Gains of Persistence in Praying

By Christopher Nwachukwu

My total submission to the body of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, has been a journey of purposeful transformations in the hand of the Living God. On this privileged walk with Jesus, as a born-again Christian, and its milestones of faith in Him alone, I have come to the absolute conviction of the supremacy of the hand of the Lord in all the a

• Language: English
• Publisher: Book Vine Press
• Release date: Aug 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781958678299

Christopher Nwachukwu

Christopher Nwachukwu lives in North Carolina with his wife, Tilynn. He is the founding member of lgreja Pentecostal Povo Peculiar Church in Brazil and actively participated in charity works through the church and allied NGOs.A Contributor to Afribraz Magazine, Chris mentored young and adult professionals in multinational companies and institutions while he was an ESL instructor in Brazil. He has published a poetry book. Presently he is working on several book projects of different genres. His areas of study, at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, span different disciplines (from the arts, IT, healthcare, sciences & business) across institutions like Minot State University Center for Excellence in the United States; ACBEU in Brazil; Imo State University, Okigwe; and River State University of Science and Technology in Nigeria.

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Contents

Acknowledgement

Foreword

Preface

Prologue

Chapter One: People Do Not Pray Because…

Chapter Two: No Shame in Praying; Only Gains

Chapter Three: Take-no-Prisoner Attitude in Prayer

Chapter Four: Our Persistence is a Requirement, Not our Perfection.

Chapter Five: Be Spiritually Savvy

Chapter Six: Things to Avoid when Praying

Chapter Seven: Be Thankful to Our Lord Jesus

Chapter Eight: Prayer of Submission to God’s Will

Chapter Nine: Thanksgiving Prayers

Chapter Ten: Prayer as Protest-Tool and Audacious Positioning

Chapter Eleven: Prayer as Urgent Pleas to the Almighty God

Chapter Twelve: The Power of Praying Together

Chapter Thirteen: Prayers to Praise God and Exalt Him

Chapter Fourteen: What Will You Do When Grim Milestones Face You?

Chapter Fifteen: What Do You Do with Your Victories When Life PremiumTidings Are Yours?

Chapter Sixteen: What Software Runs Your Soul?

Chapter Seventeen: The Passenger Who Missed the Right Train

Chapter Eighteen: Fully Tapping into the Source of Power of God, Through Prayer

Chapter Nineteen: The Let Your Prayers Soar and Transcend the Limitation of Self

Chapter Twenty: Praying for Prisoners

Chapter Twenty-One: Do Not Wait

Chapter Twenty-Two: His Mercy Over our Merit

Chapter Twenty-Three: Pray Before Travelling

Epilogue: When They Blindly Tell us that God is Dead.

Conversation with an Atheist (1)

Conversation with an Atheist (2)

Pray with Holy Anger

Bibliography

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Firstly, to the Lord Jesus I give all the glory for this book. I pray for His special blessings on the following:

Chad Joseph Thieman, for his mentorship and guidance; Machi Enwerekowe, for his painstaking revisions; Dr Austine Amanze Akpuda and his lovely daughter, Joy Daberechukwu Amanze, for their indispensable, collaborative editing support.

I remain grateful to the Lord Jesus for other friends and family members, who shared their thoughts and support at various stages of this project. May God’s Blessings shine on their paths.

CHRISTOPHER N. NWACHUKWU

FOREWORD

My being invited to write this Foreword is as puzzling and endearing as was the reaction of the onlookers recorded in 1 Samuel10:11 who said one to another, what is this that is come unto the son of Kish? Is Saul among the prophets? This same experience, that has become so secularized that it has become anecdotal, is exactly one way to describe, not only my joy at the author’s demonstration of faith that he had completed a manuscript on praying.

My own qualification, first as a Reviewer of this work, and second as the one writing the present Foreword:

The first biblical passage presents the story of Samuel, the last Judge of Israel and his understanding of his assignment to anoint one of the children of Jesse, the Bethlehemite. It is apposite to cite the requisite verses (6and7) of 1 Samuel, Chapter 16. As the verses read,

And it came to pass, when they were come, that he (Samuel) looked on Eliab and said, surely the Lord’s anointed is before him. But the Lord said unto Samuel, look not on his countenance or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart. (my emphasis)

A complement of the foregoing divine drama can be seen in the New Testament text presented in Luke 18: 9–14. This text addresses a parable through which Jesus Christ focused on people who trusted themselves that they were righteous and despised others (Luke18:9). Concerning the prayer encounter that involved a Pharisee and a publican, Jesus Christ narrates as follows:

¹⁰Two men went up into the temple to pray; one a Pharisee, and the other a publican.

¹¹The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortionist, unjust, or even as this publican.

¹²I fast twice in the week; I give tithes of all that I possess.

¹³And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.

¹⁴I tell you. This man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.

From the two books of the Bible cited, Samuel and Luke, one can learn that only God can determine who is right or qualified to meet His approval. With Samuel’s human disposition to assessing who should be anointed. God establishes the difference between looking at the countenance and the ideal of the Lord [that] looketh on the heart. Unlike the Pharisee, who emblematizes those who, acting as the self-appointed secretary to God, would decide those to malign and report to God, the publican affirms that it is only God’s grace that can redeem him. For the reader of this book, the author’s spiritual profile can be revealing enough to gauge his position as a prayer-focused Christian who, beyond praying for himself, had in his words, as contained in his Preface, had the privilege of saying prayers God answered for me, my loved ones, people I prayed for and strangers, neighbors and colleagues that I know.

The idea of being commanded to pray without ceasing as stated in 1st Thessalonians 5:17 is evidence that prayers are very important and necessary to the destiny of man. In this book we are reminded that beyond the idea of invoking God’s presence and blessings, that prayer is a divine weapon and can be seen as the software that runs the soul, we are invited to contemplate the fact that there are no less than 130 references to prayer in the Bible. Very significantly, while references to the predominance of prayer, as a phenomenon, can be seen in at least thirty-eight books of the Bible, twenty-three in the Old Testament and fifteen in the New Testament.

It is pertinent that roughly 135 verses contain such references to prayer. While the New Testament Books that feature references to prayer include Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Romans, Colossian, Thessalonians, Philippians, Acts, Hebrews, 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, James, Peter, and1 Timothy, those in the Old Testament are Genesis, Exodus, Joshua, Judges, Job, 1st Samuel, 2nd Samuel, 1 Kings, Numbers, 1 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles, Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, Psalms, Isaiah, Ezra, Nehemiah, Jeremiah, Jonah, Daniel, Amos and Lamentations. It is because prayers are so important that Jesus Christ, beyond praying for Himself and others, created time to teach His disciples how to pray.

It is this phenomenal reality that gave birth to the popular Christian song: Prayer is the key (2 twice); prayer is the master key; Jesus started with prayer and ended with prayer. Prayer is the master key. We should not forget however that, as William H. Shannon has stated, Jesus’ prayer was more than communication with another; it was communing at the deepest level possible with one from whom he was distinct but not separate (19).

Whoever has not been lucky enough to bear witness to answered prayers can be likened to a college student who, because s/he could not make an A grade, cannot believe that making an A is possible. The privilege of having made an A, when I combined some mental discipline with prayers and also being a witness to having many of my prayers answered, makes me share the vision that inspired this book. As a believer in the power of prayers, I have, beyond struggling to understand and appreciate the chemistry of prayers, its palpability that is not confined to the fringes of one’s imagination, sought to study the phenomenon. It is such a resolve that made me to source and be acquainted with, among many others, Gordon Lindsay’s Prayer and Fasting: The Master Key to the Impossible (n.d), Mike Shreve’s Powerful Prayers for Supernatural Results: How to Pray as Moses, Elijah, Hannah and other Biblical Heroes Did (2014); Joseph Prince’s The Prayer of Protection: Living Fearlessly in Dangerous Times (Nov.