Posted: 02/17/2009 at 7:29pm | IP Logged

YOUR FATHER’S GOOD PLEASURE
A Perspective On Prayer
Don Atkin

 http://www.donatkin.com

We have it on good authority that Father’s
propensity toward His children is to give.

Jesus said, “It is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

Paul understood: “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?”

Peter got it: “His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness.”

Listening as others pray can reveal some things about their relationships with God.

Claims of intimacy are questionable when prayer is based in insecure begging and pleading for things that have already been given by a loving, gracious and generous Father.

Repetitiously appealing to “Lord,” rather than peacefully discussing matters with “our Father,” reveals that some are still walking as slaves, not as benefactors of our adoption as sons.

God inhabited the praises of Old Covenant people. Under the New Covenant, God inhabits His people! We do not labor to enter into His presence. He is ever-present, always with us, never leaving nor forsaking us.

Access into the Holy of Holies, through the blood of the Lamb and by the power of the Spirit, eliminates the absolute need for special times and places for prayer. We can pray without ceasing—when sitting, standing or walking, while lying down and sleeping, even when in the midst of fellowship, ministry, and earthly labors.

The anointing abides. Christ abides.

The Father may guide us into prayer disciplines, even as He does for the stewarding of finances. What once were requirements of the law may now be disciplines of the Spirit. We are no longer slaves. We are sons. We are no longer bound to legalistic minimums in giving or in praying. We are indeed free to respond to the Holy Spirit in all of life’s situations.

Prayer becomes like breathing. We can be in the middle of something very intense—totally focused upon the details of our present activity—and Father will break in. Suddenly, we know what to say in that hour. Suddenly, we know what to do in that circumstance. Suddenly we have a word of knowledge—prophetic insight into the situation. Suddenly we have a word of wisdom—knowing what to do with what we have come to know.

We do not need to “shift gears.” We live in His abiding presence. God’s Spirit enables us to be both supernaturally natural and naturally supernatural. Life is not to be broken up into little segments.

Yielded hearts will not be disappointed.

This is life in the Spirit, the lifestyle of the maturing sons of God, walking and talking with Father. We find out what He is doing, so that we may join with Him in the same way that Jesus did. Jesus had no agenda or ambition of His own. He had no will of His own. Consequently, He did not spend time in prayer asking for Father to bless His plans or give Him things to consume upon His own lusts.

Spending all night in prayer before appointing the twelve apostles must have been an interesting time. I wonder how many names they considered together. You can see the unity of heart and purpose in the fact that Jesus chose those whom He wanted, and then three years later said to the Father, “I have manifested Your name to the men whom You have given Me out of the world. They were Yours, You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word.”

That’s what sons do! We walk in fellowship with our Father. We want what He wants for us. We manifest His name to those whom He gives us out of the world. They keep His word, not ours.

So, lay hold of the faith that has been given you. Breathe in and breathe out His life. This kind of prayer—born of and maintained through the Father-son relationship—will integrate you into the kingdom business of our Father, and fit you for a yoke that is easy and a burden that is light. This lifestyle of prayer will produce rest for your souls.

Requests for prayers roll through cyberspace indicating that—if we can just get enough people praying, we might twist God’s arm and change His mind. It is a lesson in futility to accumulate volumes of “prayer warriors” to a cause that is not God’s cause. Conversely, two or three who have been brought into agreement by the Holy Spirit’s revelation on a matter can move mountains.

Men and women who are walking together in fellowship with the Father
through their relationship with the Son and in the power of the Spirit
will inevitably do the works of Jesus.

“I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.”
“It is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”