Hearing is one thing, and sometimes that really is enough depending on the nature of our prayer request, but usually God is waiting for our interaction on the subject. Prayer has been called 'earthly permission for divine intervention' (Dr Myles Munro) and I'm liking that. Of course God knows what you need and what to do, but His hands are basically tied due to a fairly generous thing He did at creation: He gave the earth to us to rule -Genesis 1:26. (And then we pretty promptly handed it on to the arch enemy of God.)
Anyway, part of being made in His image included having the power to change things with our words. We make agreements everyday just about every time we open our mouths - either with lies or with truth, with light or dark, life or death, God, Satan, others or ourselves. Scary eh? However that's a big subject so let me just stick with the currant prayer permission thing:
Take what the answer looks like and speak it out.
Now over the years this has been packaged a bit dubiously and we ended up with positive confession catch phrases that had as much bounce as a soggy paper towel: 'name it and claim it', 'blab it and grab it' to name two. But we're not talking about magic formulas or mind power. Nor are we talking about living in denial. "I don't deny the existence of the mountain. I deny the right of it to exist in my way. I see it as God sees it - removed." (Charles Capps) There is an important difference here: we need to be speaking God's words. That why we spent time making sure we heard God's heart on the subject first. Remember mother Mary's words at the 'water into wine' wedding: "Whatever He tells you to do, do it"? This gives you the confidence to know that what you're announcing to all the unseen powers is the answer that God most certainly decreed.
Now for you WhatDidJesusDo? folks - the following is paraphrased from Charles Capps' 'The Tongue, A Creative Force':
1. He spent much time in prayer, but He never prayed the problem, He prayed the answer - what God said is the answer.
2. He spoke accurately. His conversation always consisted of what God said.
3. He always spoke the end results. Never did He confess present circumstances. He spoke the desired results.
4. He used the written word to defeat Satan.
5. Jesus spoke directly to the problem, such as trees, storms, waves, demons and Satan, and they all obeyed Him...not because He was the Son of God, but because He was the Son of man (John 5:26-27). He operated as a man on the authority of His Father's Word.
People who are born on this earth are the only ones who have authority here. That is why God works through mankind/humans.
That is why it was so important that Jesus came to earth as a human, left all His supernaturalness behind, and then showed us 'here, this is how you do it.'
Practical stuff: if in doubt; rest, listen, give permission. That's how you pray. And like I said at the start, this is not a formula, you need to find how this looks for you. But you gotta START somewhere! So give it a go.
