Praying With Vision Bringing the Eternal Into Focus Jennifer Kennedy Dean Your flesh prays little prayers. Your flesh prays time-bound, earth-bound prayers. “Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit” (John 3:6). God commands us to pray this way: “With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit” (Eph. 6:18, NAS). The word translated “in” means “from a fixed position.” Pray from your fixed position in the Spirit. Pray according to the mind of the Spirit, by the leading of the Spirit, in the power of the Spirit. Prayer birthed by the Spirit releases the power of the God to accomplish the purposes of God. The power of God will do “immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine” (Eph. 3:20). Have Faith in God Don’t put your faith in an outcome; put your faith in God. When we invest our faith in our ideas of what God should do, we will not see the power of God operating in the circumstances of earth. When we are focused on our preconceived ideas of what God should do and how He should do it, we will often think that God has said ‘no’ when He has really said ‘yes.’ If we have narrowly defined how His ‘yes’ will look, our faith will take a hit from which it is difficult to recover. We will experience more disappointments than victories. If we continue to pray this way, we will soon experience prayer fatigue. Petition, the asking aspect of prayer, is only one component in the whole prayer equation. The deeper your understanding of prayer becomes, the simpler you understand petition to be. He invites us to ask. It is our asking that releases His supply. Asking requires childlike, unpretentious faith. It assumes that the need speaks for itself; that the Father’s love needs no convincing. The more intimately acquainted the petitioner is with the Supplier, the less need he or she feels to embellish. To ask is to simply take the need, not the answer, to the Father. “They have no more wine” (John 2:3). “The one you love is sick” (John 11:3) “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10). “Father, glorify your name” (John 12:28). When you realize how sweetly uncomplicated presenting your petitions to your Father is, then your energies can be devoted to worshiping Him, loving Him, hearing Him, learning from Him, letting Him recreate the inner landscape of your soul. The disappointments in prayer often come from just this misunderstanding. Thinking petition requires that we pray the answer, we frontload our prayer with instructions and expectations of how God will accomplish His will. We have in mind not only what we believe God will do, but how we believe He will do it. Although He is eager to reveal His will to us (Col. 1:9), His paths remain beyond tracing out (Rom. 11:3334). When we confuse what He is doing with how He is doing it, we often miss seeing His power at work and our prayers being answered. As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things (Eccl. 11:5)
Seeing the Answers to Our Prayers: Simeon The person with clear spiritual vision will recognize dimensions of reality that are invisible to the physical senses. In the second chapter of Luke we are introduced to such a person. “Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Christ” (Luke 2:25-26). What have we learned about Simeon so far? We know that the Holy Spirit was upon him. In other words, he was especially attuned to the moving of the Spirit and his life was open and available for the Spirit’s leading. We know that God had placed into Simeon’s life a vision--a clear mental picture of a future event. It is God’s promise. The Spirit had revealed to Simeon that he would not die until he had seen the Messiah. In verses 27 through 28 we read, “Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the law required, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying: ‘Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you now dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation.’” Simeon, moving in the flow of the Spirit, went to the temple where he saw Mary and Joseph bringing the infant Jesus “to do for him what the custom of the law required.” Do you see what that phrase implies? Mary and Joseph were doing something ordinary--something every Jewish family did. Probably other families were doing the same thing on the same day. Yet when Simeon looked at this ordinary, everyday scene, he saw what no one else saw. He saw the Messiah when everybody else saw a mother and a father and a baby. Others saw the appearance. Simeon saw the truth. We can reasonably assume that other Israelites were praying for the Messiah’s coming. Yet only Simeon recognized the answer to his prayer when He appeared. Seeing the Answers to Our Prayers: The Widow of Zerapheth A particular widow found herself in a hopeless situation. Due to a severe drought, she was reduced to nothing. Death was the only future she could see. “ ‘I don’t have any bread--only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son, that we may eat it--and die’”(1 Kings 17:12). No doubt she had prayed. As daily she watched her supplies dwindle, she had cried out to the God of her Fathers for help. Maybe she started out with great confidence in God’s promises to care for her and she watched expectantly day after day, anticipating His rescue—a rescue that didn’t come. With each hour that passed, her hope faded until the day she was left with neither food in her house nor hope in her heart. Here is how her situation appeared to her: God has forgotten me. God has abandoned me. But the truth is radically different from the appearance. God says to Elijah, whom He intends to supply with food in spite of the drought: “Go at once to Zarephath of Sidon and stay there. I have commanded a widow in that place to supply you with food” (1 Kings 17:9). Elijah travels to Zerapheth and there encounters a widow gathering sticks. Had Elijah been depending on his own senses and preconceived expectations, this widow would not have caught his attention. She is the most unlikely widow to be the answer to Elijah’s prayers. She has nothing to offer. But Elijah does not look at appearance; he looks at truth. “He called to her and asked, ‘Would you bring me a little water in a jar so I may have a drink?’ As she was going to get it, he called, ‘And bring me, please, a piece of bread’” (1Kings 17:10-11).
God is about to bring all the pieces together, showing them to be parts of a whole. The widow’s need, Elijah’s need, and God’s provision. The widow describes the facts of her situation. She has nothing to give. She has nothing to live on; she has just enough to die on. “ ‘I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son, that we may eat it--and die’”(1 Kings 17:12). But God speaks through Elijah’s mouth and redefines the circumstances. What appears to be “not enough” is, in reality, “more than enough.” What appears to be the preparation for her death is, in reality, the provision for her life. What appears to be loss is really gain. What appears to be the end is really the beginning. How easy it would have been for either Elijah or the widow to miss God’s miraculous work on their behalf by limiting God to their best ideas. God is not interested in meeting your expectations; He is interested in exceeding them. He loves you too much to be satisfied with confirming your faith; He wants to stretch your faith. He is training you to look past appearance and see truth. Learning to See the Answers to Your Prayers: Aligning Yourself with Truth Several years ago, a woman came to me for prayer. She was desperate and afraid. Her son had been arrested for selling drugs. She told me the story of his years of drug abuse—the anguished attempts to overcome his addiction; the glimpses of hope that turned out to be false hope. Through his story she weaved her own: she had prayed every way she knew how and God had never answered. I sensed that she had come to me because she was looking for someone who knew how to pray with such skill that she could get God to behave as the woman thought He should. She had a long list of instructions for what I was to pray. I began by asking her, “What is it that you really desire for your son?” As she went back to her list and began to read off her instructions for God, I interrupted her. “No. Those are the things that you have determined will accomplish what you really want for your son.” Years ago, God taught me that I can’t know the desire of my heart unless I know the heart of my desire. I helped her peel back the layers until she discovered the center of her desire: that her son would know Jesus Christ and find peace in his life. “That’s what we’ll ask for,” I told her. Things didn’t go well, if you define reality by the circumstances. The evidence was overwhelming. Her son was bitter and suffering excruciating withdrawal. In her panic, she would say, “God isn’t answering. Why isn’t God doing anything?” I reminded her what we were praying for. “Change your perspective,” I told her. “Don’t say, ‘God isn’t answering’; instead, say, ‘This is how God is answering. This is the path His yes is taking.” Fast forward. He was given a prison sentence. I wish that I could tell you the details that had to fall into place for God’s plan to emerge, but I will condense the story. He was led to Christ by a fellow inmate, who got him involved in a prison Bible study. Gradually, he became a different man. When he was paroled, he had to continue in a daily drug rehabilitation program. He finished the program, continued in his Christian walk, and has been sober and working for just over two years. What appeared to be backward was really forward. What appeared to be down was really up. What appeared to be dark was really light. Look With the Eyes of Your Heart “I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know” (Eph. 1:18).
The circumstances of earth are an optical illusion. When you look at an optical illusion, your eyes tell you one thing, but the truth is something else. What appears to be true is not true. You cannot know the truth by appearances. You have to understand certain principles of visual perception. You have to understand how the background of each illusion impacts the way the foreground is perceived. Appearance is not truth. When you look at the circumstances of earth, what you see is no more reliable than the appearance of truth in an optical illusion. You have to understand the spiritual principles that stand behind the earth-circumstances in order to have the true perspective. The concepts in this article are from Fueled by Faith by Jennifer Kennedy Dean. Find the book at www.prayinglife.org.