Prayer: Unleashing Gods Will On Earth

➡ Jim Pugh, through the Ministry of God as Government, discusses the power of prayer in our lives. He explains that God has two types of will: unconditional and conditional. Unconditional will is when God decides what will happen without any human involvement, while conditional will requires human cooperation. Prayer is a key way we can cooperate with God’s conditional will, drawing from heaven into our lives. It’s not about making God do something, but accessing what He already wants to do, which is conditioned on our participation.
➡ This text emphasizes the power of prayer, particularly when it’s based on God’s word. It suggests that prayer can lead to healing, deliverance from sin, and can help overcome weariness. The text also highlights the importance of confessing sins to those who will pray for you, not judge you. Lastly, it uses the story of Elijah to illustrate that persistent prayer, even in the face of no visible results, can eventually lead to significant outcomes.
➡ Elijah, with God’s help, outran Ahab who was on a horse, demonstrating the power of faith and prayer. This story, shared by biblical teacher Jim Pugh, emphasizes the importance of turning to God and the strength it can provide. You can find more of Pugh’s teachings on his website.

The following teaching is by Jim Pugh through the Ministry of God as Government. If you have never listened to one of our many podcasts and wish to see all the topics taught through this focused subject discussions ministry, please go to www.goddesgovernment.com to find the inventory of all the subject podcasts. Now, welcome Jim Pugh as he presents another historical study of truth from history, Bible scripture, or current events. Welcome to our audio version of our spiritual focused discussion subjects. This is part one on the subject of prayer. The title of today’s discussion is prayer, Unleash God’s Will on Earth.

They that wait upon the Lord will have new strength. They will mount up with wings like eagles. They will run and not get weary. They will walk and not faint. For many of us, prayer is like the national anthem before a sporting event. It gets it started but has absolutely no connection to what’s happening in our lives. We do it because it’s tradition. We’re supposed to. It pays homage while being totally disconnected from the field of play of our lives, and yet it is one of the dominant themes of scripture. It is the dominant theme of James.

In verses 13 through 18, you see the word pray or prayer in every verse. So for James, this is a big deal. I hope to explain in this discussion why God has a conditional will and an unconditional will. God’s will is what he determines to happen, but it can happen in one of two ways. It can happen unconditionally or conditionally. God’s unconditional will is when he determines what will happen irrespective of what anybody else does. That is, it’s not conditioned on us or anybody else because he is going to decide that it happens and he is going to cause it to happen without any human involvement.

That is his unconditional will. It’s not conditioned on our actions or non-actions because he’s sovereignly. He decided to make it come to pass all by himself. That is his unconditional will, but God’s conditional will is different. There are many things he has decided to not let happen until he gets cooperation from earth. There are many things that he has decided he will not bring from heaven into history unless there is human cooperation with his desire and design. For example, the Bible says God desires all men to be saved, yet men only get saved when they believe on the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation.

So he has a will, but it’s tied to a condition. Many things in your life and my life are tied to God’s conditional will. So things happen or don’t happen based not on God’s decision but on our cooperation or lack thereof. One of the primary mechanisms that God has established to determine much of what he does on earth and in your life and in my life is conditioned by the absence or presence of prayer. James says in chapter 4 verses 1 to 3, you have not because you ask not or when you ask, you ask with wrong motives.

He says, I wanted to give it to you, but you never came to me for it. So you don’t have it. It wasn’t because I didn’t want to give it. It was because you didn’t cooperate with getting it because it was part of my conditional will. Prayer is relational communication with God and the goal of prayer is to draw from heaven into history. The goal of prayer is to get eternity to make a statement in time. It is to make heaven visible on earth. It is to get God to touch humanity. The goal of prayer is that up there might do something, fix something or change something down here.

When God makes a big deal about prayer, which he does throughout all of scripture, we are asking God to release his will from heaven to earth. We’re giving him an okay because we’re cooperating because it is part of his conditional will. Now, the problem is you don’t always know what’s conditional and what’s unconditional. Some things are clear, but other things you’re not sure. That’s why Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 517, you better pray without ceasing. You better bring it all to God so you’ll miss nothing because all the time it’s not clear which way God is operating from.

Without prayer, you become limited to the physical. But the only reason you pray is to get the spiritual God to enter into the physical. The passport to leave the physical and into the spiritual is in one word in scripture, and that word is prayer. Now, let me explain. Prayer does not get God to do something he doesn’t want to do because you can’t make God do something. But what prayer does is access what he already wants to do, that he has conditioned on your participation and mine. I love Isaiah 65 verse 24.

Isaiah 65 24 says, Before you call, I have answered. Oh, did you follow that before you prayed? I have already answered the prayer. So you are not praying to get God to do something but to pull down something he has already predetermined to do. Because if he has already done it before you ask for it, then why don’t I have it? Because it has to be pulled down, pulled from heaven into history, and that is done through prayer. So we’re talking about something serious. We’re talking about drawing heaven into history. So let’s break down this passage.

And by the end of this passage, I hope you have will have been ignited for a new fire regarding prayer and its power to take the kingdom of heaven and invade the kingdom of earth through the secondism of prayer. Verse 13 is anyone among you suffering? Suffering meant to be going through a difficult period of time. James says if you are hurting because of circumstances, you must pray. Pain is always an invitation to prayer. Pain in whatever form it takes is always an invitation to pray. You say, Well, I’m hurting all the time.

That means you should be praying all the time because pain is an invitation to pray. He must make contact with heaven in the midst of the pain. He must pray. He goes on in verse 13. Notice what he says. Is anyone cheerful? He is to sing praises. Now praise is an expression of value to the Lord. It is honoring the Lord physically and verbally. There’s no such thing as silent praise. You can have silent worship, but you can’t have silent praise. Praise is always visual and vocal. That’s why he says sing praises to the Lord.

Wait a minute. Let’s rewind. If you’re in pain, pray. If you’re not in pain, you’re not sad, but you’re glad praise. Well, hold it. You’re either one or the other. You’re either in pain or you’re cheerful. If you’re in pain, talk to God. If you’re not in pain, praise God, which means that you are always communicate with God because you’re either in pain or in praise. So God wants to hear from you all day nonstop as a way of life. He wants you to thread him into every aspect of your day, either in prayer or in praise, because you’re either in pain or you’re in praise.

Verse 14, he says, is anyone among you sick? Now the Greek word for sick means to be weary. That’s what the word means to be weary. In verse 13, you are praying for you. Anyone suffering, let him pray. But in verse 14, you need help because your prayers are not getting through. In fact, you don’t even feel like praying anymore. When life beats you down long enough, deep enough, you can get tired of dealing with God. So he says, go to the elders of the church that should represent the spiritual leadership of the church to get support for a breakthrough.

You have not been able to get on your own. That’s why you’re to be a part of a local church so that when you can’t go on, somebody else can keep you going on. You’re not to be a lone ranger Christian. So there must be spiritual people since they represent the church is talking about the environment people who can carry you when you can’t carry yourself. So he says, when you can’t handle it yourself, come to the church, call on the elders, get the ministry, the oil, and you do what he says in the name of the Lord.

Why? Because we’re talking about kingdom prayer. We’re talking about authority from heaven. The name means according to the character, the attributes, and the authority of Jesus Christ. You do it in Jesus’s name because he’s the one who okay’s the answers to prayer. Verse 15 and the prayer offered in faith who will restore the one who is sick. The prayer offered in faith. Here’s a word. I love this word. We need this word restores to restore something is to bring it back to its original intent. When something breaks, you restore it. You try to bring it back to its original intent.

God is a restoring God in the weariness is of life. He makes an astounding promise. He says God will restore. Now let me clarify. We know that everybody who gets physically sick doesn’t always get well, or they may get partially well, or they may be just a little better. We know that perfect health is not always restored in every situation. We know it is sometimes, but it’s not all the time. Sometimes God takes you out, but other times he walks with you through. Other times he walks beside you, and he restores you emotionally.

Even though you’re waiting for him to restore you circumstantially or physically, sometimes he does both. But the restore here is to remove the weariness while you still trust him for the solution. He says the prayer of faith will heal the sick. It will remove the weariness, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, because maybe he didn’t, but if he has, they will be forgiven him. Why do we pray for one another that our circumstances change? And if necessary, that sin get addressed because sin can keep you sick.

All sickness is not caused by sin. 1 Corinthians 11 makes it clear many are sick and many are weak among you. Why? Because of unaddressed sin. Therefore, confess your sins to one another. He says in verse 16, acknowledge the sin that’s created the weariness for which you need to repent to the appropriate other. Now, how do you know who the appropriate other is? Because some people you cannot tell your stuff to. Okay, it would be all over town. Okay, how do you know who the other is when you need help out of weariness? And you need victory over sin, but you need another.

Who is the other? Can’t just be any and everybody. He actually tells you, he says, confess to one another. And then he says, and pray for one another. So you only confess to somebody who’s going to pray for you, not talk about you. So the confessed, who is the pray for? He says that you may be healed, that you may be delivered from or through whatever is taking place in your life. The word if he has committed in the Greek is the perfect tense. The perfect tense means past action with abiding results.

So what does that mean? It is if he has committed a sin that he keeps on committing. In other words, this is a habit of sin that they haven’t broken. So they need to be delivered, healed, delivered from this. So you get help from folks who are going to pray and get to God with you and for you. Now he makes a summary statement in verse 16. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much. The effective word there means energized. An energized prayer is a focused prayer. It is a prayer that is God centered.

It must be accompanied by righteousness, the effective prayer of a righteous man, a person who is living to please God. Nobody is perfect, but you can be righteous. That is, you’re living to please God. The effective focused energized prayer can accomplish much. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man, he says, can accomplish much. And then he gives an illustration. He says in verse 17 and 18, Elijah was a man with a nature like ours. Translation, he wasn’t from Krypton. He wasn’t a super prophet. He was a regular ordinary flesh and blood individual.

He didn’t have any unique thing over any other human being ever made. He was a man with a like nature. So whatever he’s getting ready to say about Elijah is true about you because he just like you, he just a man. That’s all he is. He says, however, this ordinary man was a prophet. It says he prayed earnestly. He wasn’t being casual. So let’s go back and see what really happened in first Kings. Well, look at chapter 17 verse one. Now, Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the settlers of Gilead said to Ahab, as the Lord, the God of Israel, lives before whom I stand.

Surely there shall be neither do nor reign. These years accepted my word. Verse 18, one, now it happened after many days that the word of the Lord came to Elijah in the third year saying, go show yourself to Ahab and I will send rain on the face of the earth. Oh, in chapter 17 verse one, God said, it’s not going to rain. In chapter 18 verse one, God said, it is going to rain. So why do you need to know that? Because Elijah didn’t just make this up. He was praying based on what God had said.

God said it’s not going to rain. God said it is going to rain. So he prayed, watch this based on God’s word. So the first thing you need to know is you need to pray with your Bible open. You need to pray and say to God that he said this, and I’m holding you to your word that you said. I believe this, so I am praying for it. The Bible is full of prayers that you should pray. When you’re struggling, there’s Psalm 42 you pray. Psalm 42, when you’re repentant. That’s Psalm 51, you pray Psalm 51.

When you are afraid, there’s Psalm 34, you pray Psalm 34. And you point God back to his word because God has held his word high above his name. So you start with the word of God about the situation that you faced. All right, let’s go on. He goes on to say, I hear the sound of a storm coming. In verse 42, an Ahab went up to eat and drink, but Elijah went up to the top of Mount Carmel and crouched down on the earth and put his face between his knees. He took the posture of a pregnant woman who was in labor.

The Bible calls it travail. He was in labor and he said, I need some rain. I want some rain. I’m going to push and push and push till I get some rain. Oh, you know what God wants you to do? He wants you to birth his will from heaven into history by calling it down, drawing it down, pushing it down until that baby of deliverance, that baby of healing, that baby of victory comes forth. This is serious praying. This is not casual praying. This is crying out. Why do I have to work so hard? Because Satan is trying to block your prayer from getting through.

It says, he said to his servant, go now look toward the sea. So he went and looked and said, there is nothing. He said, servant go to the sea and look for the storm. Servant went out and said, oh Elijah, there’s no storm out here. But wait a minute. We just read Elijah heard the sound of a storm. But the servant went out and he didn’t see a storm. See, that’s why you got to be in touch with God. So you hear stuff before you see stuff. Because faith is not what you see. Faith is what you don’t see.

But if you can hear the voice of the Holy Spirit, if you can hear the voice of God, you can hear stuff. Before you see stuff, God sometimes tells you before you see it. So he told his servant to go back seven times, the number of completeness. He says, I want you to go back seven times in verse 43. Whenever you see the word seven, it means something has been brought to completion. Sometimes people say, how long should I pray for something? How long should I talk to God? I’ve been praying about this for years and nothing has happened.

How long should I pray? Well, let me explain something. God only has three answers. Yes, no, or wait. If he hadn’t said yes, and he hadn’t said no, that means wait. So what do you do while you wait? You pray till you get a yes or no. You pray to completion. When he went out the seventh time, he said, I saw a cloud coming out of the sea, like the size of a man’s fist. You know how small a cloud that is. He said, I just saw a little cloud. I don’t see a storm. I just see a little fist size cloud.

Elijah said, after the seventh time, and he saw the cloud Ahab, prepare your cherry at verse 44 and go down. So the heavy shower does not stop you. He didn’t let him see a shower. He let him see a cloud. See some time when God’s ready to move. He isn’t going to let you see the whole thing. He just lets you see a little something, something to give you a taste. That’s why the Bible says, oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. He may not give you the whole meal. He may just give you a sample plate.

That means that the meal sometimes God gives you is an appetizer. He isn’t ready to feed you the whole meal. He is just giving you something, something so that you know what you have to look forward to. So he says, we only got a fist, but there’s a shower. So watch this now. He tells Ahab, get in your chariot and go because this storm is going to get ready to break out. So get in your chariot and go. That means a horse is pulling the chariot. So he gets in a horse and go 15 miles from where he is to Jezreel.

So Ahab gets in there and he’s riding his horse, but I don’t want you to miss the end of verse 46. Then the hand of the Lord was on Elijah and he girded up his loins and outran Ahab to Jezreel. No, you didn’t. Ahab is on a horse. Ahab is riding a horse. Oh, Elijah picks up his cloak, ties it up, and he outruns a horse to Jezreel. I believe Isaiah put it this way, that they wait upon the Lord, will have new strength. They will mount up with wings like eagles. They will run and not get weary.

They will walk and not faint. You ought to be willing to pray. You ought to be willing to pray out to God. You ought to be willing to touch heaven because the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. You have been listening to a focused discussion of various subjects brought to you by biblical teacher and author, Jim Pugh, with God as government. For free access to all of Jim Pugh’s focused subject podcasts, please go to www.goddesgovernment.com. Distribution of all of the podcasts and all other teachings are available for worldwide distribution.

Thank you for joining us in this broadcast of our focused subject discussion. [tr:trw].