“Christianity is a living faith, fellowship
with the living God who hears and
answers prayers. Simply talking in
the air is not prayer yet.
…If your prayer life is unproductive, you
need to examine your methods;
otherwise, there is no need in such
prayer.”
Kenneth Hagin
I have read the following on one of my friend’s Instagram page: “Laziness destroys a person’s full potential.” It reminded me of a quote by Myles Munroe: “The richest places on our planet are not the oil wells in Kuwait, Iraq or Arab Emirates, or even the mines of gold and diamond in South Africa, of uranium in the former Soviet Union or of silver in Africa. You will most likely be surprised, but the richest places on our planet are cemeteries. It is there under the earth that unfulfilled dreams, unsung songs, unwritten books, unrealized ideas, visions, goals and plans are buried. Cemeteries contain enormous potential, which has just remained potential. This is a great tragedy.”
Many people come to me with different requests: “Please pray for my daughter,” “Please help us with groceries,” “I am a bedridden sick person, my son is confined to a wheelchair, my husband is unemployed; please help us any way you can.” Of course, people must always help one another; however, when you see that most people who come for help just sit around doing nothing – they don’t pray, don’t work, don’t read the Bible, and only send letters or messages by phone with requests or rather demands, it is clear that they do not realize the potential, which is placed in them, and their unique calling. They live a dull life, in suffering and hunger.
Let me turn from big and small family problems to our people, the Armenians. For centuries, many times the very existence of the country and the nation of Armenia was under threat. But each time, by the mercy of the Lord, we were reborn like the Phoenix. After the unspeakable devastations caused by the recent war (I am speaking about the devastation of the inner world of our people) we tried to “come to our senses” and analyze why our victories turn into defeats, and came to a number of different conclusions.
Now let me turn to global scale problems as well. Today lives of all people on the planet are endangered. Artificial creation and spreading of the virus called Covid-19 and the coming vaccinations are a vivid proof of this. Despite the reality of how much people understand it and their opinion on the matter, against the man created in the image and likeness of God, a terrible atrocity is being prepared.
Some have put up with their personal failures. Some, having left Armenia, their bleeding birthplace ravaged by outer and inner enemies, seek safety abroad. Some explain the sword of Damocles hanging over the humanity with “the last days” and “coming of the antichrist.” All these people knowingly or unknowingly avoid applying the potential, which God’s hand has put in them to do His will. No matter in which country these people live, what education they have or what social class they belong to, the fact is, they have given themselves to INACTION. What actions are necessary to take? It is necessary to find the root of all these tragedies and heal it. There is an undeniable truth: if the roots of a tree are not healthy, the branches will gradually dry up, the trunk will rot, and the tree will die.
The roots must be healed in the spiritual world, because everything happens in the spiritual world first, and then manifests in the physical world. The Bible confirms it: “The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light” (Gen. 1:2-3). No matter what problems confront you – family problems, those associated with preservation and prosperity of a nation or safety of the population of our planet, there is only one way in the spiritual world to heal the root of a problem, and this way is PRAYER! Having heard this, many might be disappointed, and others, having a wrong perception of what I mean, might ask, “Do you think we haven’t prayed so far?” Generally, people always pray, but they do not pray through to receive the complete answer. “You have not yet resisted to bloodshed, striving against sin” (Heb. 12:4).
Prayer is a serious work. For many years, Kenneth Hagin has been my prayer life teacher. With the help of his books, I developed my prayer life, and because of the work done in the spiritual realm, I saw many miracles in the physical one. Unfortunately, not only newly converted people, but also those who serve in the Church for many years do not know how to pray properly. God’s mercy is always there. Through His grace and mercy, people can receive answers to their prayers, but it can’t go on like this all the time. The Lord desires people to develop their spiritual lives, that is not only learn how to pray but also achieve greater results. As one preacher said, “In spiritual life, one should not be content with having buns only; you need to have cakes as well.”
Kenneth Hagin writes that prayer life is like sports, each sport with its own rules and methods. It is impossible to win on a hockey field with a soccer ball. The same is true in the spiritual world. If in order to solve a problem a Christian needs intercessory prayer, then no matter how much they launch spiritual warfare, using the believer’s authority, there will be no result. If in order to solve a problem the Lord wants us to worship, then no matter how much a believer or a prayer group pray and proclaim the desires of their hearts, they will not receive an answer, even if they fast and pray for days. “The horse is prepared for the day of battle, but deliverance is of the Lord” (Pr. 21:31). The Lord decides how the answer to a prayer is going to come. The Lord searches the “heart and inner depths” and He knows what will be the path to the miracle at a given moment. Not only He wants to do a miracle in the life of a person or a whole nation; He wants the life of the person or the nation to change. And He knows the way to the change.
Naaman, the commander of the army of the king of Syria, would never be healed of leprosy, if he didn’t obey the words of the prophet: “So he went down and dipped seven times in the Jordan, according to the saying of the man of God; and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean” (2 Kgs. 5:14). Not only a praying person must receive guidance from God on how to pray (worship, spiritual warfare, prayer of agreement, etc.), but also a word from the Lord about how his miracle is going to happen. Jesus, before teaching multitudes and the disciples, preaching and doing miracles, spent time alone with the Father. He separated Himself for this purpose every day, and God the Father revealed to Him what He needed to do: “Whatever I speak, just as the Father has told Me, so I speak” (Jn. 12:50).
I will explain what I mean using an example from my life. For years, since my youth, I had headaches. At first the headaches were rare, but gradually they became frequent. One day, I realized that to cope with the terrible headaches, I already took three different pills every day, and then slept for two hours to be able to work or go about my everyday routine. Frankly, I did not pray for healing; I thought that because I served the Lord, He saw my suffering and one day would heal me. But seeing that I was not receiving the expected healing from the Lord, I underwent a medical examination. I then flied to Belgium for further analyses to receive an accurate diagnosis and treatment. In Brussels, the best doctors told me that my headaches had multiple reasons, and explained them in detail. Each time I had pain in different parts of my head. The doctors said that there is no possibility of complete cure; I had to take medications to ease the pain. It turned that the medications would have adverse effect on my stomach, which meant that later I would need to have some stomach treatment as well. They also suggested me to change my occupation. They did not ask me who I was or what I did, but came to that conclusion based on the results of their tests.
I returned to Yerevan with a suitcase full of pills. Following the advice of the doctors, I took them every day to avoid the terrible pain. I did not even think about changing my occupation, because I could not leave the calling, which the Lord had given me. And while fulfilling my calling, I was in stressful situations almost every day, because I communicated with physically and mentally ill people, orphaned children and survivors of violence.
A short while later, I came to my senses. I decided to stop taking any pills and put my hope in the Lord. At the midnight, the headache started again. Gradually it was becoming even more unbearable. I started to pray and proclaim that by the blood of Jesus Christ, which was shed on the cross, I was healed. In the name of Jesus Christ, I ordered the devil to let go of my body. I also prayed in the tongues of the Holy Spirit. The pain continued increasing. I did not stop praying. Different thoughts came; I remembered the following verses from the Bible: “Though the fig tree may not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines… Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation” (Hab. 3:17-18). For a moment I doubted thinking that maybe the Lord did not want to heal me, but wanted to see how much I would be faithful to Him in that pain. But then I understood that it was a trick of the devil; he tried to deceive me using that Scripture to move me further from God’s will. I continued my spiritual warfare, proclaiming Chapter 53 of the Prophecy of Isaiah: “He is despised and rejected by men, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief… Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows… by His stripes we are healed.” I proclaimed, full of faith, “By the power of the cross of Jesus Christ I am healed!” I can’t tell how long this battle lasted, probably around 40 minutes or more. Suddenly this unbearable pain was gone in a moment, and God’s peace surrounded me. I was completely healed! Years have passed since that day. I do not suffer any longer, because, by the leading of the Holy Spirit, I understood, which Scripture was for me in that situation and how I was to pray.
To be continued…
P.S. In the coming messages, I will share about different types of prayer and their characteristics in hope that by applying them, the roots of the problems described above will be healed as well.