The Prayer Experiment

Prayer Principles from The Sermon on the Mount

Therkelsen

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2007
• eBook ISBN: 9781498276078
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Are you without an answer to an important prayer? Do you pray until you feel you cannot pray anymore? Do you feel discouraged because you have tried to measure up to God's expectations and still nothing has changed? Do you want to be free from the hindrances that prevent God from answering your prayers? The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) purely articulates teaching about God's role and our role in bringing about changes to our lives through prayer. Therkelsen emphasizes five deadly barriers to receiving God's transformation: 1) judgment and criticism, 2) lovelessness, 3) unforgiveness, 4) anger, and 5) desire for control. Remembering her mother's "prayer experiments" and drawing on her own prayer life, Therkelsen shares what the Holy Spirit has shown her about partnership with God and about processing God's answer through prayer.

1

Jesus’ Love Rules over Criticism

A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another as I have loved you.1

John 13:34

Being part of a large prayer group is not easy. As we have gone through the years new people and long time members, have found the expansion to be a sign of God’s life and growth within this body of Christ. This shows we are not a clique, praise God. We are not ingrown and self-focused, though we have a long way to go in being totally selfless. We have learned many lessons in allowing Jesus to love through us. Jesus is yearning to manifest Himself more and more in our lives and times of prayer.

God is seeking to do a work far beyond any of us. Studies show that seven years is the normal length for a prayer group because of the deepening demands of love which Satan thwarts through personality conflicts and dissension. Jesus alone can keep a group meeting weekly over the years. God is calling us to a new place of love and obedience to His laws of love. This is a place of stretching and growing that He might manifest His power in a new way in and through us in prayer.

We have seen great and awesome answers over the years. It is thrilling and amazing to be a part of God’s life through the life of prayer! He has worked in spite of us to bless others and ourselves. But now He is saying, “I want you to be more serious about loving me and allowing my love to flow through you.” I know I personally need a more rigorous obedience to love, and a more energetic faith and trust in Him, hence this Experiment of Prayer.

As we move into this experience we know Satan will be more aggressive in all our lives, because his time is short. In the life of prayer, nothing annihilates answers to prayer as much as lovelessness in the heart of the intercessor.

What is Satan’s easiest way to try to block the power of prayer in any prayer group? By violating the basic premise of Jesus’ love commandments, through inner battles of “secret fault-finding,” and through criticism of others, and even of ourselves.

The Sermon on the Mount says we are not to judge or criticize because it stops the flow of love, or the Holy Spirit who is love. He is only released in love, through love, by love (Eph 5:2) not by attempting to coerce God by our demanding others to change.

Our judgmental spirit prevents the movement of the Holy Spirit in our midst, and prevents the answers He longs to produce.

You might ask “Are you saying that my secret or open fault-finding attitudes are powerful enough to blackout God’s response?” Yes, these attitudes create an atmosphere in which Jesus is hindered and any power in prayer is sabotaged. Satan is very much at work in any Christian gathering hoping to cancel out our love for one another and God’s movement through the group (1 John 4:7­­­­­­–12, 20–21). What is canceled out is what the Scriptures call agreement or acceptance (Matt 18:19–20).

Agreement has many qualities. We list only a few:

• Identification or the ability to walk in another person’s shoes (Matt 18:23–35).

• Patience with others (Eph 4:1–2).

• Discernment beyond flesh. Real discerning comes out of God’s love. With God’s love abandoned we merely “judge and criticize,” thereby wounding the real person beyond the mask. A critical atmosphere is harmful to all concerned (Phil 1:9–11).

The amazing thing is that it takes only one critical person to weaken or even prevent the flow of love so the Holy Spirit cannot work. Any fault-finding is serious because it grieves the Holy Spirit (Eph 4:30–32). I have learned over the years that when my judging attitude has increased my level of God’s love flowing through me has decreased.

Jesus means for your ability to love through Him to be stretched each time you come to prayer group. It is like “choir practice” each week. We practice love here in a relatively easy setting that we might be stretched and enabled to love with His love in more difficult settings.

Let us talk about this in more practical and detailed ways.

1. When I am irritated by another person in prayer, it shows me where I am. Something in me that is not what it ought to be has been triggered, or I would not be so irritated by something someone else has said (Matt 7:1–5).

2. When I am hurting in impatience, anger, pettiness of any kind, that tender place of fault-finding is where I need to grow. What I see in others, is showing in me.

c. If I see self-centeredness, it is in me.

d. If I feel their self-love, it is also in me. This is often manifested in “self-display” as the saints have said.

e. If I see self-importance, it is in me.

f. If I see pride, it is in me.

g. Every negative aspect in another’s personhood and prayer is in me. Content and length of prayer, control issues I hear and find fault with secretly, all are in me.

What are we to do when these ugly things surface in us?

First, repent while the prayer is still going on, adjust your thermostat of love quietly and privately, but adjust by confessing silently your judgment and criticism, your lack of love, which is sin.

Then, thank the Holy Spirit for revealing your sin, repent of it, accept forgiveness, get busy praying for the person or praying with the person and their prayer. Enter in to their prayer totally and completely in nothing but love. That is agreeing with another, or God’s love in action. To enter into prayer, and be lifted above judgment is powerful and effective praying.

William Law was a contemporary of John Wesley. He was the author of The Power of the Spirit, formerly known as A Serious Call to the Devout Life. In this book he writes, “Divine Love is a new life and new nature and introduces you to a new world.”2 We must make the choice out of our will, to move in love!

Hannah Hurnard in her book, The Winged Life, wrote, “It’s the reserves and the exceptions we insist on making to divine Love that brings failure. There must be no exceptions at all to God’s call.”3

8. If unloving thoughts are in our heart it changes the atmosphere. The person praying feels rejection, abandonment and loneliness. In prayer we are sensitized to other’s feelings in a highly charged way. When we enter into criticism, those around us will feel let down because secret fault-finding is powerful and can be felt by others.

9. There is always something in every prayer we can agree with, so get back in order, get sin out of the center of your heart and mind—love.

10. We have often felt the power of God’s love in this group, and the resulting faith which brings the answer (Gal 5:6). If we are in His love it will reveal His will (1 John 3:18–24).

Mary Welch, a devout woman of prayer, stated many times in the 1940’s and 50’s that “Love always lifts another and never adds to a person’s burden.”

God is calling us then to a quick accountability while we are here in this group on Tuesday night, that He might call us to a deeper accountability moment by moment. We know He is released, in ways we will never understand, through loving, believing prayer.

At the beginning, this Intercessory Prayer Group was focused on praying for ourselves, for others in the church at large, and the world itself. When the group was small years ago, we could bounce back and forth between personal and impersonal prayers easily.

Shortly after our first year we began to feel the urging of the Holy Spirit to more prayers for others and the world. Real answers began to come when we no longer prayed corporately so much for ourselves, but ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Jesus’ Love Rules over Criticism
• Chapter 2: Asking, Seeking, Knocking Brings Answers
• Chapter 3: The Power of Secrecy
• Chapter 4: Our Wants or What We Need
• Chapter 5: Do We Say or Pray the Lords Prayer?
• Chapter 6: Knowing Him as Father
• Chapter 7: The Holy Spirit Reveals Father’s Love
• Chapter 8: Treasure God’s Name
• Chapter 9: Are You Living in the Kingdom Now?
• Chapter 10: Making His Will Our Will
• Chapter 11: He Is the Supplier of Our Needs
• Chapter 12: As He Forgives Us We Forgive
• Chapter 13: God’s Power to Rescue
• Chapter 14: He Is Everything
• Chapter 15: He Meets Our Every Need
• Chapter 16: Are Jesus’ Attitudes Active in Us?
• Chapter 17: He Can Turn Our Darkness to Light
• Chapter 18: The Holy Spirit Brings Victory over Darkness
• Chapter 19: How Do We Become More Yielded to God?
• Chapter 20: Give God Time to Respond to You
• Chapter 21: Anger Turned to Love
• Chapter 22: Ways to Handle Anger
• Chapter 23: From Self-Control to God-Control
• Chapter 24: “Divine Realization”—God’s Gift to Us in Prayer
• Chapter 25: Overcome Evil with Good
• Bibliography