Going Higher with God in Prayer

Cultivating a Lifelong Dialogue

A.W. Tozer, James L. Snyder

• Publisher: Bethany House Publishers
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9780764234040
• eBook ISBN: 9781493437382
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

What's Keeping Your Prayers from Being Effective?

Learning how to pray is one of the greatest challenges in a Christian's life. A.W. Tozer pointed out that the Church's greatest curse is unanswered prayer, and that many people do not seem bothered by that. Maybe they don't understand what answered prayer is all about.

Tozer outlines this as only he can, describing the kind of prayer God answers and the kind of prayer that leaves Him silent. Ultimately, you have to ask yourself: are my prayers today more powerful and effective than they were a year ago? Our good Father wants them to be!

The book opens with Jacob's Ladder and its theme of ascending into God's very presence. What better place to begin dialoging with God? Only He can teach us what is on His heart, what His will is, and what our part in it could be.

ONE
Discovering the Dynamics of Prayer

 

Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it.”

Genesis 28:16

The most important aspect of the Christian life is prayer. It is the most potent weapon we have in the spiritual warfare before us in this world. Every Christian is defined by their prayer life, and if we are not living in prayer, we are not experiencing the life God has for us.

From the time I became a Christian, I invested my time in prayer. At that time, I didn’t know very much about prayer, but through the years I have discovered the marvelous dynamics associated with it. I can relate with what Jacob experienced here.

Every Christian believes in prayer, but few actually live the dynamics of a biblically focused prayer. Prayer is not a ritual or the mumbling of phrases; rather, it is experiencing the awesome presence of God. Out of this presence comes a life of victory and pleasure to Him.

What bothers me is that many Christians do not understand how powerful prayer is and do not take it seriously. Prayer is replaced with works, programs, or methods. They think that if you have the right method, then God will answer your prayer.

But the important thing I have discovered as a Christian is that if I cannot accomplish something through prayer, then it cannot be done by God’s grace. The person who discovered this, I believe, was Jacob. But if I could choose between being friends with Jacob or his brother, Esau, I would pick Esau. Esau was a man’s man. He was a hunter and was very vigilant in the things he did. He was his father’s favorite son.

Jacob, on the other hand, was a momma’s boy tied to her apron strings. He didn’t seem to have what it took to be the kind of man his brother was. These twins were as opposite as day and night.

One day, Jacob deceived his father and brother, lying and stealing from them, and then he had to get out of town. His mother sent him to her family so he could find a wife there—she did not want him to have a Canaanite as a wife. Because of that, Esau, in defiance of his mother, decided he would have a Canaanite for a wife.

But being a momma’s boy, under his mother’s instructions, Jacob fled to her brother’s place, where he would find a wife to please his mother. When Jacob fled from the wrath of his angry brother, in the howling wilderness wasteland, he saw a ladder standing upon the earth. If Jacob had stayed home in good company, keeping to the house and helping his mother, he would never have seen the ladder. His weakness led to communion with God.

Sin is always wrong, and if we insist on rebellion against God, we will get ourselves into serious trouble. But remember that if you are God’s and you belong to Him, you have learned the art of true repentance. God will turn even your defeat into victory. A fleeing Jacob will see a ladder, whereas his brother, Esau, out running around, hunting and bringing in savory meat to please his father, will never see that ladder.

This was an experience with God that Jacob had never thought about before. As he traveled, he became weary, and at the end of the day he grabbed a rock, lay down, and went to sleep. In his sleep, God gave him a dream of angels going up and down the ladder.

The thing I appreciate most about this story is the fact that when Jacob awoke from his sleep, he declared, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it.” I don’t know what kind of a person he was, spiritually speaking, but I think this dream transformed him. He experienced the presence of God, and that would change his life and prepare him for what he would encounter for the rest of his days.

Meditating on the Scripture, I see several important aspects about this ladder of prayer. It ascends, and it descends. This is significant. The going up is an illustration that we have access to God. I do not think Jacob understood this at the time, and even today most Christians don’t understand that prayer is, first of all, access to God. It is the key to the treasures of heaven, giving us what God has for us and enabling us to do what He wants us to do.

There is step after step after step; the steps go up and then come down.

In the ascending stairs, we need to understand that the closer we get to God, the farther away we are from the world. This is something many Christians do not understand and have not experienced. From God’s perspective, true prayer can never mingle with the world, and the key to this is a complete separation between the world around me and my prayer experience. Jacob learned that if he was going to touch God, he needed to be set apart.

That is exactly what this ladder did. It lifted Jacob out of this world and into the presence of God, introducing him to a world he could never have imagined.

Today, many churches believe that if they adopt the world’s business methods, they can build a better church. If you must use business methods or programs to build the church, you have pushed the Holy Spirit to the side. Anybody can build an organization and religion and everything that goes along with that. But only the Holy Spirit can build the Church. And this ascending is the process of separating from the world and focusing entirely on God above.

When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he understood that what he had experienced was something sacred. Once again, we need to understand that prayer is not merely a process or a program, but a sacred and holy activity. We need to grasp the idea that it is communication with God on His terms, not ours. Like Jacob said, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it.” We can be praying when suddenly we find ourselves going up the ladder, experiencing the presence of God and for the first time seeing that which we did not know was there.

Too many Christians have the idea that they can get away with just adding prayer to their normal daily routines. That is not the truth, but a lie from the enemy. Prayer is not something we add to our life. Rather, it is something we ascend to. The result of true prayer is experiencing the presence of God in reverence and awe on His terms.

If I need to prop up my prayer life with worldly ideas and activities, I do not understand the real essence of prayer. Prayer is discovering the presence of God in a way we did not know before. We cannot truly pray without experiencing God.

Of course, this ladder ascension speaks to the fact that there are various levels of prayer. As I mature in my Christian experience, I am also developing in my prayer ability. My ability to leave the world behind and enter into the presence of God is not something that comes overnight. It’s not something that just happens. It is proactive on our part as Christians. We must turn our backs on the world and put our focus on the God of heaven.

Not only did the ladder go up, but it also came down.

The ladder going up means that we can leave the world and enter into the presence of God. The ladder coming down means that God can come down into our presence.

This is not thought of very much. One of the great desires of God is to come down among us. Just as we go up into God’s presence, He now wants to come down into ours and fill our lives with the awesome sense of His presence.

That’s why Jacob said, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it.” Once he began to understand and know the presence of God, his life was about to change more than he had ever understood before. The Jacob we come to know after this is the Jacob who experienced God.

My prayer life is not just something I do; rather, it is something I experience. If you would ask anybody, “Do you believe in prayer?” most people would reply, “I sure do believe in prayer.” Then if you would ask them, “Have you experienced prayer?” most would look at you with a questioning eye and nod their heads, unsure what you meant.

The problem is most have not experienced prayer the way Jacob experienced it here. Most people go through the motions without the coming down of the presence of God. Prayer is not merely emotional but experiential.

When Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, a dove came down from heaven and rested upon Him. That was a symbol of the Holy Spirit coming upon the Lord Jesus Christ in preparation for His ministry. We need to have the power and presence of God come upon us as well, and if we do not have this, our Christian experience, especially our prayer lives, will be bland and of no real power.

I want heaven in my life. I want the glory of heaven to shine in me and through me.

Too often, as Christians, we get so caught up with the world that we drag our feet, but what Jacob experienced is what we need to experience. Jacob wasn’t the perfect person and still had a ways to go, but he was now going in the right direction.

Christians need to be going in the right direction, and prayer navigates the way forward as we experience the presence of God. His presence is not one-sided, but two-sided. We go up to Him, and He comes down to us. And that interaction is magnificent as we walk in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Most Christians try to deal with the world by accommodating it, making sure the culture is not offended by what they say or do. Therefore, they have ceased to live the radical Christian life of the New Testament. But if I am walking in the power of the Holy Spirit, I am going to offend just about everybody I meet. The reason for this offense is that people have turned their backs on God, which, unfortunately, is even happening in churches today. We have allowed the world, particularly Hollywood, to define Christianity and Christ. I want nothing to do with the Christ of Hollywood.

We need to understand what Jacob experienced when he said, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it.” When we come to the point of knowing that God is in our place, our lives begin to change.

The most essential thing in my life as a Christian is prayer, but not prayer according to man’s understanding. It is prayer in harmony with ascending into the presence of God in such a way that separates us from the world. This prayer experience defines us.

I do not answer to the world. I do not conform to the world. I understand what real prayer is all about and how it separates me. This is the only way I will experience the dynamics of true spiritual separation. I want to examine this as deeply as possible to motivate our hearts to have a passion for prayer as we’ve never had before.

After Jacob had this dream of the ladder, he said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven!” (Genesis 28:17).

What Jacob now understood was that prayer is the gateway into heaven. Prayer is the thing that gets us to where God wants us to be so that He can work in our lives as He wants to. I do not tell God what to do. That is a temptation we all have. But I need to get to the point where I am coming up into His presence and allowing Him to come down into my presence at His discretion. And when that happens, I will begin to see things like I never saw them before. I see them from God’s perspective.

True prayer cultivates in us sacred reverence and holiness. True prayer gets me to where God wants me to be. It opens up to me all the treasures of heaven I need, to be all that God desires me to be.

We can spend our time in prayer, but it needs to motivate us until we are caught up in the presence of God. Anything less is unworthy of our time.

O God, I long to long for Thee every day of my life. Give me the strength I need to push the world aside so that I can enjoy Your presence in my life. In Jesus’ name I pray, amen.

TWO
Barriers to Answered Prayer

Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.

Philippians 4:6

When we begin to understand the dynamics of our prayer life, we will appreciate the apostle Paul’s words when he says, “in everything by prayer.” This was what the Holy Spirit told Paul to write, and what He teaches us today.

I think Jacob understood this when he said, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it.” Up to this point, Jacob believed he was in charge of his life and didn’t need anybody else. However, it was when he discovered the dynamics of prayer that his life changed. He still had a long way to go, but at least he was now heading in the right direction.

I think this experience prepared him for that night of wrestling with God that changed his life forever (Genesis 32:22–32). Jacob had found the answer to dealing with life’s problems.

I believe “in everything by prayer” is a remarkable phrase. It is the key to the treasure house of God and confirms that all God has is ours. Unfortunately, Christians are not enjoying all God has for them because they do not know it belongs to them, or because they have not practiced this phrase for themselves.

To realize that God has provided a treasure house and made it available to us is one of the great discoveries of the Christian life. “In everything by prayer” is an unfailing technique for successful prayer and should be on the cornerstone of every church building, in every pulpit, and in every boardroom. In fact, for every boardroom, I would suggest four of these mottos, one for each wall and large enough that no matter which way a board member was looking, they would see it.

I want to explore why prayer is the key to everything we do in God’s Church. It is not simply that the Lord said it so now you believe it. There is a reason and a purpose for why He said it that you should understand.

There are two kingdoms: the kingdom of man, and the kingdom of God. These coexist and, to some measure, mingle, but not much. They touch a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Books by the Authors
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. Discovering the Dynamics of Prayer
• 2. Barriers to Answered Prayer
• 3. The Challenge of Balancing Our Prayer Ministry
• 4. The Platform of Effective Prayer
• 5. Confidence in Our Prayer
• 6. The Danger of Unanswered Prayer
• 7. Cultivating Anticipatory Prayer
• 8. Prayer in Anticipation of a Crisis
• 9. Prayer for the Glory of God
• 10. Corporate Prayer: The Blessing of Coming Together
• 11. The Serpent That Destroys Our Prayer
• 12. Conditions for Answers to Prayer
• 13. How to Pray Successfully
• 14. Things Prayer Will Do for You
• 15. Casting All Your Cares on Him
• 16. The Blessing That Lies in Prayer
• 17. God Working through Us
• 18. God’s Wisdom Working through Us
• 19. God Working through Us Is Not an Accident
• 20. Is Anything Too Hard for the Lord?
• 21. A Man of Prayer
• About the Author
• Back Ad
• Back Cover