OFFER A PRAYER OF THANKSGIVING

When the flesh is weak, most people give up and let go. When the flesh is weak in prayer, it means the natural man is fighting the spiritual man. The only way to become spiritual is through prayer and the Word of God. Jesus said the Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak, so even Jesus experienced the weakness of the flesh but He kept on praying. Some of you felt disconnected when you were praying, some days you felt power. There are days you could wake up and pray for the whole night, and there were days you could hardly wake up. All of this, is what Christians face in their spiritual lives. Fasting teaches you to be disciplined and when you become disciplined, it does not matter the circumstances, you pray and eat the Word. Whenever you don’t feel like praying, it is your flesh ministering to you, not your Spirit. The Spirit is always willing to pray but the flesh is weak, do not give in to the demands of the flesh, keep on praying.

In this prayer we have learnt what to be throughout our lives, we have received lifetime teaching. Now you know that when the Spirit comes upon you at midnight and says pray, you must wake up and do the way you did during fasting and not postpone or say you are tired. You were able to wake up every night through fasting because you were committed to the command that God gave us. From that create a habit of prayer and eating the Word. No one is born with a habit, it is adopted and learnt subconsciously or consciously.

You can also adopt the habit of praying, you have to be willing. Since we have been waking up at 04:30am to attend 5am prayers, continue praying in your own space. A healthy christian can discern danger from afar when you are aligned and alert in the Spirit, when you are suppose to be robbed or fall into a ditch, you are going to be alert because you are praying at all times.A habit does not have to feel good for you to do it. Get into the habit of speaking with the Lord Jesus Christ all the times. It can be something as simple as “Lord, I want to be more like You”. Do it to live in the glory of God, continue being in the prayer mode.

Let the Holy Spirit be your friend, whatever you do speak to Him, have fellowship with the Holy Spirit. The problem with us is that whenever we pray, we want to utter powerful things that changes the atmosphere but that is just one kind of a prayer. The Holy Spirit wants fellowship with you and to converse with you about various things, be open to that, don’t limit Him to what you esteem ‘powerful’!
2 Corinthians 13:14. “The amazing grace of the Master, Jesus Christ, the extravagant love of God, the intimate friendship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all”

Paul prayed that the Corinthians may experience this intimacy. The word ‘intimate’ means that it is very deep. You need to enter into the bedroom with the Holy Spirit. Some of you experience sexual desires because of God wanting to be intimate with you, but the flesh interprets it for you in a fleshy way. The Spirit wants an intimate relationship with you, which is communion. So when you look at this situation it might seem like you are attacked but it is God seeking your attention, calling you for intimacy with Him.Likewise, some of you might experience loneliness as a result of the Spirit trying to grab your attention but the flesh interprets it once more, the way you will understand it. When you speak to the Holy Spirit about your brothers weakness, you have already prayed for him but when you gossip with someone about your brother, it is just speaking without power and it brings no help to your brother. Speak to the Holy Spirit, He is a friend who can do better, whatever you make Him aware of, He is able to deal with it.

God cannot rest in many people because they are busy with friends other than Him, God can only rest when you give Him attention. How long can you be with a person who ignores you while he is with you? God did not leave most people because He was never there, He left because they never gave Him attention. God can only rest in you when you become His friend, let prayer be your lifestyle.

Never be far from God, allow Him to rest in you. Adam was God’s best friend. Conversations between friends cannot be recorded because they have an intimate relationship, that is why we don’t know what God and Adam talked about all this time before the fall, because God was resting in Adam until he became disobedient. You cannot be a partaker in Deuteronomy 28 when you have not found rest in Him, He must abide in you. As long as He is not your friend, you cannot rest because you will always need someone else to talk to and comfort you, instead of talking to God. When you have an intimate relationship with God you will be an alert Christian, nothing wrong will happen in your life. Many people today are seeking guidance because they ignored the relationship with God.

It is something else when you miss what God wants to tell you or give you. Imagine the things God wants to tell you alone but you miss them. Then you come and seek guidance from your spiritual Father and when he prays about it, God tells him that He has been talking to you but you missed it. By that your spiritual Father knows that you are not a spiritually alert Christian, you ignore the God that is with you. God is speaking but there is no fellowship between you and Him.

The bible says do not grieve the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is like a woman, he easily gets grieved, if do not give Him attention. Even in your sleep He still wants you to hear Him, when He comes to you and tells you to wake up and pray, He wants you to hear Him. When you ignore the Holy Spirit, you start to have peaceful nights because He is grieved, He doesn’t come to you anymore. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit because He does not easily forgive, have fellowship with Him so that God can rest in you.

Yesterday I spoke about entering the seventh day, and that 7th day is you. God must rest in us as He rested in Jesus because He was thankful, He must not feel like we are the 1st to the 6th day. God wants you to be thankful all the time, pray a prayer of thanksgiving, not request because your mind is above. When your prayer is of thanksgiving, God rests in you. As long as you ask, there is a battle within you between the Spirit and the flesh, then you pray a prayer of thanksgiving, there is assurance of blessings because God rests in you.

The prayer of Jesus was not “Father, wake Lazarus” but it was “Father, thank You that You hear Me”. When you look at the prayer life of Jesus, it was about thanksgiving. When He said “thank You” bread multiplied, Lazarus was raised, others were healed and many more miracles happened. Let us move from asking to being thankful because we have sweet fellowship with the Spirit of God ,that thank you changes your situation.

Genesis 2:3 “God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it because in it He rested from all His work” The seventh day was different from the six days. God entered a day, which was the Lord Jesus Christ – this is the perfect man you should be, where God can rest in you. Other days God created something, but when it comes to day seven there is no day and night, there is no good and bad, you must be that day. So when Paul said “I have learnt to be content in everything” it means that he learnt to maintain the day even at night.

[Revelation 21:1-4]
The Holy Spirit wants a constant intimate fellowship with you, whenever He says pray, you must be available. Jesus prayed even when His flesh was weak, He persisted and prayed. Jesus knew that He is going to die, that someone is going to betray Him, so He did not only pray when things where going well for Him thus He is a day, not day and night. When you receive mercy in the morning, do not go out of that day, receive mercy and let it follow you. If you stress when you lose materials or encounter difficult situations, you are in the night, when you can maintain your peace even when you go through difficult situations, you are neither in night or day but you are in a day. Be content in God and the Holy Spit can rest upon you.

When God said my Spirit will not strive with man see Genesis 6:3 it is because there was no rest for God in those men. So before you can find rest in God, He must find rest in you. God cannot dwell in you if you are not content. Many people are still baptized, the Spirit comes upon them and leaves because they react to circumstances, God is looking for a place that He can settle in even though there are things happening in your life.

You can be in the right position of prayer like Hannah but still not right with God. She was praying diligently, asking God to give her a son such that she lost delight in the husband, because of that the husband had to ask her, “am I not better than 10 sons”? Today God is asking many people a similar question: am I not better than the car you are thinking about, that sickness, that situation you are thinking about? If God is better, then He should make you happy even when you don’t have, even when you lost your materials, whether people leave you, you still remain the same. Learn to be content, there are fruits of the Spirit which are there for a time, to help you in your weaknesses, but as soon as you mature those fruits stop operating in you.

When you are not sufficient with God you suffer on what you depend on. When you depend on God even in the weakness of your body you cannot see suffering. Where did Jesus pray and ask God to help Him in His pain? When Jesus was on the cross instead of crying for pain to be taken away from His body, He hungered more and more for God. Instead of “Father, remove the pain from the beatings” He said “why have You forsaken Me”? Learn from Jesus; fix your eyes on God, not the situation you are going through .If Shadrack, Meshack and Abdnego could find Jesus (the fourth man) in fire, you will understand that this is not the faith that takes you away from the situation but it is the faith to find Jesus Christ in the situation that you are in. When you write an exam and you don’t know answer, do you copy? But why do you go and borrow when you don’t have money? You are not applying the same faith.

Revelation 21:4 “God will wipe away every tear from their eyes” meaning there is no longer day and night. Can you hear that this is Deuteronomy 28? The man of old have not received rest, that is why they are still waiting to be perfected. There is a generation that received rest in heaven and there is a generation that received rest on earth. When you are in the Garden of Eden, you cannot discriminate heaven or earth; because you are in the Spirit, you are in the rest.

When Adam was in the Garden of Eden, he did not lack nor longed for nothing because he was in the rest. Jesus died in the rest, when He was crucified He drew us together with the men of old, because you are in the Garden, whether you are on earth or in heaven it does not matter. Perfection is when we set out minds on things above, and make sure that heaven and earth are the same. Perfection is when we take what is in the Spirit. Why must there be a new heaven and new earth instead of God revamping earth alone? When the son is at rest, what he sees in the Spirit manifests in the world that he lives in. In heaven there was no perfection, perfection is in the rest, in the Garden in the Spirit.

A person is divided into soul, body and spirit, it does not mean that the soul is there and the spirit is somewhere else but they are one. Heaven, earth and the Spirit is a place, they are all in one place. So when the bible says “fix your mind on things above” that above is not a matter of altitude but a matter of who is in control. Your mind must be in the spirit so that heaven and earth may be what the Spirit is. Perfection is in the Spirit, heaven and earth must change, not the Spirit. In the book of Revelations, John saw a new heaven and new earth but the Word remained, the Word is the Spirit. You will be surprised that when you reach heaven you still have to be taught other things. The peace that comes does not come from heaven but it comes from the one who is walking with you. If you reach heaven and you don’t have fellowship with the Spirit, you will still be lost. The peace is with the One you are with. When Jesus said I am not giving you peace of this world, He did not mean that He is giving them heavenly peace but that He is giving them the peace that He is in.

Nothing in this world can give you joy, so why do you allow situations to take away your joy? Joy must be found in Him, not in people or things around you. Do not depend on people around you; even if you are alone, be happy. You need that car or house to make your life easy, not to give you joy, allow God to rest in you and become the seventh day. There is no better life than to be a Christian, peace that surpasses all understanding is not brought by things, it is there automatically. Nothing can take it away. Most of your prayers are motivated by panic, God cannot work. Allow God to rest from His works.

When you pray and your mind is above, Deuteronomy 28 is yours, you bind what is on earth according to what is in heaven. In the Spirit there is existence but it is not bound, bind it then it will be on earth, claim it and it will be there. You have an assurance, you must bind it or lose it, when you do, it manifests in the physical. Deuteronomy 28 waits for people to claim it. This is what God is expecting from us, He is not expecting us to ask.

Already things are given to us in the Spirit, all we have to do is claim them. When we go to Him we just have to say “thank you”, this is how we claim what is in the Spirit. Thank you is powerful because it means you acknowledge that whatever you are thinking of asking is already given to you. It is time to say thank you, and rest because of what you have in the Spirit. The one with assurance does not worry, he is the same person regardless of what happens in his life. Deuteronomy 28, go read it again and again, it is yours.

Your Father through the Gospel

Abraham Unknown

YESHUA; A CITY ON A HILL, THE LIGHT THAT CANNOT BE HIDDEN