On Prayer
by Karen C. Appleby
copyright 2006
When I was young in the Lord, He anointed me to pray. Oh how I prayed. It flowed from a well deep within me. It flowed and flowed and I loved to pray and spend time with Him.
I developed a disciplined prayer for all my family and friends and God even had me write a handy little booklet to help me pray so that I would not forget anything. One day I sat down to go through my disciplined prayer list when I heard a voice loud and clear say, “Don’t bring me your ritualistic prayers. I don’t want them.”
It scared me to death. The last thing I wanted was to be rejected by God for doing wrong as I had been rejected in my early life. I stammered around and tried to pray prayers that I thought were not ritualistic. A huge wall came between God and me concerning prayer. I cried out to him. I wept before him. I started to pray and found no words to speak. This went on for a long time. The accuser of the brethren had me in his clutches and accuse he did. The problem got worse instead of better and I beat up on myself. The more I did that, the more I felt I had failed my wonderful God.
Round and round I went with the condemnation and the accusations coming against me. Finally I had become my own worst enemy. Satan did not have to accuse me anymore, I had picked up the ball and it was rolling well.
I finally began to realize that this was not my precious Jesus who had done this. I recognized the condemnation came from the clever enemy. I prayed and repented from believing the condemnation, but I still did not have the root of my problem.
Now you must realize that I did not stop praying altogether. I talked to God, but could not seem to pray those passionate prayers for others that I had been able to do before. I decided that I needed to stop striving over this and I jumped into God’s lap and gave the whole thing to Him. I decided that the prayer was going to come to me when I quit working and punishing myself in my own flesh. I would trust the Lord to take care of this problem.
I talked to the Lord about my problem, but I did not strive. I stayed close to Him and sat almost always silent before Him. I knew that He was with me and His presence was there. Whenever I needed to pray with someone, God gave me the ability to do so.
I went to Canada to teach at a women’s retreat. Three of us talked about how we give away our inheritance just as Esau gave his inheritance to Jacob for a pot of stew.
I taught how we attained that inheritance of dominion in the Garden of Eden and how when Adam and Eve sinned; they gave their dominion to the devil because Eve believed the devil’s lie. Adam also believed a lie when he sinned because he thought that if he did not eat the fruit, he would be separated from Eve forever. He did not want that because he loved her. I knew while I studied this whole thing that I was onto something that was going to be life changing for all of us, including me.
I inspected my walk with the Lord and discovered several places that I had believed the devil’s lies. I began taking back the territory that I had yielded to the enemy. I confessed and repented for all the lies God showed me I had believed. Some of those darkened veils that cover us when we sin came off my eyes and let in more of His light.
One morning I got out my disciplined prayer guide and opened it up. As I sat there, the Holy Spirit stirred within me. I had believed the lie about prayer! I wrote a letter to the Lord in my journal to confess and repent for the wrong I had done. God was setting me free. Step by step, He had taken me from deception to revelation.
God is so smart. Do you know how much I learned in that process? I learned more about recognizing the voice of God--He will never talk to me the way the devil did! I learned more about getting caught up in condemnation… another tool of the enemy. (I do not care how rejected you were as a child, it is the devil’s plan to destroy you. Do not be surprised when you find this out.)
I learned more about giving every difficulty over to God. I learned that if you give something to him, He will take care of it at the right time. I learned to look for the places in my life where I have believed lies and repent from that. I am sure that I will learn even more from this.
Thank you, Lord, for your awesome ways.
Matthew 21:22 And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.
