Designer Prayer: Learning to Pray in the New Covenant

By Luella Campbell

Once again, as with my previous book, The Heartbeat of Holiness, Designer Prayer is an attempt to respond to the many books I have read on prayer which approach the subject from every angle except from the solid foundation of Scripture. It is not surprising that many of the books reflect confusion between the Old and New Covenants despite the clear teaching of the Word of God. Many follow the great international prayer movements which base much of their teachings on the Old Covenant. This makes effective prayer a complicated exercise for many of Gods children. It is little wonder that many believers neglect prayer or pray half-heartedly or ineffectively because they just dont know how to pray.

My exploration of prayer in the New Covenant has led me into the most liberating and exhilarating experience of my life as I have discovered how simple God intended prayer to be. Since, in the New Covenant, Jesus has accomplished everything for us and given us everything we need, prayer needs no longer to be a laborious exercise but a joyful expression of gratitude that we can enter by faith into everything He has provided for us.

With joyful confidence in the one who made possible this blessed life in Christ Jesus, find rest in the bosom of the Father who loves you with furious passion. Through Christ Jesus, you are His righteous, holy and beloved children. You are free to approach Him as Abba. He has promised you all things in His Son. No more whining! No more pleading! No more bargaining! A joyful thank you is the essence of prayer in the New Covenant.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing Africa
• Release date: Jul 21, 2017
• ISBN: 9781482878172

Luella Campbell

She is a trained nurse and has a diploma in theology and in ministry. As pastoral assistant, she teaches, writes teaching materials, articles for her church magazine, and daily blogs on four websites. Her first book, Learning to be a Son, was published in January 2015.

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Copyright © 2017 by Luella Campbell.

ISBN:      Softcover      978-1-4828-7816-5

                eBook      978-1-4828-7817-2

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. [Biblica]

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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CONTENTS

Dedication

Acknowledgement

Preface

PART ONE

The Creation Model

Chapter 1 In His Image

Chapter 2 In The Beginning

PART TWO

The Old Covenant

Chapter 3 What Was The Old Covenant?

Chapter 4 An Exploration Of Old Covenant Prayer From The Ancient Hebrew

Chapter 5 Prayers Of Old Testament Saints

Chapter 6 Prayer And The Old Covenant

PART THREE

The New Covenant

Chapter 7 What Is The New Covenant?

Chapter 8 Jesus, Greater Than…

Chapter 9 Jesus, Better Than…

Chapter 10 The New Covenant Is Jesus

Chapter 11 What Is Prayer In The New Covenant?

Chapter 12 The Prayer Life And Teaching Of Jesus

Chapter 13 Paul And Prayer In The New Covenant

Chapter 14 Palal And The New Covenant

Chapter 15 Clear Up The Confusion

DEDICATION

I dedicate this, my fourth book in the Learning series, to all earnest believers who desire to be true disciples of Jesus. He said, Follow me, and those who sincerely follow Him will find that His yoke is easy and His burden is light.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

New International Version (NIV)

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

The Message

Scripture taken from THE MESSAGE. Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.

King James Version (KJV)

New Living Translation (NLT)

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

PREFACE

N ot another book, Lord!

At the age of 75, I thought my third book, The Heartbeat of Holiness, would be my last. Three books in just over a year was my limit. It’s not just the writing of a book that is the work but the many hours of proofreading, editing, re-editing and re-editing again and then working with the various departments of the publishing company to prepare the cover and the manuscript for printing.

The thought of writing another book made me feel weary. In fact, I told my pastor after my third book that I was empty. Nothing more to give. His comment was: You’ll soon be full again!

People write books for different reasons. Some, like I did, want to write a book so that they can hold in their hands their own book that they have written and published. I tried hard. Not being a novelist, I tried this theme and that theme but it was hard work and nothing jelled. I have several half-written manuscripts on my computer to show for my effort!

Others write books because they have a burning desire to pass on a message. Be it through a novel or some other genre, they must deliver their message so that the world will be influenced by their inspired thought.

Many have written their personal story because they felt that through it they could inspire, encourage or entertain their readers. Some have fought and won great personal battles, embarked on great adventures, survived horrific crises, learned important lessons or rollicked through life and offer their readers a lift in their spirit or good laugh.

My first two books came out of years of studying the gospels. With my exploration came a dawning realization that I had missed something on my spiritual journey of (then) 58 years.

I learned that Jesus did not come to establish another religion, albeit – so I thought – superior to other man-made religious systems. He offered those who would believe in Him the opportunity to be reconciled to the Father and to return to His family as sons and daughters. He came to show them the way to live as God’s children in a unique relationship of love and intimacy. He came to give them life and to live inside them by His Spirit. Through this journey, I gave birth to two books – Learning to be a Son and Learning to be a Disciple.

I wrote my third book, The Heartbeat of Holiness to protest about much of the teaching concerning holiness that makes it hard work and gives detailed instructions on how to be holy through self-effort. If salvation is all of God, I learned that the process of becoming holy is also initiated by God. Why should it be any different? Whatever we attempt on our own, we will surely mess up, so why would God risk our failure to be holy without which, so He said, we will not see Him?

Why this book?

Despite my determination not to write another book, I’m back at it again, and again I am writing to correct what I call thumb-suck teaching about prayer. It came about like this:

Our church and the church community in our town were in the throes of preparing for a visit from a well-known and well-loved evangelist and motivational speaker. The organiser of the event came to my pastor with a request for him to arrange a week of prayer in our church to prepare for the great day. He gave him a long list of prayer requests for which the people were to pray. My pastor brought the list to me and asked me, as prayer co-ordinator for our church, to prepare for a prayer gathering.

I looked at the list of prayer requests and my heart sank. My spirit did not bear witness with what was on that piece of paper. It looked very holy but, in my understanding of prayer, it was out of sync with the heart of God. There was nothing intrinsically wrong with the sentiments of the prayer requests but it was what underlay the requests that troubled me. Perhaps from a lack of understanding or poor teaching, I recognised that the organiser was expecting God to do what He has already done. I realised that, in the understanding of many, God is expected to do everything and we must sit back and wait for Him to act.

Isn’t it true that the very prayers we pray for revival are, in the end, an attempt to short-circuit our response to God’s call to return to the Lord from our selfish and self-sufficient ways and to appropriate by faith what God has done for us?

His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness. Through these, He has given us His very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires (2 Peter 1:3-4).

God has given us His promises and it is through faith and patience that we inherit those promises, as the writer to the Hebrews has written (Heb. 6:12), not through prescribing to God what to do or by whining and begging for His intervention.

There is a tendency in the church to expect God to come down in great power from time to time to shake the church awake so that the unbelievers around will come to faith. However, is it not the role of the church to demonstrate to the world the reality of Jesus and His coming by our love and unity and by the fruit of answered prayer (John 15:7-8)?

Much of our problem with prayer is that we want God to do something for us when the Scripture is clear that, in Christ He has already done everything. The real issue is, in what covenant are we still living? There is a vast difference between our prayers based on the terms of the Old Covenant and prayers out of an understanding of the New Covenant. Much of the praying of some of our current great prayer movements are a rehash of Old Testament beliefs and practices.

So, what did I do? I threw the list away and prepared a new one!

Please don’t get me wrong. I have no illusions about being the final authority on prayer. For years, I have searched and read and prayed that God would teach me to pray. It has been a long, slow, tedious and sometimes frustrating journey. However, having caught something of the heart of Jesus as the Son of God, I have come to realise that God’s intention for prayer is vastly different from ours and the way we pray is often unlike the Biblical pattern for prayer, particularly prayer as it is shown and taught in the New Testament under the New Covenant.

Where did we learn to pray? We listened to older and wiser believers and copied them. We read many books on prayer and we followed the authorities who have much to say about prayer and spiritual warfare because, after all, they know much more than we do! Not so? Not so!

How many of us have gone back to the Scriptures to find our foundations in the Old and New Testaments? Have we taken the trouble to learn about prayer from the Word rather than from following the teachings and instructions of great theologians and writers and from those who have gone before us?

This does not mean that we necessarily dismiss everything they have said. However, there is nothing wrong with questioning them and verifying their teachings from the Word of God. In the book of Acts, the Bereans even measured the great apostle Paul’s teachings against the Tanakh – the ancient writings of Moses and the prophets.

Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true (Acts 17:11).

Isn’t it true that believers have embraced many errors because they have not been as noble as the Bereans who went to the Scriptures to verify what they heard from the greatest preacher of their day?

I have read many books on prayer over the years, in many of which the authors have had much to say about the power of prayer, told many stories about great answers to prayer, and given fervent exhortations to pray including details about specific times, postures, acrostic schemes for praying, and, yes, even praying the words of Scripture – which are all correct and commendable. Some books even do a magnificent job of explaining all the intricacies of the meaning of the original words relating to prayer, e.g., Dutch Sheets’ book, Intercessory Prayer. Most of the time, each author looks for new and unique ways of saying the same thing, albeit targeting unbelievers, husbands, children, or whatever group their special interest is.

However, I have yet to find one book that lays a Biblical foundation for prayer and sets prayer into the original setting of the Bible and the unique purpose of God.

God wove prayer into the culture and language in which He nurtured the children of Israel to be His special people. He had a relationship with them in a blood covenant through a legally binding union. He gave them an elaborate system of worship through which He taught them how to worship Him and what He valued in their attitude and approach to Him.

Prayer cannot be disentangled from that relationship. It was to be the way in which His people would nurture the fellowship with Him for which He created them. The outcome of prayer would be the revelation of His character (His glory) to the surrounding nations so that they would know that the God of Israel was the only true God.

It is in this context and the context of the revelation of God as Father in the New Covenant that prayer comes to life in its fullest meaning, power and purpose.

God has given us His infallible benchmark, His Word. It is up to us to use it if we are to remain true to His heart and His intention. He has also given us His Spirit, whom He pledged to teach us about all things and to lead us into all truth. The Word and the Holy Spirit are our equipment to keep us from error and to ensure that we stay on God’s path and follow the way of truth that takes us to the Father.

Why Designer Prayer

Firstly, I believe that prayer is God’s design for establishing communication between Himself and His human family. What else can we call this supernatural link between an invisible God and His creatures who are of the earth and of Himself?

Secondly, prayer is unique to the relationship between the living God and people. There is no religion on earth (and I do not classify our relationship with God as a religion) that can call what they do to engage their gods, prayer. At best, they perform rituals and babble to a non-existent deity to get his or her attention or to manipulate him or her for their own ends. At worst, they are unwittingly calling on demonic powers who have no interest in their well-being and are only out to do, through deception, as much damage as they can to their devotees.

The Apostle Paul caught the truth about idolatry and Satan’s intention to deceive people into believing that their gods are alive and involved in their lives – though not for good.

Do I mean, then that a sacrifice offered to an idol is anything, or than an idol is anything? No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to participate with demons (1 Cor. 10:19-20).

Thirdly, although prayer played a major role in the lives of godly people who lived under the Mosaic Covenant, it could never reach its full potential and complete God’s purpose until the Mosaic Covenant was fulfilled and done away with through Jesus in the New Covenant.

How important it is, then, for us to study and familiarise ourselves with God’s design for prayer so that we fall in line with His purpose! It is our role to partner with Him in what He is doing to restore to its initial glory and plan what He did in the beginning, and not to harness God’s power for our own ends. He gave us this marvellous gift so that He can grow our faith and so that we can be transformed into the likeness of His Son.

I offer this book, then, as an attempt to present as clear an understanding as I able, of the marvel, miracle and mystery of prayer.

PART ONE

THE CREATION MODEL

CHAPTER ONE

IN HIS IMAGE

B efore we can begin to explore the nature of man, we must decide what we will believe about the information we have regarding his origin. Will we believe the so-called fossil record and the theory evolutionists put forward that humankind evolved from ape-like ancestors or will we accept the Biblical record that he was the unique creation of God, the Creator of the universe? Is man a little higher than animals or a little lower than God?

Until we settle this issue in our minds we will never understand prayer. The Bible teaches us that prayer is the outflow of man in his relation to God, himself and the world around him. I unashamedly accept and base my exploration of the nature of man and prayer on the witness of Scripture that God created the first man out of the dust of the earth, breathed His Spirit into him and gave him life. The first man was a unique combination of the elements of the earth and the divine Spirit and, unlike any animal, he had the capacity to relate to and commune with his Creator in the Spirit. David asked and answered the question:

…What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than (God – Elohim in the original text), and crowned him with glory and honour (Psa. 8:4-5).

A study of prayer must start at the beginning. We will never understand the Biblical mystery of prayer until we first understand the nature of man. How best can we learn about this marvellous being called man? Let’s examine the Creator’s intention and the method He used to create the first human pair.

Empty – and filled up

The first two verses in Genesis 1 describe the condition of the earth before God intervened.

Genesis 1:2 states that the earth was formless, tohu – meaning desolate, worthless and empty, and bohu – meaning vacant and ruined; and darkness, choshek –