“Your kingdom come and Your will be done.”

When we pray the Lord’s prayer, let’s resist reciting it in a “stained-glass” voice as if it’s irrelevant pretty poetry! (D. Jeremiah n/d) Let’s understand that the Lord’s prayer was showing us that prayer is a holy rebellion to the status quo. (Teykl 2002)  He was the divine intruder and wants us to be also through prayer! (Wimber & Springer 1987) We are to pray according to the Father’s heart by saying, “Father, YOUR will [not the devil’s] be done!  YOUR kingdom come [not the devil’s] here on earth.”  

When Jesus said “NO!” to storms, He wasn’t rebuking His Father in was He?  No!  He again was demonstrating that what is happening here in the seen earthly realm IS NEGOTIABLE THROUGH PRAYER! (Teykl 2002)  You say, “Well that was Jesus.  Jesus can rebuke a storm, but I can’t.”  However, in the same passage Jesus rebuked the disciples for their little faith, implying that they could have done the same.  

The Jesus of the Bible established Christianity as the only religion that does not subscribe to fate.  We subscribe to faith that confidently prays for God’s undeserved mercy and grace in all situations.  The Lord showed me this witty comparison: Christians have turned the word FAITH into FATE.  All the major false religions of this world, which the devil himself has fathered, have at their very root FATE.  And that religious devil has subtly injected his poisonous philosophies into Christianity.  Religious fatalism suggests that we must acquiesce to “whatever may be may be.”  While it sounds so spiritual to accept and be at peace with everything that happens, and is in fact considered the ultimate barometer of a person’s faith in many churches, fatalism is perhaps the number one thing keeping Christians from following the steps of Jesus and the early believers.  

Early believers powerfully demonstrated the King’s Presence within them day by day and turned the world upside down.  That’s true FAITH!  However, today’s believers have been taught to yield to the events of an upside down world and call it God’s will.  It’s time for us to take FATE out of our FAITH. They walked in a clear understanding that their great commission was to pray and then demonstrate all that the last Adam, Jesus, had faithfully returned to the Father.  It is essential to return to true Biblical faith if we are to live coram Deo and follow in His steps.  

Adapted from the Coram Deo Secret
http://www.marisarickerson.com/coram-deo.html

“The earnest (heartfelt, continued) prayer of a righteous man makes tremendous power available [dynamic in its working].” Jas. 5:16  AMP

Today’s verse shows that our continual prayers make God’s tremendous power available.  Surely God wouldn’t want us to waste our time asking for something like his Kingdom and will to be done if that was going to happen anyway?  No.  Because He gave authority over the earth to man, He therefore must be asked before He will move on the earth. (Joyner The Torch and the Sword 2004)  God’s pattern has always been to release His will through man.  Andrew Murray said, “God’s giving is inseparably connected with our asking…only by intercession can that power be brought down from heaven which will enable the church to conquer the world.”  John Wesley said, “God does nothing on earth, save in answer to believing prayer.”  Our prayers distribute the uniting and disuniting power of the cross.  

Our pattern for praying as God’s representative here on earth is Elijah for he is the one referenced in the above James 5 passage.  Elijah was a human just like us and knew that it was God’s will to send rain, yet he had to persist in asking for God’s will in heaven to be done on earth seven times.  Seven is the number of completion, indicating we must pray it through until we see God’s will accomplished on earth.  Like Elijah we are to pray expectantly looking for results.  When we are tempted to give up and say, “It must not be God’s will,” we must ask ourselves, “What would have happened if Elijah had given up after just one prayer or on the sixth prayer?”  Like Elijah, our cumulative prayers make tremendous power available.  We must ask and keep on asking.  We must seek and keep on seeking.  We must knock and keep on knocking.  All the while believing that we have received, but that we just haven’t seen the results yet.  That’s how Elijah prayed, and he is our model.  Our prayers are likened to filling the incense bowls before His face and are poured out when they are full. (Rev. 5:8, 16:1)  Jesus gave the parable of the persistent widow in Luke 18 to illustrate “At all times, we ought to pray and not lose heart.”  A lack of endurance is probably the single greatest causes of defeat in prayer.  (Sheets Intercessory Prayer 1996) So let’s pray with Galatians 6:9 in mind, “Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary.”

Adapted from the Coram Deo Secret
http://www.marisarickerson.com/coram-deo.html

“You know of Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.” Acts 10:38

As important as serene, contemplative praying before His face is, Scripture shows us this was not the only way Jesus prayed.  Jesus also often engaged in an opposite kind of meeting that was aggressive and disuniting.  Not with His Father, of course, but with the forces of darkness.  We see in the Scriptures where He communicated (prayed) out loud directly to the binding agents of the devil’s kingdom in order to loose or separate humans from his grip.  With words, He met with whatever was binding someone’s body, mind, or spirit saying, “Be gone!” and “Be loosed!”  The Bible says, “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy [loose] the devil’s work.” (1 Jn. 3:8)  Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, had authority to loose the works of the devil with His words.  As carriers of Christ bearing His name, we’ve been given the same power and authority. (Lk. 9:1-2, Lk. 10:17-19, Mk. 16:17)  

Now that Christ is in us and because of His total victory on Calvary, our spoken words (the sword of the Spirit) make that same loosing effective: “On this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.  I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will have already been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will have already been loosed in heaven.” (Literal Greek translation of Matthew 16:18, 19)  While this kind of authoritative praying “against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Eph. 6:12) seems extreme and unlike prayer as we know it, it is in fact how Jesus did it and is defined as prayer as we see from the context of Mark 11:23-24,

“I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him.  Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” 

Adapted from the Coram Deo Secret
http://www.marisarickerson.com/coram-deo.html

"Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.” Lk. 5:16

The word prayer means “to meet.”  Just as Jesus needed to meet often with the Father one on one without distractions, so do we.  He demonstrated that prayer is a uniting, communicative meeting, involving the exchanging of ideas, opinions, thoughts and feelings.  “Ministry to God must come before ministry to people.  The role of the priest is to minister first to God, then to people.  The way we minister to God is by praising, worshiping and communing with Him in prayer and meditation.  The way that we minister to the people is allowing the overflow of what we have received in our time alone with Him to pour out into the lives of others.” (Alves 1998, 24)  This kind of prayer communion is part of the oneness Jesus wants us to have with God as seen in John 17:20-21: “Just as you are in me and I am in you.  May they also be in us.” Communion does not have to end when we go back into the world.  Like Jesus, we can remain available, sensitive, and obedient 24-7—coram Deo!  If we want to live coram Deo, there really is no way around routinely entering into this kind of contemplative prayer.  It would be like trying to be married without ever being with and talking to each other.  
  
Contemplative prayer can be defined as moving from information to intimacy.  For instance when we meditate on a short Bible text, we need to then let it bring us into the Presence of the Word who authored it.  Contemplative prayer is about finding that place before His face where we are centered in the Father’s love and then staying there.  Some have called this “soaking in the Spirit.”  Henry Nouwen defined this kind of prayer by saying, “It is precisely where we are most alone, most unique, most ourselves, that God is closest to us…the real work of prayer is to become silent and listen to the voice that says good things about me…to discover there the small intimate voice saying: ‘You are my Beloved Child.’”   During contemplative prayer, it’s essential that we know we are free from expending energy trying to earn His love.  When we make this connection, everything requires less of our energy and releases more of His.  While resting in Him enables us to do more and more for Him, let’s remember, “Failure to recognize the value of merely being with God, as the beloved, without doing anything, is to gouge the heart out of Christianity.” (Piorek  2005)

Adapted from the Coram Deo Secret
http://www.marisarickerson.com/coram-deo.html