One of the principles in the word of God is to “believe the future”. Why should I do that? Let’s ask Abraham. And behold, the word of the LORD came to him, (Abraham) saying, “This one shall not be your heir (ISHMAEL), but one who will come from your own body shall be your heir” (ISSAC). Then He (God) said, “Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them”. And He said to him, “So shall your descendants be”. And he (Abraham) believed in the LORD, and He (God) accounted it to him for righteousness.
What did Abraham believe? The future, and it was credited to his account.
We (John and I) were listening to a video Bill Boylan recommended on prayer by Don Keathley, and some of the things he was saying was “annoying” me. For instance, he named all the ways we prayed in the past and said it was foolishness and accomplished very little, if anything. He said we needed to stop asking for things; that this is not prayer. Communion with God is prayer, spirit to spirit; sharing between Father and me to become conscious of who He is; He is the initiator (big one), we are the responder. When we commune with Him, knowing He has supplied everything we need, we posture ourselves differently. He also said there was no travail in prayer. We stopped the video! We looked up the word travail and Don was right; there was no prayer indicated in the word travail.
We prayed (probably not the way Don was talking about)! We asked God to reveal to us if what Don had to say was true or not. (We always remain open, but we want to hear from Father for ourselves). Then, we continued to listen.
A few minutes later, we got it. Although Don had alluded to the following, he never emphasized it enough for us to see it: He said, “one day, this is the only way we will pray. This is how Jesus walked”. I am sure he did, but I would have to say then, that He was wrestling with the Father in the Garden of Gethsemane because it is recorded that He sweat great drops of blood during that time. Jesus asked if it was possible to not have to go through the crucifixion, then he did not want to; but nonetheless, he desired the Father’s will. There was definitely a battle going on within him. This was the moment that he laid down the last vestige of his own will. After his resurrection, none of this was necessary. Perhaps the 40 days post resurrection is where we are headed. We think this is an important point, but this point is our report, not Don’s!
So, as John and I discussed what Don was reporting, we recalled how our prayers had changed since we began to see the future concerning other spiritual matters coming in the Kingdom of God. We concluded, the area of prayer was just something we had not understood that was already happening a lot in our lives and Don Keathley explained it beautifully.
Jesus walked in constant communion with our Father, eating only from the tree of life, discovering there was no separation between Him and God. We have applied our faith on this subject of prayer to the principle of believing into the future where we too will commune totally with our Father with no separation, spirit, soul and body and it has been credited to our account for the days that loom ahead of us.
I probably have not done Don Keathley justice in trying to explain this, but I hope I provoked you to listen to his 2 videos on prayer. You can find them here:
http:www/youtube.com/watch?v=O15zwpjYZAk&t=133s
I HOPE THIS HELPS SOMEONE: BONNIE