Portraits of Prayer: People Who Prayed and the Prayers They Prayed

Copyright © 2016 Piqela Gabaza.

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Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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ISBN: 978-1-5127-3934-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-3936-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-3935-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016906605

WestBow Press rev. date: 05/23/2016

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1 Abraham: Oh God -- Bless My Mistake

Chapter 2 Eliezer: Dating for Another

Chapter 3 Joshua: Sun Stand Still

Chapter 4 Samson: 'Lord, Let Me Die with These Philistines'

Chapter 5 David: 'Oh Lord God, Turn Him into a Fool'

Chapter 6 Elijah: 'Oh God, Answer Me by Fire'

Chapter 7 Elisha: 'God, Strike Them with Blindness'

Chapter 8 Hezekiah: 'Oh Lord, Let Me Die Another Day'

Chapter 9 Jabez: Bigger, Bigger, and Better Things

Chapter 10 Jonah: 'Lord, You See Me in This Darkness?'

Chapter 11 Jesus Prays: Ignorance Gone Right

Chapter 12 Stephen: True Discipline Indeed

Chapter 13 The Early Church Prays: Stretch Your Hand and Tip This Over

Chapter 14 Paul: 'Oh Lord, Fill Us with Your Fullness'

Chapter 15 The Search for Modern Witnesses

This book is

dedicated to Alice, Theo, Zoe, and Tao, who gave my life important dimensions and continue to inspire me to seek God more in order to fulfil my life's purpose.

Preface

Praying is probably the most important activity that humans engage in on this planet. As an activity, praying has been practised by most religions, and as with all things religious, it has been subjected to all sorts of distortions. Prayer has been offered to dumb idols that can neither hear nor speak. Prayer has been offered to devils and wicked powers mistaken for God, the Creator. Prayer has been offered to dead relatives -- ancestors -- with the belief that since they are dead, they are nearer to God so they can present the requests better and easier to God. And some who have been able to pray to the true and living God have prayed little, prayed amiss, or taken prayer as just another religious chore.

I have studied people and seen significant differences among people and how they pray in the church. I have seen people who easily pray, hardly pray, and never pray at all. I have had the opportunity over a fairly long period of time to participate in prayer gatherings and have been immensely blessed when the people knew how to pray and access the heavens of God. I have also been able to take personal times to pray for extended periods of time and have learnt a lot from these periods of prayer.

I have looked at life in the church and have concluded that the greatest skill that the church and any Christian must have is the ability to pray and get answers from God. Everything is subject to change through the power of prayer. Prayer has the power to change everything and anything, from the past, present, and future. One can literally change one's life overnight, if one can pray and get an answer from God. In trying to improve my own success rate of praying and getting answers, I decided to study the prayers that were prayed and recorded in the Bible. By studying what these ancient people did, how they prayed, and what drove them to pray, I was hoping to unearth a secret to success in prayer. In the process, I became more fascinated with the people themselves. I saw that a lot of them were like me -- or I was like them. I began to see that the major difference between them and me was that they seemed to have something going on between them and God well before the prayer. What could that be? Why did they appear so free -- some almost carefree -- when they prayed? And why did God answer them so easily?

That study led me to write this book. This book is the result of eavesdropping on these people as they prayed. I took time to analyse their lives and their relationship with God before they prayed these prayers I chose to study. Some people don't pray easily in public. I know a number of people whose private prayers are a lot more personal than what they say in a public prayer. I began to see that the prayers people pray are very much influenced by who they are. Prayers are offered at certain points of time in the life of the person praying. We naturally arrive at a prayer point in life, and how we arrive there determines what and how we will pray.

I have looked at both Old Testament and New Testament prayers, have noted the differences and similarities, but came to the same conclusion that God answers prayers. It was difficult to select whom, in the passages of Scripture, to eavesdrop on. There are great, exciting prayers that I have left out that I wish I could have included. There are prayers that have affected my life profoundly, like when Rebecca asked God why her pregnancy was giving her problems when it was supposed to be a blessing that I left out -- reluctantly. There are the acidic prayers of David in the psalm that he prayed against his enemies that would have made exciting analysis, which I hope to write about in the future if Jesus Christ delays His coming.

In writing this book, I have become keenly aware of the things I must stop and start doing in my prayer life. I have become more aware of certain spiritual and life postures that God recognises and responds to favourably. I became more aware of God and myself. I began to sound more like the characters I studied and began to see the results they saw. I began to understand that God is no respecter of persons; if you do what the successful did, God will also answer your prayers.

In writing this book, it has changed my own prayer internal coding. If anyone who reads this book can also begin to change the way I changed while writing it, then we would have both grown and moved closer to what God intended for us. If anyone who reads this book changes in line with the truth that I have found from the word of God, my objective for writing it will be achieved. If anyone who reads this book begins to have dramatic answers to their prayers from God, the purpose for this book will have been surpassed.

Acknowledgements

The idea for this book was birthed when a dear sister -- Grace Banda -- gave me a book to read. The moment I got hold of that book, I knew in my heart that it was an important book and I was going to benefit from reading it. My heartfelt gratitude goes to Sister Grace for nudging me on unawares. That book brought the idea of this book into my reach.

My sincere gratitude to Bryan C. Matyorauta, who laboriously edited my first draft and made very wise suggestions that totally transformed this book. His encouragement made this book a reality.

Many thanks go to Barbara Warren, who proofread the second draft and brought to bear on the book her extensive experience in the publishing industry. She improved the flow and the narrative in a significant way.

CHAPTER 1

Abraham: Oh God -- Bless My Mistake

Genesis 17

When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to Abram and said to him, I am Almighty God; walk before Me and be blameless. ² And I will make My covenant between Me and you, and will multiply you exceedingly. ³ Then Abram fell on his face, and God talked with him, saying: ⁴ As for Me, behold, My covenant is with you, and you shall be a father of many nations. ⁵ No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you a father of many nations. ⁶ I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you. ⁷ And I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and your descendants after you. ⁸ Also I give to you and your descendants after you the land in which you are a stranger, all the land of Canaan, as an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.

⁹ And God said to Abraham: As for you, you shall keep My covenant, you and your descendants after you throughout their generations. ¹⁰ This is My covenant which you shall keep, between Me and you and your descendants after you: Every male child among you shall be circumcised; ¹¹ and you shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between Me and you. ¹² He who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised, every male child in your generations, he who is born in your house or bought with money from any foreigner who is not your descendant. ¹³ He who is born in your house and he who is bought with your money must be circumcised, and My covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant. ¹⁴ And the uncircumcised male child, who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that person shall be cut off from his people; he has broken My covenant.

¹⁵ Then God said to Abraham, As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. ¹⁶ And I will bless her and also give you a son by her; then I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of peoples shall be from her.

¹⁷ Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said in his heart, Shall a child be born to a man who is one hundred years old? And shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child? ¹⁸ And Abraham said to God, Oh, that Ishmael might live before You!

¹⁹ Then God said: No, Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac; I will establish My covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his descendants after him. ²⁰ And as for Ishmael, I have heard you. Behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly. He shall beget twelve princes, and I will make him a great nation. ²¹ But My covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this set time next year. ²² Then He finished talking with him, and God went up from Abraham.

²³ So Abraham took Ishmael his son, all who were born in his house and all who were bought with his money, every male among the men of Abraham's house, and circumcised the flesh of their foreskins that very same day, as God had said to him. ²⁴ Abraham was ninety-nine years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. ²⁵ And Ishmael his son was thirteen years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. ²⁶ That very same day Abraham was circumcised, and his son Ishmael; ²⁷ and all the men of his house, born in the house or bought with money from a foreigner, were circumcised with him.

The Call of Abraham

Abraham, throughout his long and eventful life of close to two centuries, had the unique grace to draw God to visit and initiate conversation with him. It seemed that God would appear from the thin air and commune with the patriarch at the initiation of God Himself. Nowhere in the narration of the Bible does it ever say that Abraham cried or called unto God. Abraham did not have to fast and pray for God to come. In his day-to-day business, God would interrupt him with life-changing words and in some cases seemingly bizarre instructions.

At first sight, Abraham appears to be in a privileged position where he does not need to call or even try to approach God. God initiates all the encounters. On closer look and reflection, it seems better, in my view, that the lesser approaches the greater. The lesser can bring to the greater even trivial matters that affect the lesser. When the greater approaches, it is to discuss great issues like creating nations and a nation through which the Messiah would come. When the greater approaches, He has plans about the whole earth and how, through this one man, the whole world can be blessed.

When the lesser initiates the encounter, he can talk about the immediate issues around his life: his headache, his bills, his barren wife, and his crop failure. When the greater approaches and initiates the conversation, it is more difficult to bring the conversation down to the lesser plane of realities, as this creates an anticlimax -- a drag on the encounter. Whether Abraham was in a privileged position or not is debatable. For Abraham, this was his life, and he made the best of this unique relationship where God initiated all the encounters.

We are not told much about Abraham's first seventy-five years of his life in Ur of the Chaldees or at Haran, except that God thought that Haran and Ur were not suitable for what God wanted to do in and through Abraham's life. We are, however, given glimpses of Abraham's earlier life with his father, Terah, and brothers, Haran and Manor, as they journeyed from Ur of the Chaldees towards Canaan. Terah settled at Haran where he lost his son Haran, Lot's father. Terah himself died at Haran. What is significant is that Terah died intending to go to Canaan. Somehow, Terah was in the right direction for his son Abraham's destiny. It's a great beginning when your parents start you in a godly direction -- the foundations are firm and not broken. Changing direction takes much more effort.

We also get glimpses that Abraham's lineage suffered from barrenness. Terah himself had his first child when he was seventy years old, while people in his comparative generations would have children far earlier in their thirties and forties (Genesis 11:11--32). Abraham himself waited for more than eighty years to have Ishmael -- and waited a hundred years to have Isaac. In a way, Abraham may not really have panicked when he crossed seventy-five without a child, given that his father had waited for seventy years. It was too early to panic or even think of giving up, though it was a concern for his household. But without God, such a situation could easily cause marital stress and breakdown.

Ur of the Chaldees is historically regarded as a centre of idol worship. The people in Ur worshipped the moon, among other deities. It is the birthplace of Abraham and is located in present-day Iraq. We are not told about the spiritual condition of Haran, but we can infer from the instruction that God gave to Abraham to leave that place that it was not suitable for God's purpose either. So on a day when Abraham had long left Ur of the Chaldees and now settled in Haran, God disturbs Abraham's otherwise eventless life with a promise, seemingly plucked from nowhere and far too good to be true. That is God's nature and prerogative. He creates all things from nothing while standing on nothing. With Abraham, God did not ask for his opinion, views, or permission. There was no negotiation, no time wasting, and no choice. It came in the fashion 'Just do this, and I will do that.' It's not bad at all if it is God speaking.

It is symbolically important that Terah had started his journey out of Ur of the Chaldees and was facing Canaan. God then tells Abraham to keep going towards Canaan, as the Lord God would give these lands to him and his descendants forever. We find, later on when Eliezer goes to find Isaac a wife from Abraham's kindred, that Rebecca's family talked about the Lord (Genesis 24). We later see Laban, Rebecca's brother, hanging on to idols -- even teaching his daughter Rachel to love and worship them. It is therefore safe to assume that when Abraham was at Haran, it was a polytheistic society deeply rooted in the worship of idols.

It is not clear why God chose Abraham of all people -- an idol worshipper and moon worshipper. As a believer, I have always struggled with elective grace. Why does God choose one person and not the other? It is always difficult or even impossible to prequalify any person that God is going to use. Think about David, the shepherd boy turned king of Israel, and Saul, the murderer turned apostle Paul. Leah's womb is opened while Rachel, the more beautiful one, is barren.

Whatever criteria God uses, we will never