In military terminology, a theater of operations or simply theater refers to a specific geographic area in which an armed conflict takes place.
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Can you imagine trying to pack the sun into a AAA battery case? Ludicrous! Solar energy is so intense that we cannot even come near to the sun.
Prayer also has so much power that we cannot measure or contain it. That’s because the power of prayer is directly related to the power of God. And God’s power is greater than we could ever imagine.
Our prayer power is related to how valuable God considers our communication with Him. He longs to hear from us. God’s desire to communicate with us is illustrated in His goodness. You do not have a single benefit that did not come from God. James writes that He is “the Father of lights” (James 1:17). He grants each answer to prayer just like He causes the sun, moon, and stars to continually shine. Sometimes you cannot see those heavenly bodies, but they never stop shining. In a similar way, His answering never stops.
Our confidence in prayer comes from the fact that prayer is shaped by the nature of God. The apostle John writes, “We love Him because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19). In other words, we love Him in response to His love. In a similar way, we crave to pray because He has a craving for our prayers.
Therefore, to truly understand God’s purpose and action in prayer, we must begin by understanding His nature. Because of His complexity and unlimited, eternal qualities, we cannot fathom the depths of His character. Yet, we can grasp what God has revealed to us about Himself in His Word. These facts about God are essential to our praying with authority and purposefulness. Knowing Him allows us to pray correctly—and with assurance.
God exists in three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. When
we pray, however, we do not pray to three Gods. We worship one God in three Persons. Like a circle, God’s unity is complete and unbroken. We cannot say, “Here is this part of God, and over there is another part of God.” All of God is everywhere.
God’s plural oneness is called the Trinity, or a tri-unity. This triunity is so strong that Scriptures speak of the three as “He.” For example, a plural name for God is often used with singular-person action words: “In the beginning God [Elohim, plural] created [barah, singular] the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).
God’s threefold existence is pictured in Christ’s Great Commission: “baptizing them in the name [singular] of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19). Each of the three Persons of the Trinity carries a distinct role in prayer. The Bible teaches us to pray to the Father (Matthew 6:9), in Jesus’ name (John 16:24), relying on the guidance and enabling of the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:26). In fact, prayer helps us better understand God’s threefold nature.
Because people don’t realize the strength of God’s character and His desire for them to interact with Him, they often consider prayer a tiny action in daily life. They try to compress it into a spare second or two, like putting the sun into a battery case. Then they wonder why their prayers are ineffective. They don’t realize that prayer catapults us far beyond anything we can see and into God’s theater of operations.
Prayer is limitless because God is limitless. Prayer is alive because God is alive. Prayer is powerful because God has total power. Prayer results begin immediately because God is timeless. When you pray, you align yourself with God and His purposes. Prayer propels you to your highest possible potential.
David was awed by his privilege of talking with God. He declared, “When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained, what is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You visit him? For You have made him a little lower than the angels, and You have crowned him with glory and honor” (Psalm 8:3–5).
We have all experienced that feeling of discontent when we fail to communicate with our Maker and heavenly Father. But we feel such joy when we are able to touch the sphere of our eternal Father!
The Panorama of Prayer
Prayer cannot be confined to our finite world. It deals with a Creator who is greater than all the starry heavens. Prayer launches people into the limitless, powerful arena of God Himself. The apostle Paul, a mighty prayer warrior himself, places prayer in a cosmic setting in Romans 8:26,27:
“Likewise the Spirit also joins in to help our weakness. For we do not know what we should pray for as is necessary, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with unexpressed groanings. But the One who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He [the heart-searcher] intercedes on behalf of saints according to God”.
These verses are reference points—what I call the key verses—for the chapters that follow. They tie prayer to the nature of God, then add the human factor—His people. Our key verses paint an awesome picture of prayer. They present Spirit-directed prayer as taking place in the huge sphere of God’s action, as pictured in the diagram below. (Note that the graphic serves as a functional diagram only. It does not indicate three Gods, but merely shows the separate actions that each Person of the Trinity carries out in prayer.) The circle represents the total mutual harmony of God’s triple action in prayer. The major players in the cosmic arena of prayer are located at the four quadrants of the circle.
One of Jesus’ first prayer lessons for His disciples shows this twoway action: “But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly” (Matthew 6:6).
Our key verses mention three intercessors who are located at the other quadrants of the prayer circle. All three are essential players.
The first intercessor mentioned, at the lowly six o’clock position, is the praying Christian. People are mentioned first. Why is our praying important? After all, in verse 26 the first thing said about our praying is that “we do not know what we should pray for as is necessary.” For answers, we must look at the next two intercessors.
The second intercessor at three o’clock is the Holy Spirit. He intercedes for the fulfillment of God’s world plan with longings that are, literally, not expressed. He carries out His praying within your life as a Christian believer. Amazingly, our prayers provide expression for the groanings of the Holy Spirit!
A third intercessor is situated at nine o’clock. The verse does not give His name, but describes His operation—He searches the hearts of praying people and prays for them according to God. Who is this person? We can determine His identity through His actions—searching the hearts of praying people.
There is nothing new about God searching human hearts. He has done that for centuries. David, for example, prayed, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my anxieties; and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:23,24). A reference in the New Testament, however, identifies one specific Person in the Trinity who has this responsibility. Revelation 2:18,23 names Him as the Son of God—our Lord Jesus Christ. “These things says the Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire . . . ‘All the churches shall know that I am He who searches the minds and hearts.’”
Romans 8:34 confirms the intercessory role of Jesus. “It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us.”
A dramatic scenario thus comes to light in these key verses. God the Father unfolds His redemptive plan for the world. God the Holy Spirit receives each part of that plan as an intense longing or “groaning.” He communicates these longings to poorly praying Christians and helps them to pray better. God, the searching Son, receives those longings in the prayers of His people. The Son, the Lord Jesus, then presents those prayers back to the Father and sees that they get answered.
This circuit of prayer can be described as an “unbrokencircuit between the throne and the footstool, and God’s desires were only flowing through us and returning to Himself again.”
In this way, the circuit of God’s action is completed in the world. This is the way in which God is effecting His will and restoring His kingdom to a rebel society (Matthew 6:10).
What Happens When I Pray?
Picture a lonely Christian battered by a barrage of painful conditions. In desperation, he steps into his prayer closet and brings his battle into the heavenly realm. As he kneels in that little corner, something happens that is more powerful than earthquakes or hurricanes. His prayer, offered with a small, weak voice, engages action that reverberates through the universe!
Even when this pray-er has little strength left, his mere thoughts in prayer to his heavenly Father are just what God is waiting for. The Trinity, in total unity, wisdom, and power, takes that heartfelt cry to God and transforms it into action within God’s theater of operations.
Can you relate your prayers to this scene? Do you see them as part of God’s cosmic panorama? Can you sense the power of God’s promise? Can you regard the prayers of the saints as something precious to Him (Revelation 5:8)?
Our key verses in Romans 8:26,27 inspire seven conclusions about the role of prayer in God’s arena:
● Prayer is more than something you do; it is something God does through you.
● Prayer completes the circuit of God’s action in the world.
● Prayer does not change God’s will, it effects His will.
● When you pray, you step into the operation of the Trinity.
● The significant part of your prayer is the praying of the Holy Spirit; your prayer is a primary way through which the Spirit prays.
● The powerful part of your prayer is the praying of Christ; your prayer is the main material for which Jesus is praying.
● Praying makes your Christian life supernatural; God gets His work done through your praying.
Hudson Taylor gives this insight regarding our prayer: “I used to ask God to help me. Then I asked if I might help Him. I ended up by asking Him to do His work through me.”4 Praying Christians are not powerful people. Their prayers are simply the conduit through which their powerful God lifts them from the human realm into His supernatural sphere.
God shows tremendous love to us by including our prayers in His action arena. He took extreme measures to make our praying possible. John 14:26 encourages us to remember that the Holy Spirit is our teacher and that He is helping us understand the cosmic nature of prayer. God has granted immense potential to you in prayer. He designed your prayer as an active connection for Him to your world.
The Problem of Prayerlessness
Considering the limitless nature of prayer, we also can visualize the serious nature of prayerlessness. Prayerlessness is an insult to God. Every prayerless day is a statement by a helpless individual, “I do not need God today”. Failing to pray reflects idolatry—a trust in substitutes for God. We rely on our money instead of God’s provision. We rest on our own flawed thinking rather than on God’s perfect wisdom. We take charge of our lives rather than trusting God. We consider His arena to be trivial until crushing needs drive us to our knees in prayer.
Prayerlessness short-circuits the working of God. In His love, He imposes Himself on no one. He waits to be asked. Neglecting prayer, therefore, is not a weakness; it is a sinful choice. Thank God that the atoning blood of Christ Jesus can remove the guilt of the sin of prayerlessness, for His blood cleanses the believer from all sin.
Perhaps you are thinking, I would love to have a powerful prayer life, but I just can’t seem to make it happen. Every time I try, something comes up and I fail.
There is hope for prayerlessness! The Spirit of God can change a weak and deficient prayer life into one that is powerful and effective, but four actions are necessary. Eagerly take these four steps before proceeding with this treatise.
1. Be sure that you are a Christian. If you have any doubt about Christ living in you or that you are a member of God’s family, please turn to Appendix A, “Knowing God Personally.” Read thoughtfully through the material, then pray a prayer like the one suggested to invite Jesus into your life. Notice His guarantees on the pages that follow. Your prayer of invitation begins a life of prayer, and prayer literally becomes your lifeline.
2. Repent of prayerlessness which dishonors your God. Every significant life decision starts with a changed heart. Admit how weak, wayward, and insufficient you are. Ask God now to cleanse you of your wrong attitudes toward prayer and to fill you with a desire to communicate with Him continuously.
3. Be filled with the Holy Spirit, as commanded in Ephesians 5:18. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of prayer (Zechariah 12:10). If you are not familiar with the concept of being filled with the Spirit, read your Bible. It will give you the steps to being filled with the Holy Spirit. To be filled with Spirit is to be filled with the Word of God. Then ask God to fill you as He promises He will.
4. Commit to center your schedule on daily time for you to meet God in prayer. We make time for the things we consider important. Your daily routine reveals what those things are for you. Make prayer the first priority in your day. Schedule it as your most pressing business appointment. Keep that appointment with God.
Exploring God’s arena takes us to the action in the heavens. In our next chapter, we will glimpse things going on in that awesome realm!
Prayer Response
My God, You stoop to accomplish Your will through the prayers of people like me. This is marvelous! I long to know more about that. I confess my ignorance and low regard for prayer. Forgive me in Your great mercy. Fill me with Your Holy Spirit. I want to give myself as a willing servant to fit into Your plan and to center my life around communion with You. In the name of Jesus, amen.
Personal Reflection
● What part of praying is most impressive to you? Why?
● What practical ways can we attract other people into the prayer arena?
● How would you express Psalm 116:1,2 in your own words?
● What keeps you from setting and keeping a daily time of prayer?
Practical Step
Use the four steps on the preceding page to evaluate your priorities in prayer. As you give prayer first priority for the next week, write down the changes that occur in your life. At the end of the week, jot down a number of differences you find in your communion with God. Thank God for the new closeness you enjoy with Him.
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