Sermon Central
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Open Heavens With Holy Disturbance
Contributed by Daniel Olukoya on Jan 24, 2005 (message contributor)
Summary: God knows the secret plan of the things He will do for the world, using your hands, therefore if God is your partner make your plans BIG.
“Oh that thou wouldest rend the heavens, that thou wouldest come down, that the mountains might flow down at thy presence”.
This is a great prayer point, asking God to tear open the heavens and come down with His presence and every mountain will have no option but to melt and flow away.
It talks about rendering the heavens.
“ I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, which shall never hold their peace day nor night: ye that make mention of the Lord, keep not silence, [7] And give him no rest, till he establish, and till he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth”.
This is one method of creating open heavens. It is the Holy disturbance that we are talking about, and God enjoys this kind of disturbance.
WHAT IS HOLY DISTURBANCE?
It is prayer.
The subject of prayer is deep and intense. Those who have been coming to our prayer lectures would have heard a lot about it. If you have not been coming you had better make up your mind to start coming.
It is very deep, mysterious and very powerful and this is why unseen forces work very hard to hinder people from praying. They do a lot of hard work to let people do everything but not pray.
Prayer is one of the three pillars that uphold Christians and make then stand in the faith.
PILLARS
1. Holiness
2. Word of God
3. Prayer
If you miss any of these, you cannot stand as a believer.
Prayer is the only thing that the devil cannot do out of all that we do in the house of God. He can dance, sing, entertain, preach, cancel but he cannot pray. Even angels don’t have the privilege of praying. It is given unto us. It is often said that a Christian is most powerful on his knees. Men may reject your message, despise your person but they are helpless when it gets to your prayers. That is, once you start praying today, it does not matter whether the person you are praying for or about agrees with you or not.
When you spend time with God in prayer, it is the most useful thing on earth. Therefore, the most important pre-occupation of the devil and most important assignment is to keep people away from praying and he has succeeded a lot. My prayer is that he will not succeed in your life in Jesus name.
The enemy will not succeed in my life in the name of Jesus.
The hymn writer says:
“Christians seek not yet repose, Hear your guardian angel say; you are in the midst of foes, watch and pray”
The man who can really pray has nothing to fear and everything God can do, prayer can make us benefit from it.
If you looked at the Church history, you would find out that every great move of God, any great revival that had ever come to pass, could be attributed to a knee praying, there would be someone that had prayed hard for it.
There can be no fresh anointing without a visit to the school of prayer. It is prayer that converts promise to performance. The good thing now is that the arm of God responds to violent praying. When God points a tiny finger at the enemies, they are finished not to talk of when He arises.
Jacob prayed violently and wrestled with the angel for seven hours, repeating the same thing until he got it in the morning. He said
“I will not let you go unless you bless me”
It worked for him.
Blind Bathemeus, cried out violently it was prayer and he refused to keep quiet until Jesus heard him and abandoned all others and asked for him to be brought forward.
The Bible does not say: “Preach all the time” But pray all the time” 1thesalonians 5:7, Ephesians 6:18
When you pray the way you should, your life will no longer remain the same. The spiritual conflict in which we find ourselves is such that even if you believe there is no problem, because you belong to one club or the other, you have women or men with whom you spend your leisure, in this conflict, the deciding factor is prayer. You may think those who are praying are fools.
Prayers do not die.
OPEN HEAVENS
It is important to understand this issue because it will make us obtain break through for our lives.
Many uncomfortable or inconvenient situations will remain the same until you obtain breakthroughs.
An evangelist went to a place where the Gospel had never been preached. He had the Gideon New Testament, and distributed it to everybody.
A little boy received one and kept reading it. He read the whole New Testament and did not really understand. He saw where the Apostles received the Holy Spirit and how others too received Him, he too wanted this experience but did not know how to go about it. He resolved into prayer, since he saw there the importance of prayer
