“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30.
And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, with all prayer and petition praying at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance. Ephesians 6:17-18.
Today your LORD (יהוה) God says:
Prayer is very important. It is your lifeline, your connection to communication, revelation, impartation, direction, provision, comfort, help, deliverance, specific instruction, and salvation in every situation. Do you remember the Roman centurion named Cornelius? He was not Jewish or yet a believer in Jesus but he developed reverence for Me from his contact with the Jewish people in Caesarea where he had been stationed by Caesar, and he gave gifts of charity to My people. He prayed to Me continually. Acts 10:1-2. I sent an angel to him with a message: “Your prayers and deeds of charity have ascended as a memorial before God. Now dispatch some men to Joppa and send for a man named Simon, who is also called Peter; he is staying with a tanner named Simon, whose house is by the sea.” Acts 10:4-6. Do you see? His prayers came as a memorial before Me. Your prayers are precious to Me. I tell you to come to Me and put Me in remembrance. And his prayers came up as incense in golden bowls in the arms of the saints and on My golden altar before Me in Heaven. And I gave Cornelius direction to salvation by having him send for Peter to hear the good news of Jesus. And when Peter came, Cornelius was completely open to receiving Jesus for he had received the direction from Me. And Peter, as he was praying in Joppa, I gave him a vision and clear direction to go with the men Cornelius sent to fetch him and to have no qualms about entering the home of a person who was not Jewish. And all this through prayer.
So today we continue our series, “LORD, teach us to pray,” with Life Lesson No. 4: “How to pray – What to say, Part 1.” There are three parts to this because it is too much for just one lesson. If you remember from Life Lesson No. 1, “What is prayer?,” the pattern of prayer as My Son taught it consists of fellowship, partnership, and stewardship. So today we will focus on fellowship, though the three are not really separate but can be mixed together as one unified whole.
Prayer is communication but at a level of the supernatural with your LORD God. It is conversation at a heavenly level filled with awesome majesty and splendor. “Splendor and majesty are before Him; strength and beauty are in His sanctuary.” Psalm 96:6. It is in the very Holy of Holies before the throne of grace. “Give to the LORD, O families of the peoples, give to the LORD glory and strength. Give to the LORD the glory of His name; bring an offering and come into His courts. Worship the LORD in holy attire; tremble before Him, all the earth.” Psalm 96:7-8. And the offering you bring is the fruit of your lips. “Take words with you and return to the LORD. Say to Him, “Take away all iniquity and receive us graciously, that we may present the fruit of our lips.” Hosea 14:2. Each day offer Me the first fruit of your lips by calling upon Me first thing when you awake.
Be aware that I am a Person. I speak to you of My hands, My eyes, My ears, My everlasting arms, and the path of My feet. I speak of sitting on My throne. Jesus told you that in seeing Him you see Me. He is the exact representation of My being. You look like Me. You are in My image and likeness. Your spirit looks like your physical being but in perfect form and beauty.
Do not call Me infinite. I number things. There is no end to the numbers but I number things and I contain them. All moves and lives and breathes in Me. Infinity is contained in Me, so it is containable. I AM a Person that you can see, not an infinite force or concept. I am limitless in what I can do and where I can be but it is not nebulous or expansive in the sense that you cannot be in My everlasting arms with My left hand under your head and My right hand embracing you. You can come to My throne and see Me. You can converse with Me as a Person. And that is where prayer starts—at the throne of grace before the divine majesty of One who loves, made, understands, and is for you.
Jesus gives you an invitation to prayer, “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30. Prayer is a place of refreshment and empowerment, rejuvenation and regeneration. It is a place of instruction and learning, healing and enlightenment. It is a place of entering My rest. My peace. My comfort. It is a place to cast all your cares on Me and find the solution to all that is causing you unrest so you can rest in Me.
And you can learn about the protocol of prayer from the Old Testament and the New Testament. Jesus told you, “Therefore every scribe who has become a disciple of the kingdom of heaven is like a head of a household, who brings out of his treasure things new and old.” Matthew 13:52.
So let us begin. A good place to start is the psalms. The psalms show the way straight into the glory—through the outer court of the tabernacle to the inner court of worship. “Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with joyful songs of praise. Give thanks to Him, bless His name. For the LORD is good.” Psalm 100:4-5. You will see the way to begin prayer is to join with the songs of Heaven. “O come, let us sing for joy to the LORD, let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving, let us shout joyfully to Him with psalms. For the LORD is a great God and a great King above all gods, in whose hand are the depths of the earth, the peaks of the mountains are His also. The sea is His, for it was He who made it, and His hands formed the dry land. Come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the LORD our Maker. For He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand.” Psalm 95:1-6. I am enthroned on the praises of My people. Psalm 22: 3. When you begin in this way you have come right to My throne. Your mind has been lifted from the things below where the devil crawls and prowls to the things above where Christ is seated at My right hand. And in Him I have already raised you up with Him and seated you there.
And you have started where My Son told you to start in the pattern of prayer, with fellowship: “Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Your Name.” And this you find again and again in the Psalms, “I will be glad and exult in You; I will sing praise to Your name, O Most High.” Psalm 9:2. “Let them praise the name of the LORD, for His name alone is exalted; His glory is above earth and heaven.” Psalm 148:13. I am the Most High and I am also your very own Father. “But now, O LORD, You are our Father, we are the clay, and You our potter; and all of us are the work of Your hand.” Isaiah 64:8. This is a special place, a secret place where I can speak to your heart and mold you anew, whether it be a physical, emotional, or mental healing, or a new direction in your life. And I mend broken hearts in this place also. Bring everything to Me in this secret place of peace.
It may be that sometimes you want to remain there before My throne with heart in tune with Heaven and enjoy being in My presence as I reach down and pull you up into glory. You can receive awesome revelation and impartation at this time, in the place of worship there is much light and revelation. Moses stayed in My cloud of glory forty days and forty nights and it seemed like nothing to him, he did not even have any need to eat or drink and he was radiant when he came down. He received so much revelation in this place of divine and awesome majesty. He wrote the first five books of the Bible. He heard and saw the events unfold from the beginning, he heard the words of creation, witnessed the fall of Adam, the conversations of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, he saw the life of Joseph, and so much more. I revealed the beginning to him. And later I would reveal the end of time as you know it to John in his time of worship on the island of Patmos as he wrote the book of Revelation.
And it is here you learn My ways and come to know My Names as expressed in the Covenant benefits. Here I share My secrets with you. And you can share your heart with Me. What do you say in this awesome place? Learn from David, the man after My own heart and the sweet psalmist of Israel, “My soul, wait in silence for God only, for my hope is from Him. He only is my rock and my salvation, My stronghold; I shall not be shaken. On God my salvation and my glory rest; the rock of my strength, my refuge is in God. Trust in Him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before Him; God is a refuge for us. Selah.” Psalm 62:6-8. Pour out your heart as you declare who I am and wait for the answer.
And consider more of the conversations in fellowship in the secret place as David shared by the inspiration of My Spirit, “You are my hiding place (secret place, “seter” in Hebrew); You preserve me from trouble; You surround me with songs of deliverance.” Psalm 32:7. And there are many such songs by David that reveal fellowship in the secret place, “I love You, O LORD, my strength. The LORD is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge; my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. I call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised, and I am saved from my enemies.” Psalm 18:1-3. I extend to you the hand of fellowship, but it is also the protecting hand of your Father and God, and there is no snatching out of My hand. You are safe with Me. “For my soul takes refuge in You; and in the shadow of Your wings I will take refuge until destruction passes by.” Psalm 57:1.
Consider this guidance for prayer in the secret place of fellowship: “One thing I have asked from the LORD, that I shall seek: That I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the delightful beauty of the LORD and to inquire in His temple.” Psalm 27:4 It is a place of answers and a garden of delights. And what would he do there? “And I will offer in His tent sacrifices with shouts of joy; I will sing, yes, I will sing praises to the LORD.” Psalm 27:6
And fellowship in the secret place will become the joy and anchor of your life. You will want to return there all day and night long. And the good news is you can. My Kingdom is within you. You access it in the Spirit in your heart. “O God, You are my God; I shall seek You earnestly;
My soul thirsts for You, my flesh yearns for You, in a dry and weary land where there is no water. Thus I have seen You in the sanctuary, to see Your power and Your glory. Because Your lovingkindness is better than life, my lips will praise You. So I will bless You as long as I live;
I will lift up my hands in Your name. My soul is satisfied as with marrow and fatness, and my mouth offers praises with joyful lips. When I remember You on my bed, I meditate on You in the night watches, for You have been my help, and in the shadow of Your wings I sing for joy. My soul clings to You; Your right hand upholds me.” Psalm 63:1-7.
And did you notice that you enter the gates that lead to the inner court with thanksgiving? Psalm 100:4. Thanksgiving takes you out of depression and lack to joy and increase. Thanksgiving focusses your attention on Me and magnifies Me above your problems. “O magnify the LORD with me and let us exalt His name together. I sought the LORD, and He answered me, and delivered me from all my fears.” Psalm 34:4. Worried, anxious, and depressed people are not thankful people and they, like the barren bush in the desert, refuse to see good when it comes. They cannot pay attention in prayer because they are too busy fellowshipping with themselves and their problems. “Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with thanksgiving.” Colossians 4:2. Without peace in your heart you cannot devote yourself to prayer. “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body; and be thankful.” Colossians 3:15. Thanksgiving has a lot to do with peace of mind. Thanksgiving as you agree with and recall all My benefits will give you joy unspeakable and peace that passes understanding. Psalm 103:1-5, Philippians 4:6-7. “It is good to give thanks to the LORD and to sing praises to Your name, O Most High; to declare Your lovingkindness in the morning and Your faithfulness by night.” Psalm 92:1-2. “For You, O LORD, have made me glad by what You have done, I will sing for joy at the works of Your hands.” Psalm 92:4. The voice of thanksgiving brings about wonders. Psalm 26:7.
There are three things I very clearly ask you to do, “rejoice always, pray without ceasing, and give constant thanks,” and those three give you a good definition of how to pray and what to say.
I love you. There is much more from My Word that I want to share with you about how to pray and what to say, so we will continue tomorrow with the aspect of partnership. Why not start putting these lessons into practice right now? Come, draw close to Me and I will draw close to you, and let Me refresh and bless you as we fellowship in the secret place.
The LORD your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you but will rejoice over you with singing. Zephaniah 3:17.