ON THE PRAYER AND FAITH DYNAMISM: REJOINDER TO TOBI ODUWOLE (PT.1)

Hello Tobi, good day. How are you doing? It’s really been a while since we last saw. I know say your face still never change, and ya bear-bear still small.

Beht who am I to judge the authenticity of the connection of your facial foilage?

Okay, so I read your blog post here: “Your Prayer Isn’t Enough” , and I’ll try as much as possible to be as candid as possible in love, as a brother. Everything I will reply you with will be Scripturally backed as well. First off, the headline is an attention grabber, so there’s that.

This is your first paragraph:

“In my 5 years of Christian journey, I had this mindset of getting what I want by praying and whatever I pray for what I want I shall receive which isn’t the case in our work with God. All the time, I have seen the people treat God like a genie without actually having a relationship with him and forgetting about him when they receive what they want.”

Now let’s look at the Bible. Mark 11:24 says “Therefore I say unto you, what things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.”

Now, that’s Jesus speaking, not Mark. Not Peter. Not Paul. Not John. Jesus. As in, Full Jesus Christ, our senior brother. Anything apart from what He said is tantamount to calling Him a liar, knowingly or unknowingly. If you read the verses before and after, Jesus NEVER put a qualifier for receiving from God whatever it is you pray for, and I’ll tell you why. Or, I’ll ask you a question instead.

Tell me: for the sake of this post (I apologise if this is sensitive to you specifically), does not having a relationship with your father make you any less of his son? No; you’ll just be a son who doesn’t have a relationship with his father. As a child, did you have to work harder to EARN your father’s love, assuming he was a loving man who wanted to be a father? My guess is no; no child has to earn the love of their parents. Yes, the world system lets us understand that after a certain age, we are supposed to fend for ourselves, but God is our ETERNAL FATHER, and he never put an age limit on our care. That’s because our care is a product of His Grace, and there is NOTHING anyone can do to earn it; if there is, then it isn’t Grace. The only thing you can do regarding Grace is to Receive it. It’s people who can’t fathom the fact that you have NOTHING to do but receive God’s love and care that feel there is something to be done. Jesus didn’t say “When you pray, I’ll check if you have a relationship with God first, see when last you prayed, and then we’ll see about granting your request.” In an ideal home, no child has to work at having a relationship with his/her parents; there is a relationship already just by being a member of the family, and that is enough to qualify the child for the benefits of being a part of the family.

You don’t work for what you already have.

In this next segment of your post, you wrote:

“A year later when my prayer life started developing, I had this other mindset that if I pray for 1 hrs or a certain about time I will get what I want or the process will be quicker which again its a false message preached by religious people. During my Christian journey, one thing I realise about prayer is that it helps prepare you for your breakthrough and see what God is teaching you during your season of struggle, pain and waiting for your vision to manifest. Reading my bible and realising that when these people in the bible prayed about their breakthrough, God didn’t immediately give it to them he prepared them for it and build their character inside of them but how they held on to God promises in mist of their struggles, betrayal and lost is that they had a solid relationship with God and made themselves/position their mind to receive instruction of him.”

First off, I’m glad that your prayer life is developing, but the important thing about development is that you develop in the right thing, the right way. Your statement above contains certain wrong assertions, which I will address now.  Again, Mark 11:24 says “Therefore I say unto you, what things soever ye desire, WHEN YE PRAY, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.”

In the above verse, Jesus gave the moment for receiving what you pray for: WHEN YOU PRAY. In asking for something from God, we are given the rules: there is no time frame given for receiving, but WHEN YOU PRAY.  You receive what you want WHEN YOU PRAY, as long as you BELIEVE that you will receive it. Saying that God doesn’t give us what we pray for immediately we ask for it is calling God a liar, and He CANNOT lie. To understand why it may take some time for some people to get what they pray for is to understand the dynamics of Faith, and the effect of Sin on this earth.

Faith is how you receive what you pray for. Without it, you will get nothing. Hebrews 11:6 shows this. This is why Jesus tells us in Mark 11:24 that the way to receive from God is to BELIEVE. We are to ask in Faith, not in Fear or Doubt. The moment you get to that point of absolute certainty in the infallibility of God’s Word, you will get what you ask for, because at that point, you will clearly see yourself in/with what you are asking for.

As for the effect of Sin, well, Sin has contaminated the earth since the Fall. It turned upside down everything that God created; sickness for health, barrenness for fruitfulness, lack for abundance, fear/doubt for Faith…death for life. Everything around in the world is designed to go contrary to Faith; all you have to do is look closely to notice this. When what you are asking for is material (which is usually), God has to send angels to influence those through who God will answer your prayers here on earth. Some people are naturally stubborn though, so until God finds that one, you better stand in Faith and pray it through.

God doesn’t need to withhold your prayer answer to teach you something or build your character, and He tells us this in Luke 11:11-13. As a Believer, you have the Holy Spirit in you, so your character is the character of the Holy Spirit, which Gal 5:22-23 calls the fruits of the Spirit. The Believer is not developed in these things in lack or fear, but by being in the Word. One of the characters of the Believer is what keeps him/her steadfast in Faith; perseverance, the ability to wear out the situation.

This is your next segment:

“When God gives us a prophecy, we are so quick to do things our way because he’s taking so long to give us what he promised us he was going to do in the first place. We become so impatience that can make us lose track and do things our way which it doesn’t work and things go wrong, we saw this example in the story of Abraham and his wife Sarah. When God told Abraham he was going to have a child at a Very old Age, the promise was taking so long for both Sarah and Abraham that Sarah convince him to sleep with the maid Hagar and few months down the line Hagar pregnant and gave birth to Ishmael which wasn’t part of God plan over Sarah & Abraham life but didn’t stop God promise for them instead God still carried on with his promise, one thing my friend always tells me is that when God prophecies over your life, his prophecy doesn’t get returned in Void. Even in the story of Joseph, When God showed him who he was going to be but had to go through major challenges by his brothers selling him into slavery to becoming a servant/household superintendent to being thrown into prison for some many years after being accused by Potiphar’s wife for rape to becoming an overseer for pharaoh. it’s weird how Joseph went through all of this but still manage to receive favour from God.”

The fulfillment of God’s Prophecy to us has been shown, throughout the Scriptures, to ALWAYS come to pass. However, the dynamics of Faith requires you to pray while you wait, not worry while you wait. Hebrews 6:12 gives the template for inheriting the promises of God: Faith AND Patience. Like you pointed out, sometimes some of us can’t wait it out, because some Prophecies are divinely designed to manifest at a particular time.

Now, there is a flawed understanding of Abraham’s and Joseph’s conditions, with regards to Faith, that shows in your post, and I say this, because I used to have the same understanding at one point. In Genesis 12, we are introduced to Abram, 75 years, not yet Abraham. It is here that God gives him his promise. However, fast-forward to Genesis 15: 2-4, where we see Abram, almost 99 years now, telling God that he is childless and his estate is in danger of falling to his steward. Of note is the words he uses:

“And Abram said, Lord God, what wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless, and the steward of my house is this Eliezer of Damascus?” Gen 15:2 (KJV)

When dealing with Faith, it is important that you SEE what it is you want. Hebrews 11:1 tells us that “Now Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the EVIDENCE of things not seen.” Comparing these 2 verses, it is immediately clear that Abram was not operating in Faith, because he lost sight of the evidence of God’s promise to him, which is God’s Word. In fact, this was the main reason he went along with Sarai’s plan to sleep with her maid; if he’d been holding on to God’s promise, there is no way he would have gone along with her plan. So God did something that would constantly keep this promise in Abram’s mind; He changed his name to Abraham which meant “Father of many nations”. In doing so, anytime someone called his name, what Abraham was responding to was God’s prophecy over his life. In fact, God roped in every person that came in contact with Abraham into His plan, so that there was no way he would ever forget. As we see, not long after, in less than a year or so, Isaac was born.

As for Joseph’s story, he didn’t HAVE to suffer what he did to get what God promised him. He didn’t “MANAGE” to receive favour from God. His brothers were only succumbing to the machinations of the devil, who sought to kill the Blessing line (which is a whole new study on its own) that God had channeled through Joseph. In fact, it was God’s prophecy to Joseph that kept making him the cream of the crop, no matter where he was; as a slave, he rose to become the head, and as a prisoner, he also rose to become the assistant warden, all in a short period of time. Joseph didn’t have to go through what he did, but that didn’t stop God, who is always able and willing to use our circumstances to bring out what He has told us. I mean, He called forth light out of darkness, and out of death, He called forth Life.

This sort of thinking is the same one which subscribes to the lie that God places sickness or poverty or hardship on people to teach them lessons. That’s a blatant lie; if He did, why did Jesus come to die? James 1:13. God doesn’t teach you about health with sickness, or abundance with poverty; what lessons are you going to learn? Those things are of the devil. For the template of God’s plan for man, look at Adam before the fall; EVERYTHING was provided for him. He was brought into abundance; pain, sickness, suffering, lack and every other aspect of the Curse came into the world the moment Sin came.

I'll take a break here, with the second part to be uploaded later. In the meantime, listen to some music: Prince Of Peace by Hillsong United.

God bless you.