In Christ

"If It Be Your Will” - How many times have we ended our prayer with that statement? It may sound humble and extremely spiritual to end our prayers this way, but let's take a closer look.

Did you know that it is recorded Jesus only prayed this prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane? Jesus knew that He was going to be crucified as our Substitute. He didn't want to go through this, but He was willing to go through it if there was no other way! This is a simple prayer of consecration He prayed to the Father.

Why then, do so many people think this is the way we should pray all of the time? This is not the way we should end our prayers when we are asking the Lord to meet a certain need in our lives.

Faith begins where the will of God is known.

As I've mentioned so many times before - find out what the Father's will is before you pray! This is where our faith for answered prayer comes from. We do this by going to God's Word and finding promises in the bible that pertain to what we are believing Him to do for us. The next step is to purposely believe those promises. Finally, meditate (think about and consider) the promises until faith rises up in your spirit. When this happens you will know that the promises of the Lord are true and the situation (what you are praying about) has to change!

When a person ends their prayer with the phrase "If it be Your will” it is actually a lazy way to pray! This may not be a nice way to put it, but it is true. It will give you an excuse for unanswered prayer. When your prayer isn't answered, then you can always claim, "Well it must not have been God's will!”

We should be shocked if our prayers aren't answered -

when we pray according to the promises of God!

God's "will” is that we live a life of wholeness in every area, health in our bodies, prosperity and deliverance from every evil work.

Jesus gave us an example of how to pray in Matthew 6:9-10. "Pray like this: Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy. May your Kingdom come soon. May your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.” (NLT) We need to know the will of the Lord in order to pray that it is done for us here on the earth the way it is in heaven.

Romans 12:2 tells us : "Don't copy the behaviour and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God's will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.” (NLT)

Our spirits are reborn when we invite Jesus to be our Lord and Saviour, but our minds still need to be renewed by studying and meditating on His Word to change the way we think and react to things. This is how many of our actions are changed from the world's way of doing things over to God's way of acting and reacting to things.

Always remember, Holy Spirit is there to help us. He will bring certain scriptures and promises to us that burn in our hearts. These are the ones that we are to hold onto as the promises from the Lord to bring about the victory we need in a particular situation.

Submission by Rena Mae McDonald