Have you ever tried to pray your way through a problem and found yourself hopelessly bogged down - seemingly unable to get the victory?

I have. There have been times when I felt like a car with its wheels stuck in the mud. The more I revved my spiritual engine, the more fervently I prayed about trouble I was facing, the deeper I sank into the mire of defeat.

James 5:16 says, "The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much." Yet despite my fervency, my prayers weren't being effective. Clearly, something was wrong. And, thank God, I know now what it was.

I was fervent about the wrong thing!

I was fervent about the problem when I should have been fervent about the answer. I was more tuned in to the works of the devil than I was to the promises of God. I had my heart fixed on the problem instead of the solution!

Over the years, I've learned that if you're going to pray effectively you can't just keep praying the problem, you have to pray the plan of God. You have to go to the Word of God and find out what He says about your situation. Then you meditate on it. You think about it. You talk to God about it. You let His Word grow in you until your heart is so full of it, you think you're going to burst!

Faith Declares the Outcome
If you're going through a tough time, if trouble has come to your house, this is the scripture for you, because Job was in trouble when he said these words. He was right in the middle of the greatest season of adversity he had ever experienced. He was a righteous man who expected to see the goodness of God in his life. Yet, he was experiencing a terrible attack of the devil.

What I love most about this scripture is that Job spoke it out right in the middle of adversity. When it looked like God wasn't doing anything for him, when it looked like the devil was having the last word, Job stood up and declared how that situation was going to end. He said, "I don't care what it looks like right now. My God will do exactly what He said He would do. He will perform His plan in my life!"

That kind of talk is the mark of the spirit of faith. Anybody can listen to a faith sermon now and then. Anybody can say they have faith. But the person who truly has the spirit of faith will stand up right in the face of the devil and all the opposition he brings and declare the outcome.

He'll say, "I see this situation. I see the trouble I'm in right now but it's not over yet. And before it's over, I would like to announce to you exactly how things are going to turn out. They're going to turn out with me being the head and not the tail, above and not beneath. I'll be blessed coming in and blessed going out. I'll be more than a conqueror because of what Jesus did. He has made me a champion in Him!"

In order for this to happen, you must start declaring the outcome. You must meditate on God's Word so that victory is real inside you. You must think the victory of God, see the victory and smell victory until it governs your life. You must declare the outcome according to God's Word and refuse to speak defeat.

Rest, Rejoice and Receive
"But Sister Lynne," you might say, "I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to make it all the way through to that victory. I'm a weak person. I keep trying to hold onto my faith in God but it keeps slipping away from me."

If that's the case, stop thinking about yourself altogether. Don't worry about how good a grip you have on God and start thinking about what a good grip He has on you! Meditate on His grace. Forget about your inability and just focus on His ability.

After all, the Bible says that God's "strength is made perfect in weakness" (2 Cor. 12:9). So quit struggling and rest in the fact that the weaker you are — the more help God will give you. Keep your eyes on His faithfulness not on your own!

When you do that, you'll enter the rest of faith. You won't have to struggle. You won't have to maneuver and manipulate. You'll just trust God and expect Him to bring to pass everything He has promised.

Do you know what else faith does?

Faith rejoices.

Even in times of trial?

Yes, even in times of trial. When you have the spirit of faith, people can't even tell that you're going through hard times. You're so happy, people think everything in your life is just fine. First Peter 1:5-9 says it this way:

[You] are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations: That the trial of your faith being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ: Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory: Receiving the end of your faith...

Notice those verses say that if you're believing, you rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory - and you receive the end of your faith! Remember this: joy is the mark of someone who is going to receive what they are believing for. It's the mark of someone who is truly in faith.

Give Your Faith a Shove
One of my favorite praying people in the whole world was Mamma Lena Cain. She was an elderly Pentecostal lady and before she went home to be with the Lord at 96 years old, I asked her what the difference was between pray-ers in this generation and pray-ers in her generation. "Well, when we went to pray," she said, "we had the victory before we ever prayed, so we never prayed long."

They spent time in the Word. They spent time meditating on and talking about the promises and the power of God. So when they made their petition to God, they were already rejoicing. They knew the answer was theirs. They were laughing and shouting and running when they came to the prayer room because they were already seeing and saying the outcome. And that outcome was good!

Most people these days don't do that. In fact, they do the exact opposite. Instead of rehearsing God's Word and meditating on that, they rehearse their problem over and over and meditate on that. They come to God and say, "Oh, Lord, things are so bad. They're so dark. It's so awful. Everything's going wrong. Woe is me. Woe is me..."

They're like the car I talked about earlier, spinning its wheels in the mud. The more they pray, the deeper in trouble they get. They spin round and round in the problem, going deeper and deeper all the time.

They need to do what we did as teenagers once when we loaded so many kids in the back of our car that we bogged down in the mud at the drive-in theatre. We all jumped out to lighten the load then we gave the back of that car a big shove and got it out of the mud onto the dry ground.

They need to lighten their load by obeying the admonition in 1 Peter 5:6-7, "Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time: Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you." They need to go to the Lord and say, "Father, I humble myself before You and admit that, as big as my problems might seem to me, they are small compared to Your goodness and Your power. So I'm giving them to You right now. I'm putting them in Your hands and I'm not going to worry about them anymore. I'm going to trust that You are taking care of them because You care for me. I know that in due time, I'm going to come out on top of this thing."

Then they need to give their faith a shove by speaking the Word of God. They need to get themselves out of the mud of discouragement and onto the dry ground of faith by declaring the outcome in the midst of adversity! They need to get so happy about that outcome that they shout and dance and roll right on to victory.

It's important for all of us to do that. We all need to move our faith up a few notches!

Have a Little Talk With Jesus
We don't have to wait until we're facing some huge, life-threatening disaster either. We can practice the spirit of faith in the details of our lives. Do you know God cares about the details? He does! The Bible says He is so concerned about every tiny detail of our lives that He numbers the hairs on our head. Think about that. He not only knows how many hairs we have, when one falls out, He knows which number it was!

I experienced the reality of that when we were about to move into our new church building.

In our old building, each member of the ministry staff had their own kind of office furniture. So we had a kind of hodge-podge of stuff. One person had contemporary black lacquer furniture in his office. Another had early attic style. Some people had ratty old couches. Others had none at all. And it came to me through the grapevine that when we moved into our new building we would be taking all that old furniture there with us.

When I heard that, I had a little talk with Jesus. But I didn't tell Him about my troubles. I reminded Him of the vision He had given us for this building. I reminded Him that it was a vision of excellence - not a vision of ratty furnishings. Every time I would hear someone talk about moving the old furniture into the new building, I would go to the Father with joy and say, "Lord, I want to thank You for all of our new furniture to match our new building. I thank You, Lord, that we're not moving that old furniture over to the new building."

Sure enough, before move-in time came, God made a way for us to have that furniture. I wish you could see it. It's beautiful and it's an absolute miracle of God!

Someone might say, "Well, I wish God would do that kind of thing for me."

He will if you'll just give Him the opportunity. If you'll just open the door to His power by declaring the outcome instead of complaining about the problem, He'll not only deliver you from trouble, He'll bless you like He did Job who ended up with double-payment for everything the devil stole from him.

He will do for you what He promised through Paul, "...exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us" (Ephesians 3:21).

So stop spinning your wheels. Start declaring the outcome. Rest and rejoice because "Faithful is He who is calling you [to Himself] and utterly trustworthy, and He will also do it!"

Copyright © Mac Hammond Ministries
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