do you and I need to pray?
To get god to do something up there that we need him to do down here.