Your Dangerous Prayer!

You have a dangerous prayer you just may not know it yet. Even if you have never thought of it, your dangerous prayer is in your heart. And it is not just you telling God what you want. It’s about trusting that he loves you in the hard times and in the good times. He will let you know when its time to say back to Him what he has already in His heart to bless you. Yes it requires faith. Yes it requires a little boldness in the face of baroness, but what you see now is not everything there is to be seen.

Christ followers live in two worlds, the seen and the unseen. Since nothing happens until we prayer, prayer is the first thing that should happen. It does take a while to get use to a life of praying first…then doing. Prayer is following God’s heart and wanting more of His life to be our life. I know you might be saying, “What the heck does that mean?” Just spend more time with the “noise” of your life shut down. It may cost you time from your fun stuff, but do it. The more you do it the better you will be at hearing God and praying what He puts in your heart. Don’t worry your little head about getting it right the first time.

Just do it.

Just be off the chain? Even if you are wrong the first time you pray dangerously, God won’t let you be wrong for long. So what do you have just sloshing around in your heart that needs to pour out your tongue to God? Come on go for it. Write it down and speak it into the universe where you, the Angels, God and yes even the Devil can hear it. Don’t be afraid of what God thinks about it. Odds are the more outrageous it is the more likely God put it there.

Think about it, why would the enemy of your very existence, Satan, put something outrageously good for you and the kingdom of God in your heart to pray…wait for it…. wait for it! He wouldn’t!!! Yes you are very welcome…I just cleared it us up for you. No Satan wants you broke, sick or better off for him… you dead. In the gospel of John we read the words of Jesus himself and whatever you remember, please let it be this,

 “The enemy (Satan) comes to kill still and destroy, but I have come to give you life and that more abundantly.” John 10:10 KJV (emphasis added)

Don’t mix up who wants you dead and who wants you to live abundantly. If you get a wild hair of an idea to pray any shade of death over your life or someone else, that’s bad. And it did not come from God. It came from the other guy…the one who hates you. Yes…he can give you thoughts to. I know you might not like to hear that but it’s true. Now he cannot control you if you are a Christ follower, but he can give you some nasty stuff to think about.  

So if the stuff you are thinking is NOT good…replace it with the GOOD STUFF. Like the Snapple commercials, fill your mind with the good stuff and hang around Christ followers who speak life not death and listen to life-giving pastors and get fanatical and like read the bible everyday. You don’t stop thinking bad thoughts…you REPLACE them with the good stuff.

Over time you will start praying the good stuff back to your Heavenly Father.  And good stuff will began to happen to you. I know you’ve probably heard “Good things happen to good people”…wrong! “Good things happen to those who believe good things happen to them,” and you can quote me on that. This principle will happen even to people who are on the fringe like my friend crazy Harold. He’s not really crazy, he just has that one eye that won’t look straight at me when we talk...kind of freaks me out a bit.

“Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.” ~Proverbs 4:23 NLT

Here’s an important, but little know secret about prayer, “You pray all the time.” Yes folks you heard it here first…you pray constantly. What is in your heart goes up to God. The good stuff He loves to answer, but the junk and we all have some, He cannot answer. Why…do you say? Cause He is crazy in love with us and will try to talks us out of the “the junk." How does He do it? Oh I don’t know, maybe like, have me write this blog? Yeah, that makes sense…stuff like that.

Anyway, we do… and… we have… and… we live… and…we pray what is in our hearts…there I’m out of breath, but I said it.

“…For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” 1 Samuel 16:7 ESV

So prayer is as much what you hold in your heart as what you say with your mouth. Like right now while I’m writing this I’m thinking about some knuckleheads that I know that get on my nerves. Now don’t sit there looking so holy, yes, pastors are human too and we have to decide what to do with those thoughts just like you. I can just let these thoughts ride and get more ticked off and think “Get ‘em God”, which He won’t do or I can replace these thoughts with what God really thinks.

“But I say to you, love your enemies and bless the one who curses you, and do what is beautiful to the one who hates you, and pray over those who take you by force and persecute you.” ~Matthew 5:44 Aramaic Bible in Plain English.

So there you go. God just told me what to hold in my heart and how to respond to the knuckleheads in my life. He did not say I had to like what they do, but how to deal with it.

The more you hold the good stuff in your heart the more you think like God so the more you…you got it…pray God’s will.

So let’s wrap here. 

• You have at least one dangerous prayer in rolling around in your heart so get it out so the universe can take a good look at it. Don’t be shy.
• Watch what you let bounce around in your noggin cause that stuff gets stuck in your heart and becomes a part of you. As I like to say, “Think about, what you ‘think about’.” A journal or an honest friend can help with this, ones just louder than the other.
• Replace the bad thoughts with the good stuff. Be patient with yourself. It takes a while, but it will happen. You’ll be praying God’s will out loud before you know it.

That’s it; now go get ‘em tiger!

Remember be life-giving!

Alex Anderson