Day 1: Global Day Of Prayer With Pastor Chris by Pastor Chris Oyakhilome: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

The Power of Prayer

The poverty and powerlessness of the average Christian today finds its explanation in the words of the Apostle James. Matthew 7:7-8 says, "Ask, and you will receive. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened." God has given His promise that He will answer prayer every single time.

James 4:2 gives the blunt diagnosis: "Ye have not, because ye ask not." If you are seeing no progress in your Christian life, no fruit, no power over sin — it comes to one answer: neglect of prayer. God Almighty has promised us His power and placed it at our disposal. All we have to do is simply pray.

Acts 2:42 shows us the pattern of the early church: "They continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers." Steadfastly. God delights to answer when we are steadfast in prayer. That is one area the enemy constantly attacks; that is one area the flesh fights us in.

Prayer can do anything God can do. Because when we pray, He does. All things are available to the man who prays. Jesus said all things are possible to him that believes — and nothing shall be impossible to those who believe. Prayer is the key that opens wide the inexhaustible storehouses of divine grace and divine power. There is no limit to the power of prayer because prayer can do anything God can do — because God can do it all. All of God's infinite resources are at the command of prayer.

Waiting Upon the Lord

Isaiah 40:30-31 says: "Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall. But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint."

Notice the sequence — they run before they walk. The eagle does not fly; the eagle soars. Eagles stand on a rock in the mountains and wait for the right currents of wind, then spread their wings and are carried — they do not work to stay up, they surrender to the wind. When you wait upon the Lord, you will soar higher. You mount up, meaning you are being carried. And then you start running, catching up with God. Then you walk — your fellowship with God is restored.

Waiting upon the Lord strengthens the currents of the wind so they come your way, and all you have to do is surrender. People who are too filled with the world, too dependent on reason instead of faith, become too hardened to surrender. God has chosen the weak things, the things that are not, to confound the mighty. To surrender, you have to become like a child. If you believe in God, no explanation is necessary. If you do not believe, no explanation will suffice.

People who are too busy to pray are too busy to truly know the Lord. Activity without prayer will just wear you out. After many years in ministry, one thing has become certain about the devil: he is not afraid of activity, not afraid of machinery — he is only afraid of prayer, because he knows the power of God always comes when His people pray. When you wait quietly upon the Lord, that is what destroys the devil's kingdom.

The Effectual Fervent Prayer of Elijah

James 5:17-18 — Elijah was a man subject to the same passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain, and it rained not on the earth for three years and six months. Then he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain — not "God answered," but the heaven itself gave rain. That is how responsive the created order is to the prayer of a righteous person.

The secret of Elijah's prayer was that he was being guided by the Lord's spirit, not selfish ambition. When he commanded the heavens to withhold rain and later to release it, in both cases he told the people: "I have done this at your word" — meaning at God's instruction. The effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man produces results. It makes tremendous power available, dynamic in its working.

You are the watchman in your community, in your city, in your country. The earnest, heartfelt, continued prayer of a righteous man makes tremendous power available. We must affect lasting changes in our world for this present time and for future generations — not through might or power, but through ceaseless, tireless persistence in intercessory prayer.

Interceding for the Nations

Jeremiah 33:3 says, "Call unto Me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things thou knowest not." Psalm 50:15 says, "Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me."

There are things in your city, your nation, your world that will not be resolved by natural means. For what we are up against, you cannot just pray the short prayer printed on a screen and say that is fine. You must give serious attention, more time, to prayer — privately, intensely, steadfastly. Cast out the forces of darkness over the nations. We cancel their policies. We break their influence over governments, over cities, over countries. When you do it in the spirit, there is nothing they can do in the earth.

2 Corinthians 10:4 — the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds. These wicked financial and ideological fortresses that have destroyed and ruined nations — we bring them down by the power of the living Christ, praying in tongues, interceding with a laser focus on the outcomes we desire and anticipate.

2 Corinthians 3:18 — we all with open face, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.