What is Prayer (part II)

By Odon Bulamba (summary only)

Luke 3:17-23

When Jesus prayed and the sky opened. When we open the door we expect something to go in or come out, so the door of the sky was opened and Holy Spirit came down, then Jesus became very powerful. After this He went to the desert for forty days and forty nights because of the power He received.

After receiving the Holy Spirit a voice spoke which gave Jesus His identity, it confirmed His identity. As for us, when we pray and ask God for something, the very first thing to know is if we are in the baptism or not, but what does that mean?

To pray well here are the steps.

1. Before reading the Bible we must say a short prayer like this, “God help me to pray, I am going to read your word and after that I’m going to pray, so be with me, I want to feel your power.” This is the first prayer.

2. Confess your sins and ask God to help you to understand the meaning of His word. You then open your Bible and meditate on a passage. Meditation is not limited only to your personal life, it will also will help you think about your brothers and sisters life around you. You will meditate on the Christian life around you or church, you will meditate on the whole world, Christians or pagans. So with one passage you do not only meditate on yourself, but also other people’s lives. As you meditate you will find you have some verses or visions that can teach someone who is in the world, or this text can comfort a weak Christian because of this and that, or this text can help you. From one text you can draw many answers for yourself and others. It depends on how you meditate.

3. After your meditation you say, “God, now I am ready because this Word is for me and I feel in me that at all cost I must change,” or you can say, “I must put this Word into practice,” “I want this word to be fulfilled in my life, (or other people’s lives), so I’m now ready to be baptised.” The baptism that John practice was immersion. It means that the whole body would go into the water, so you can say in your prayer. “I want to be baptised in this Word I have read, and I want to be baptised so that I can go into depth in your Word. I don’t want to be baptised like the Pharisees or Sadducees the way they did it at the time when John baptised them, because they would confess their sins and that’s it, but I want to be baptised to discover the depth of meaning in Your Word for my life and the life others.” This is how you pray after meditating on the Bible.

4. You are now going to punch into prayer. What do we do when we pray? You just tell Jesus anything, or any problem you may have; just tell Him. For example, “Jesus, this is a problem for me, and according to the Word on which I am meditating on - it is written this and that, and my interpretation of this Word is this regarding myself (or others)". So you basically tell Jesus what you’ve understood and now say, “what shall I do, because I am unable to find a solution, I am not able to change myself with my own efforts, so what shall I do to receive what I want so that your work can move on in my life, this is why Jesus’ I ask you to open heaven’s door because I want to see this door open so I can receive something from You so that Your work can move on in my life.”

If you want you can pray like this, “Jesus, when You were baptised the doors of heaven opened, and the power of the Holy Spirit came down.” So you remind Jesus of what happened when He got baptised and we remember that Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to lead us, and then you can say, “I want now the Holy Spirit to lead me in all of this, Jesus help me for I have faith the doors of heaven will open, for they are there.” Then the Holy Spirit will come down with a solution and you can pray for a very long time, as Jesus did for forty days in the desert. The devil will not touch you during your prayer, he might come at the end of your prayer but not during it.

The devil knows at the end of your prayer you are tired and will bring all sorts of troubles, distractions etc, but tell Jesus what you want and the Spirit of God will be with you. God Himself will talk to you, because He is proud of you. You will feel a joy inside of you, a new strength in you and God will say, “this is my son or daughter who is praying, she/he belongs to me.” You then hear or feel a joy, a power comes in you and you know that God is in you.

SUMMARY

- Pray before reading the Bible that God will help you to understand it
- Confess your sins before reading the Bible
- Meditate on the Word of God thinking of yourself and others
- Pray using the Word of God

For the full message please email: littlebethlehem@windowslive.com