Prayerlessness – Part 2

by Mac Hammond | Uncategorized

God’s plan for your life won’t be the only mystery you will be in the dark about if you don’t have the ministry of the Holy Spirit operating in your life. Allow me to show you some of the mysteries God wants to reveal to you by His Spirit.

You see, the unsaved don’t have the capacity to understand the Word of God. But once they are converted, they have access to the mysteries of the Word.

Now, Jesus isn’t on this earth to explain His Word anymore, but He did send the Spirit of Truth to do that for us in His place. Just as the disciples had questions, there will be times when you, too, will have questions about something you read in the Word.

At those times, all you need to do is sit quietly and begin praying in the Holy Spirit, believing for the interpretation and expecting understanding to come. The revelation will come. The mystery will begin to unfold because it is given to you to understand the mysteries of God’s Word.

Let’s look at another mystery, one we see in Colossians 1:26-27: “Even the mystery which hath been hid from the ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints: to whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

Friend, once you have a revelation of who lives inside you – when you realize that the Greater One indwells you – there will never be a “Goliath,” never be a mountain and never be a circumstance that will make you bow in fear.

You will charge every Goliath, you will cast every mountain into the sea, and you will overcome every circumstance when you know Christ is in you. This revelation will make you a world changer. But unless the mystery of Christ in you is real to you, the quality of your life will be indistinguishable from that of someone who is unsaved.

Ask God to reveal this mystery to your heart as you pray in tongues. You will begin to know that you are more than a conqueror and you can do all things through Christ. You will become a winner just looking for a race to run.

The Bible mentions another mystery in Ephesians 5:30-32: “For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.” This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.

There are actually two parts to this mystery. The first concerns the mystery of how to have a successful marriage: it will forever be a mystery to you until you and your partner begin praying in the Holy Ghost together. When you do, the Spirit of God begins to reveal to you the sacredness of your relationship.

God strengthens your marriage and transforms it into what He meant it to be. Suddenly, you are simply unable to stay mad at each other anymore. And nothing is able to divide you from one another.

When you spend time praying in the Spirit together, the Holy Spirit also shows you how to treat your spouse. He gives you encouraging words to give your mate. He shows you special gifts to buy or tells you when to do something special for your beloved. Day by day, He teaches you how to get along with and truly love your husband or wife. Praying in the Spirit together absolutely revolutionizes your marriage.

The second part of this mystery deals with your relationship to the Body of Christ – your place in the local church to which God has called you. As I’ve mentioned before, God has a place for you in the Body of Christ. It is a place where you can bring your unique supply of natural and spiritual gifts, which enable your church to grow and be successful in expanding God’s kingdom.

In return, it is also a place where you can receive the teaching, anointing and spiritual gifts – the life flow from God – that you need to grow into the person God wants you to be.

Unfortunately, many Christians are not connected to a local part of the Body of Christ – or they are connected to the wrong part – because they don’t understand this mystery. You must be connected to a local church. And the Holy Spirit will reveal which one is right for you and what place you best fit within it.

There is yet another mystery the Spirit wants to reveal to you. You can find this one in 1 Corinthians 15:51. In fact, your understanding of this mystery will have a profound effect on your Christian walk: “Behold, I show you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.”

This is the Rapture, or the catching away of the Church, but the Bible calls it a mystery. That is why so many Christians have never been able to embrace this truth as reality. Yet this is one of the most important revelations you can have where your daily walk with God is concerned.

Let me explain. Do you ever have trouble with your flesh? Has your old man not entirely passed away? (Rom. 6:6; Eph. 4:22) If so, the revelation of this mystery to your heart will help set you on a straight and narrow path.

When the fact that Jesus could return right now is as real to you as the chair on which you are sitting, when the fact that Heaven could be just a breath away becomes that real to you, you won’t take a chance of getting caught in some willful sin. When the Rapture of the Church is a reality to you, you will begin to be separate and sanctify yourself to God’s holy purpose.

As it says in 1 John 3:2-3: “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. And every man that hath this hope in him purify himself, even as he is pure.” Now, the Spirit of God can reveal this mystery to your spirit in prayer. And once He does, you will never be the same.

You can radically change your life by letting the Holy Spirit conduct His ministry of revelation to your heart. Prayer with your natural understanding is important, but it is just not enough. You don’t have the intellectual discernment to know how and what to pray precisely, because so many of the significant things in life are mysteries. Romans 8:26-27 says it this way: “And in the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”

Please don’t allow yourself to be cheated out of your heavenly prayer language. You need to be baptized in the Holy Spirit once definitively and then filled with the Spirit on a continual basis. (Eph. 5:18)

The more of the Spirit that operates in your life, the more consistently revelation knowledge will flow. And the more you understand truth, the more you will be able to avoid deception, thereby withstanding the temptations, tests, and trials that Satan lays for you.

Deception is the opposite of truth. Ultimately, prayerlessness is a major doorway to deception because it keeps you from receiving revelation knowledge of the truth. The primary reason for prayerlessness is not knowing how to pray. It is just that simple. The solution is to be baptized in the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in other tongues and then regularly yielding yourself to His ministry in your devotional time by praying in tongues.

That’s how you avoid the snares, traps, pitfalls, and deceptions that Satan sets for you. You will know the truth, and the truth will set, and keep you free because if Satan can’t deceive you, he can’t defeat you!

Source: Doorways to Deception by Mac Hammond.
Excerpt permission granted by Harrison House Publishers

Mac and Lynne Hammond are senior pastors of Living Word in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, which they started in 1980. Many outreaches and ministries have launched from Living Word since that time, including Maranatha Christian Academy, a Pre-K through grade 12 school with nearly 900 in attendance, and Living Free Recovery Services, a licensed outpatient treatment program.

Most recently, Mac and Lynne have launched a vision to plant fifty churches across the globe in the next five years. As of August 2024, nine churches have been planted in the Dominican Republic, Ireland, Venezuela, Bolivia, Colombia, and Guatemala with construction underway for seven more churches in El Salvador, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Prior to becoming a pastor, Mac was a pilot. He served in the Air Force, served two tours of duty in Southeast Asia, and was honorably discharged in 1970 with the rank of Captain. Between 1970 and 1980, Mac was involved in varying capacities in the general aviation industry, including ownership of a successful air cargo business serving the Midwestern United States. A business acquisition brought the Hammonds to Minneapolis, where they ultimately founded Living Word. Currently, Mac is the host of The Winner’s Way and The Winner’s Minute broadcasts and the author of several internationally distributed books. Mac is broadly acclaimed for his ability to apply the principles of the Bible to practical situations and the challenges of daily living.

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