3 Then I turned my face to the Lord God, seeking him by prayer and pleas for mercy with fasting and sackcloth and ashes. 4 I prayed to the LORD my God and made confession, saying, “O Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, 5 we have sinned and done wrong and acted wickedly and rebelled, turning aside from your commandments and rules” ….17 “Now therefore, O our God, listen to the prayer of your servant and to his pleas for mercy, and for your own sake, O Lord, make your face to shine upon your sanctuary, which is desolate. 18 O my God, incline your ear and hear. Open your eyes and see our desolations, and the city that is called by your name. For we do not present our pleas before you because of our righteousness, but because of your great mercy. 19 O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive. O Lord, pay attention and act. Delay not, for your own sake, O my God, because your city and your people are called by your name.”

Daniel 9:3-5, 17-19 (ESV)

2 “When you pray, say:

’Our Father in heaven,

Hallowed be Your name.

Your kingdom come,

Your will be done,

On earth as it is in heaven.’”

Luke 11:2 (NKJV)

“What needs to shift?”

We have a role to play in living in God’s kingdom, doing God’s will, and making earth as it is in heaven…and that happens  “when we pray” (Luke 11:2)

“There are many other things Jesus did. If every one of them were written down, I suppose the whole world would not be big enough for all the books that would be written.”

John 21:25 (NCV)

Jesus begins his instructions on prayer by issuing an expectation for us to pray

“He (Jesus) said, ‘When you pray,’ which means you learn how to pray by praying…prayer is on the job training, and you grow by doing it…When it comes to prayer, I always tell people to start, and the Holy Spirit will begin to teach them as they pray.“

Corey Russell

“Have felt led to pray for others this winter like never before. I never before knew what it was to work all day and then pray all night before God for another. In college, or at parties at home, I used to keep such hours for myself, or pleasures, and can I not do as much for God and for souls?“

John Hyde

“the effect was felt throughout all India, and the breath of Heaven sweeping over the land could be traced to the kneeling figure of ’Praying Hyde”

“Give me souls, or I die.“

John “Praying” Hyde

“True prayer is the trading of the heart with God.“

Charles Spurgeon

“A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh.”

Ezekiel 36:26-27 (KJV)

1)Prayer shifts our source.

“I believe in the truthfulness of this instinct (when man calls out to God in moments of distress), and I believe that man prays because there is something in prayer. When the creator gives His creature the power of thirst, it is because water exists to meet that thirst. When He creates hunger, there is food to correspond to appetite. Even so, when He inclines man to pray, it is because prayer has a corresponding blessing connected with it.“

Charles Spurgeon

2) Prayer shifts our perspective.

“Jesus allowed His disciples to watch him pray because He wanted them to watch Him engage with the Father in Heaven.”

Corey Russell

“When you think prayer, you think list, but I (Jesus) think person. I want to introduce you to a person, a place, and the person’s name. It’s our Father in heaven, by the way…”

Corey Russell

3) Prayer shifts our will.

Intercession is the action of intervening (through prayer) on behalf of another

“19 O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive. O Lord, pay attention and act. Delay not, for your own sake, O my God, because your city and your people are called by your name.”

Daniel 9:19 (ESV)

“2 In those days I, Daniel, was mourning for three weeks. 3 I ate no delicacies, no meat or wine entered my mouth, nor did I anoint myself at all, for the full three weeks.”

Daniel 10:2-3 (ESV)

4)Prayer shifts what we occupy (position of persistence)

James 5:16-17 (NKJV) says “the effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.”

“4 On the twenty-fourth day of the first month, as I was standing on the bank of the great river (that is, the Tigris) 5 I lifted up my eyes and looked, and behold, a man clothed in linen, with a belt of fine gold from Uphaz around his waist. 6 His body was like beryl, his face like the appearance of lightening, his eyes like flaming torches, his arms and legs like the gleam of burnished bronze, and the sound of his words like the sound of a multitude. 12 Then he said to me, ’Fear not, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart to understand and humbled yourself before your God, your words have been heard, and I have come because of your words. 13 The prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days, but Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I was left there with the king of Persia, and 14 came to make you understand what is to happen to your people in the latter days.’”

Daniel 10:4-6,12-14 (ESV)

“the word prince has the idea of a ruler or authority. This fits well with the New Testament idea that angelic ranks are organized and have a hierarchy. These angelic ranks seem to include both faithful angels and fallen angels (demons). Apparently, this (prince of Persia) was a demon of high rank that opposed the answer to prayer.”

David Guzik

“The correlation between Daniel’s time of self-denial and prayer and the duration of the battle between the angels and the prince of Persia establishes a link between Daniel’s prayer and the angelic victory.”

David Guzik

5) Prayer shifts us to engage in spiritual warfare (As it is in heaven, or as it is in hell?)

“There be hindering factors of which a praying Christian knows nothing as he wonders why the answers to his requests are delayed. Nevertheless, he is to keep on praying. It may be that he will not receive an answer because he has given up on the twentieth day when he should have persisted to the twenty-first day.”

Archer

“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”

Ephesians 6:12 (KJV)

2 Corinthians 10:4 (KJV) says “For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.”

“Prayer is the great exposer of reality”

Corey Russell

If we want our reality to be as it is in heaven, then...