MHR EP 2548 - Heavenly Equity and Prayer

Have we gotten the cart before the horse in our prayer life? You have heard of an Attitude of Gratitude, but do you Pray with Gratitude. How can Heavenly Equity helped you with your grief? Heaven wants a close personal relationship with you, not only during times of grief.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Are we getting the cart before the horse in our prayer life?

SPEAKER_00 0:05

What if I told you that there's more to it? That there are benefits and reinforcements from heaven that are available to help you in this life. And you've never heard about it. Are you curious? Well, join Gordon Merrill as he digs deeper into making heaven real in this life.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Welcome back to Making Heaven Real. If you joined us last week, then you know that we discussed a term that I've kind of coined over the last 20 months, which is heavenly equity. And we talked about it from a different perspective last week, but I think it also applies very much so into our prayer life. And because of that, I'm kind of making this almost like part two of heavenly equity, which you'll know how this all works in a little bit closer to the end of the episode. Right off the top of the head is the first thing that comes to mind is First Thessalonians, where it says, Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. Give thanks in all circumstances. You notice how prayer is bookended by praise here. Rejoice on one end, give thanks on the other end. Oh, and in the meantime, in the middle, somewhere in there, pray without ceasing. Have you ever read that or heard that in church and go, gosh, how does that even happen? Well, if we have time in this episode, we'll kind of get into a little bit of that. But right off the top, we have Rejoice and Thanks Bookending Prayer in 1 Thessalonians. And that is one of 35 verses that have been identified that instruct us to give God thanks and praise. Have you ever heard of Attitude of Gratitude? Well, let's review just a few of those 35 verses real quick, and some of the short phrases out of those verses, and let's see what that looks like. Psalms 100 says, Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him and praise his name. Another Psalm says, I will give thanks to the Lord with all my heart. Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, his love endures forever. Let us sing to the Lord. Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving. Let us make a joyful noise to him with songs and praise. So there's not so much just an attitude of gratitude. This is kind of approaching the topic of praying with gratitude. If we approach God with a thankful heart, acknowledge his blessings, everything that he's done for us. Can we also look at this from the standpoint of what all he is already doing to answer our prayer? Kind of touches on the heavenly equity from last week. Both of those examples from last week on heavenly equity referred to things that happened and had already started in being put in place weeks and months before the resultant answer to prayer. Something to keep in mind as we're going through this today. So let me ask you, do we think God forgets? You know, recently I asked you what is the only way that we can limit God. So from this standpoint, is there any way that we know of that God forgets? Well, the only thing that we can refer to from the Bible is Psalms 103, where it says, when we ask for forgiveness from our sins, God separates that transgression from us as far as the East is from the West, to remember them against us no more. Okay. So that's kind of a voluntary forget, if you want to look at it that way. So I've actually heard people present this from the standpoint of if we ask God for forgiveness for the same transgression, we actually embarrass God. Do we assume that He forgot to forgive us, or do we assume that, well, you know, maybe I don't forgive you for that sin or that transgression? I think the other part of that is if we're already thinking in the mindset that if we ask God for forgiveness for the exact same transgression over and over and over, and that embarrasses God, then what do we do with God or to God when we repeatedly ask for the same prayer request over and over and over? Do we think his answer is going to change? Do you think he will give in if we badger him much like a nagging teenager? Do we think he didn't remember our request? Or do we just not have faith in our God? A couple years ago there was a movie that was made that was in the theater, somewhat popular amongst Christians, depicted a prayer wall. And two things I remember taking away from watching that movie. One of those is if we as humans have a need to have all of those prayers printed out and stuck to the wall in our prayer room to keep track of them to meet our human needs, that's one thing. But the other point is we see in scripture that God knows all of our requests before we even ask. All of them. Every last post-it note that's on that wall. Kind of talks a little bit about the heavenly equity again. If he knows about it before we ask, he's probably already got things in motion to answer those prayers. He just likes to hear it. So let's look at it this way. What if we were to change our balance within our prayer from predominantly begging to predominantly praising? Think with me for a minute about a pre teen girl and a dad. And every time she sees her dad or runs through the room and goes past him or sees him at the dinner table or whatever, it's like, hey dad, I want a bicycle. Hey Dad, don't forget my bicycle. Hey Dad. Remember I want a bicycle? Dad, have you bought my bicycle yet? Dad, you know what kind of bicycle I like, right? Now, look at it from the other side. Hi Dad, love you. Hi Dad. Do you have a good day? Hi Dad. Glad you're finally home. Hi Dad, thank you for everything you do for us. Which one do you think makes Dad feel better? Which one do you think makes Dad feel more connected? Dad already knows that she wants a bicycle. She told him once. He hasn't forgotten. He even saw which one she was playing with when we went through the store and looked at it.

unknown 9:51

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 9:55

But Dad feels better about the relationship with his preteen daughter if she's not every time she sees him only saying, I want a bicycle. So let's look go back and kind of look at that example we had before of the prayer wall. Let's just theoretically say that we have a hundred requests on that wall and we pray for them every day. Every time we talk to God, we set up this time to go talk to God and run down every one of those post-it notes on the wall so that we bring up all 100 requests every day. But we are predominantly begging for 100 things. How many thanks have you included in that prayer? Now lots of examples for prayer that have been taught or published teach us that we should start with praise and then ask later. So what if we were to change the balance of that? How about if we started the prayer with praising God for the heavenly equity already engaged, already in process, already started for those hundred requests? Then at the end it's like, oh, by the way, two more things that came up over the last twenty-four hours, can we add this to the list? And that's when we ask God for those two new requests. So how's the balance changed? Now we have one hundred thanks and praises compared to two new requests or begging. You think God understands that better? You think God wants us to have that kind of a attitude when we're coming to him. If we start the day talking to God and we're praising him for what he has already started and engaged for the request that we have left with him previously. The majority of your prayer is now gratitude, appreciation, praise, and thankfulness. So that comes back to the prayer without ceasing. Two very notable examples about that is one God specifically denounced having boisterous public prayer like the Pharisees told us to go into private and talk with God. How much more private can you be than to include God with your entire day? You start the day talking to God. Just don't ever close the prayer. But you go on this trip and the two of you take off on this adventure, and you start out in the morning and you go, you know, this is great. I'm glad we're on this vacation together. Uh it's nice to have you here. Thank you for this uh wonderful thing that we're we're engaged in. And uh, oh, by the way, um, can you make a gender reservation for us? Goodbye. And you head in separate directions. Is that truly a friendly, engaged, joined vacation? Yet that's what we do in the morning when we talk to God and then say, Hmm, well, thank you very much. Have a great day. Amen. And never address the topic again. God wants to be close. God wants to be your companion. God wants to be your best friend. Oddly enough, part of what has been so adequately demonstrated to me over the last twenty months is how close God wants to be. Grief is tough. Grief is hard. We talked about that before in a previous episode. You know, even even the phrase that the depth of your love equals the depth of your grief. But God's there with you for that. That's the heavenly equity. Where he's putting everything he has available for you out there for you to engage with if you ask. That kind of relationship is not something that you have in a quick five-minute prayer before you head out the door in the morning. That's the kind of thing where you talk to him all day long. That prayer has become very conversational, very emotional at times, very strengthening, very encouraging, and very loving. One of the things I think that is hard for some people to grab a hold of during the initial stages of grief is what goes on in your body physically, medically, during grief. Makes things hard to continually be mindful and present with everything that comes your way. Without getting into all the details and all the medical stuff that goes along with it, one of the primary concerns that they've done in studies is that real deep grief drains the body of serotonin really strongly. And because of that, your body kind of goes into an emergency status to do what it needs to do to try and rebuild that level, which also causes some different responses or different ways of dealing with reality. I know one of the things that showed up personally for me during those first couple months was this darkness, this fog, this feeling like nobody's there. Nobody's around. Even though I knew God was there, it's almost like, why don't you answer me? Why don't you talk to me? Why don't I hear you? Looking back on it now, it was very obvious he was there. He was helping. He was wrapping me in a blanket of love, is the only way I can think of it. But it was hard for me to understand that and process that and take that in because of what was going on in my body as a result of the trauma of the loss and the residual physiological changes where my body was trying to catch up. There's a lot of studies about that and a lot more detail, but just summarize it that way to let you know that all of those heavenly resources were available to me. Every time I prayed, I was heard. Every time I asked for something, that was heard. Most all of it was provided as needed, which proved it was heard. It's just I wasn't physically able to process the incoming signals as I would have normally if it had not been for the grief. So if we go back and look at the prayer life, if we look at the idea or the concept of praying without ceasing, let's take my friend along with me all day long. Okay, God, look come on, let's go. Nothing makes God any happier and any more thrilled than to have his children engage with them in a close personal relationship. Even though you don't know that that's happening at the time, you do find places in Scripture that tell you He will never leave you, never forsake you, never leave you stranded. He is always there and ready to be in communication with you at any time. Mentioned previously in a previous episode, have you ever heard or can you tell me what the voice of God sounds like to you? If not, that's something you might want to work on. Being able to know what God's voice sounds like is a relationship definitely worth pursuing. But if we're talking about heavenly equity and heavenly resources, we've already talked about spirits that are around us. We've already talked about all of the people who've gone on before family, friends, loved ones. Even a spot in scripture that talks about the heroes of the faith from Old Testament that are part of this great cloud of witnesses around us. So not only can you hear God, but if you're open, receptive, and ask, you can hear from your spirits as well. That gives you a whole different perspective to approaching prayer. It gives you a whole different perspective to approaching heavenly equity. And that gets you into the idea that came behind me coining the phrase heavenly equity. Because now if you're hearing from God, now if you're hearing from spirit around you, now that if you're getting constant communication and companionship and knowing that God is there with you, there's so much more. Where are you in your grief process? Where are you in connecting closely with God? Where are you in being receptive and engaging with spirit who has gone on before? Where are you in your prayer life? Have you gotten to where you look at this from the standpoint that God has already started work on all your prayer requests? All of the wheels are in motion, all the heavenly equity is in place to produce for you the answer to prayer that God wants for you. Like I said earlier, it's not like he's going to change his mind. He already knows what the answer is going to be, and he already knows how he's going to provide that for you. So we don't need to badger him. We just need to thank him for how he is handling this, how he's receptive to our needs and our requests, but more so how he is proud and happy to receive our praise, our gratitude, and our prayerful gratitude, as well as our attitude of gratitude. Heavenly equity makes available to us all kinds of communication and resources if we just know how to ask, how to believe, how to have faith, and how to trust.

SPEAKER_00 27:35

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