heaven's tree book club

Ground Rules for Effective Prayer
Be anxious for nothing, but in everything prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, your requests be made known to God. —Philippians 4:6
So far, day four in this book, I would say this has been the most encouraging chapter. Today also has probably been the best day so far this week. It all started with the fact I woke up one hour later than my mom. I sleep downstairs next to the kitchen and did not even hear her come downstairs and prepare for breakfast. I slept soundly for another hour after my normal time of waking. This is so amazing because I struggle with insomnia for a long time. Nothing major happened today and perhaps that is a praise too. My certification had been received and approved today by the state when one week ago it had been lost in the mail. It happened that the address was off by a number. If I just waited out I would find that they still did not receive it. Because I checked I found out it had not been received so I had to send a new one. What is more is that yesterday late night I received an e-mail regarding an Eczema treatment I had asked about two weeks ago. The person took two weeks to get back to me. I mention these two things to show how God is teaching me a couple of things. Timing and patience is important. I am learning nothing is instant, not even instant noodles. My healing and recovery is not going to happen at the snap of a finger. I am not going to find a job tomorrow and get hired in the afternoon. Most of life involves waiting much longer than we want. We get upset at God frustrated at ourselves, and this does not solve anything. Later on the author will talk about timing. Another thing is faith which is another thing the author will talk about. Eventually the woman would reply and eventually my certification will be approved. Eventually God answers our prayer. I don't know if I will actually get a job from the process and how the exams will turn out, but today I see a glimpse of hope for employment and I give God thanks today for my certification now being in the system. These few things really made me quite happy today. Also after three plus weeks, I am on my final day of the colon cleanse. I physically do not feel any differently but internally I don't know yet. I am so glad to be done, the powder didn't taste aweful, but I really didn't want to drink it for any longer. I feel fine. Not good, not great, not bad, but fine. God has shown me that He cares about the details of my life. O, yes, one more thing. I received a possible e-mail about a disability ministry which is something really on my heart. Yesterday I shared about hopes and dreams and this is part of my hopes and dreams. The only thing God did not speak to today was concerning marriage and family.
A key part of the Philippians 4 text is being anxious about nothing and praying about everything. The author emphasizes this in the start. Pray about everything. Don't be worried about anything. My problem is not praying about everything. My problem is that I also worry about everything. I worry about finances, health, singleness, joblessness, and so on. My faith sometimes is so minimal. The other thing here is to come boldly but also with humility from Hebrews 4. We approach God with boldness. We can approach boldly but not with a sense of pride. Now going back to Phillipians one key is giving thanks.
"We are also instructed to pray "with thanksgiving." If you lose sight of what God has given you, you will begin to take Him for granted. Some people pray, "My name is Jimmy; I'll take all you can gimme." Don't forget what He has already done for you. But this has another purpose, which is to keep God's fulfilled promises before your eyes. If you pray in thanksgiving, you constantly repeat—give thanks for—God's blessings in your life. This gives you confidence for what you are asking Him to do for you in the future. Often, Moses would inspire the Israelites by listing all the miraculous things God had already done for them. It's like a coach "firing up" a team before a football game. He might say, "We beat these guys two years ago. We beat them at their place earlier this year. And we've whipped them every time we have played them!"
The players say in their minds, "Yeah. We've beaten them before, and we'll do it again." Thanksgiving serves a twofold purpose: it reminds you of God's goodness, and it gives you confidence for your current (and future) praye
Two purposes. Don't take God for granted and also to gain confidence and faith in God for the future. So many times in the Bible it is about remembering God's faithfulness. We see this both in the history books and also in the many Psalms. Also, in my own life what has really helped me in praying has been remembering how God helped me in New York. God came through in some powerful ways in New York that could only be His sovereign grace. If He helped me then, He can help me now. Being thankful helps us protect against being ungreatful. It is God who answers prayer and not self-sufficiency. Some people think it is they who earn their money. Yet, the perspective is that God provided the job, God provided us the ability, and God who enables us to work. I must never lose sight of what God has done and is doing for me.

"I submit to you that you should get what you ask for—as long as it's in line with the Word—and if you don't, you didn't get an answered prayer. If you just pray for a car, then be prepared to get some piece of junk with one wheel falling off. God has indeed answered your prayer. But if you pray, "Lord, I need a new SUV that will carry all my equipment plus the kids' stuff for all of their athletic events," and you instead get a compact car, then God did not answer that prayer.
Don't wait until you get a diagnosis of cancer to "start believing" in healing. Begin believing for healing with maladies that are not life threatening,
like headaches or upset stomachs.
At this point, however, I need to add one important qualification. If you pray for a Rolls Royce, you better have Rolls Royce faith. It's important to understand that God's power to provide your prayer requests never changes, but your faith can. Remember that in Nazareth, we found that Jesus could do no mighty works because of the people's unbelief Jesus, the Son of God! The same Jesus who walked on water, raised the dead, and healed the lepers. But in Nazareth did He suddenly lose His power? No! What changed was that in other examples of Jesus' power at work, especially healing, Jesus' power was mixed with the individual's faith. Even at Lazarus's tomb, maybe Lazarus couldn't help much (because he was dead!), but the women could believe Lazarus would rise again—and they did."
This portion is really a faith-builder and is my most encouraging portion yet. He says to pray with a Rolls Royce faith if we want one. I think many Christians including myself feel guilty to ask for something like that. I really wonder if God will honor this prayer. The thing is that I don't see how God answers this kind of prayer in my own life. I don't have a Rolls Royce faith. The author also says that if God provides something less, we should not accept that as our answer. We should not settle. We should not settle with partial healing or a average marriage. We keep on believing and faith is crutial. One last point is to believe now for little things. Believe now that God is healer and can heal us of headaches. The thing is that I don't see God's healing and my faith is quite poor in many areas.
"Yet when it comes to the things of God, we have great difficulty accepting God's method of doing things—His instruction manual. Jesus said, "Whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them." The key, then, is that at the moment you pray, you must believe that you receive. Not after you pray, and not even before you pray. Present tense. That faith is the triggering device—it's the wing shape that gives your prayer lift; it's the pump priming that causes your prayer engine to start up. Again, I have to be clear here: what you believe is critical. It's not just that you believe God is God, or that Jesus is His Son. Those are prerequisites, but at the moment you pray for something, you must believe you receive it. Jesus said, "Believe that you receive them, and you will have them." Did you catch that? Your believing is present tense, but your receiving ("will have") is future tense.
"How soon will I receive what I prayed for?" you might ask. That will be dependent on several things. First, how rapidly something comes into physical reality depends on your faith, as I have written earlier. The greater your faith, the sooner you can receive answers to prayer. Related to that, a second factor that determines how long you must wait for answers to prayer in the natural (and I keep phrasing this way because that prayer has already been answered in the spiritual realm) is the nature or size of your prayer request. Money, for example, doesn't just fall out of the sky; other people must bring it into your hands. So, say you prayed for a certain large bill to be paid. At that moment God answered your prayer, and perhaps He did so by directing someone to send you a check in the mail. Although that check hasn't actually arrived yet, it is a reality. The check has been written, mailed, and is on its way to you.
There is another factor that determines how quickly you actually see in the natural the answet to your prayer. We have an enemy, the devil. One of the devil's jobs is to shake our faith, and one of the best ways to shake our faith is to attack our patience. As humans, we aren't very patient. Watch people after a stoplight turns green, and see how quickly they honk their horns if the person in front of them doesn't move instantly. (A humorist once wrote that the smallest time frame known to man is the time between a New York streetlight turning green and the cabbie behind you hitting his horn!) Satan knows we have little patience, that we live in a "now" society. He knows that if he can just delay an answered prayer, even for a few days, some people will stop believing—and once that happens, it's as if the prayer had never been answered in the fitst place. Often, then, the devil or his demons will intercept prayer answers and detour them, delay them, hold them up somehow hoping you will get off your confession of faith."
I never heard of this particular thought. The idea that we must believe at the moment of asking. The author goes on to say that we should not pray for the same thing over and over. That is not showing we have faith. We ask just once. He addresses what we do in the meantime is to thank God that He has answered this prayer and believe in faith that the problem is gone. He calls this calling the things that are that have not yet happend. The idea of how prayer is delayed is reasonable, the enemy, the size of the problem, and the level of our faith. Many of the things I am asking for now are large-size impossible problems. I do not expect them to be solved in one day. Yet I have been praying for them everyday and according to the author this shows lack of faith. I must believe God has already answered in the spiritual realm.

"What do you do in the interim—the time between when you ask for something in prayer and the time that you physically receive it—if you can only ask for something once? You thank God for what He has already delivered to you. "Father, thank You. I believe I receive that new washer that we need." When it comes to healing, you need to say, "Father, I thank You. I believe that I am healed."
People get hung up on this confession. Some people feel that if they don't talk the problem, others will think they are lying. For example, if you are waiting for the physical manifestation of your healing from a tumor, you cannot say that tumor isn't there. If your blood sugar is low, you can't say it isn't. But in the interim between your prayer and the physical manifestation of your healing, you just do not have to talk about it—you do not have to talk about the symptoms. If someone asks, "How are you?" or "How are you feeling?" you just say, "Well, based on God's Word I believe I'm healed." Instead of talking about the symptoms, you address the solution. It's important not to get caught up in talking about feelings: "For we walk by faith, not by sight for feelings]" (2 Cor. 5:7)."
"If the devil can get you into the arena of feelings and sight instead of in the arena of faith, he will take you out.
But this time I had come into the knowledge of faith and healing. I took my stand on Mark 11:24, Matthew 8:17, and 1 Peter 2:24. I said, "Father, You said in Your Word, Matthew 8:17, referring to Jesus, 'He Himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses.' And in 1 Peter 2:24, again referring to Jesus, You said, 'By whose stripes you were healed.' In Mark 11:24, Jesus said, 'Therefore I say unto you, what things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them (kjv).'
I am now praying, and I say, 'Father, I desire that this tumor or growth be healed. According to Your Word, I believe that I receive my healing now, in Jesus' name. Thank You, Father. I believe I am healed.'" From that point on, the battle was on. As time went on the tumor grew larger and hurt worse. Every day in my prayer time, I reminded the Father, "I believe that I am healed." You have to keep your confession in the present tense.
This went on for months. In the natural, every day the first thing that would come to my mind was a thought from the devil. "Fred, how do you feel?"
I would say, "Devil, I do not walk by how I feel. I walk by faith and not by sight. According to the Word of God, with Jesus' stripes, I was healed, and if I was, then I am, and if I am, then J is,' because Hebrews 11:1 says: 'Now faith is...,' and I believe I am healed." If the devil can get you into the arena of feelings and sight, instead of in the arena of faith, he will take you out.
In my case, I continued praying for many months, "Father, I thank You. I believe I'm healed." Finally, eleven months had passed, and one day I was in the shower, just soaping up, and all of a sudden, I noticed I didn't feel the pain. I stopped, grabbed my chest, and lo and behold, the tumor was gone. Vanished. At that point, I prayed a different prayer: "Father, I thank You. I am healed." I no longer had to believe it as a faith fact, because now I had it as a physical fact."
Prayer:
Father, I am learning some new thoughts today concerning prayer. I am learning to ask only once for something and then to believe it. On the basis of Your Word, I will appeal to You regarding my physical condition which is bothering me for many months now that I have prayed about. I take my stand on Mark 11:24, Matthew 8:17, and 1 Peter 2:24. Father, You said in Your Word, Matthew 8:17, referring to Jesus, 'He Himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses.' And in 1 Peter 2:24, again referring to Jesus, You said, 'By whose stripes you were healed.' In Mark 11:24, Jesus said, 'Therefore I say unto you, what things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them (kjv)." It is on the basis of Your word and Your promises that I pray for healing one last time. I know and am confident that You will answer. I hope You answer soon so that I can make it to the wedding in one week. I have learned also to pray with thanks. Thank You Father for the many ways You showed Yourself strong while I was in New York like saving me in the car accident that totaled the car but left me and dad untouched. Thank You for sustaining me through four difficult semesters and many presentations that I feared. I believe in Your goodness. Thank You today for approving my certification so that I can now take the job exams and I believe in faith You will provide employment. Thank You for knowing my heart and desire for disability ministry and I know by faith that You will provide a ministry for me that will use my passion and abilities for Your service. I pray by faith You will provide a suitable help meet to me just as You promised Adam. My faith is so small and I even feel guilty praying for a Rolls Royce. Father, You are the God of the universe. It is nothing for You to provide a Rolls Royce to Your child who asks. I don't need or want a Rolls Royce. I need employment, mission and ministry, health, and female companionship. It is in these things that I ask in faith and according to Your promises.