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Pastor Ed Pruitt
ARE YOU LOOKING FOR A PRAYER THAT WORKS PART 4
The Prayer of Consecration“…
I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” Galatians 2:20 NKJV
Let’s read that again in, Galatians 2:20 (NLT)
20 My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
The prayer of consecration may be one of the shortest prayers ever uttered, but it often requires the longest journey of the heart.
It is not fun to die to our own will and our own ways.
And that’s what it takes to surrender to God’s will and His ways.
That’s what it takes to honestly pray this kind of prayer.
The best scriptural example of the prayer of consecration is found in Matthew 26:36-46 (NLT)
Jesus Prays in Gethsemane
36 Then Jesus went with them to the olive grove called Gethsemane, and he said, “Sit here while I go over there to pray.”
37 He took Peter and Zebedee’s two sons, James and John, and he became anguished and distressed.
38 He told them, “My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”
39 He went on a little farther and bowed with his face to the ground, praying, “My Father! If it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.”
40 Then he returned to the disciples and found them asleep. He said to Peter, “Couldn’t you watch with me even one hour?
41 Keep watch and pray, so that you will not give in to temptation. For the spirit is willing, but the body is weak!”
42 Then Jesus left them a second time and prayed, “My Father! If this cup cannot be taken away unless I drink it, your will be done.”
43 When he returned to them again, he found them sleeping, for they couldn’t keep their eyes open.
44 So he went to pray a third time, saying the same things again.
45 Then he came to the disciples and said, “Go ahead and sleep. Have your rest. But look—the time has come. The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.
46 Up, let’s be going. Look, my betrayer is here!”
This prayer, with all its intensity, didn’t just spontaneously spring up in Jesus’ heart at this one crucial time in His life.
Although this Garden of Gethsemane experience was the ultimate test of His willingness to die to His own will, Jesus lived His entire life with this attitude of surrender to God.
In John 5:30 NKJV, He said, I can of Myself do nothing. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is righteous, because I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me.
And again in John 6:38 NKJV, He said, For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will,
but the will of Him who sent Me.
This was Jesus’ own testimony.
Choosing God’s will over His own was the most important thing in His life.
Desiring the Better Part
An interesting thing happens to us when we surrender
our lives to the lordship of Jesus and receive the
baptism in the Holy Spirit.
Over time our desires change so that we begin desiring
what God desires.
To a great extent, our personal will merges with God’s will, and we naturally want to do what
He wants us to do.
I don’t spend every day torn between the desire to
work in a casino and the desire to
teach the Word of God.
I never have a day when I say, “Oh, I can’t decide if I want to serve the Lord or deal drugs.”
No, my desires and God’s desires have merged together
so that everything in me wants to serve the Lord.
Yet, even so, there are times when a conflict will arise.
There are times when my soul will want to go one way
and the Holy Spirit will direct me to go another.
There are times when God will ask me to do something for Him that will cost me something personally.
At those times, my natural self will want to fight against
God’s instructions.
It will say, “Hey, I don’t want to do that.
It’s going to hurt!”
When that happens, I have a choice to make.
Am I going my way or God’s way?
For me, the worst thing I could possibly imagine is to stand before the Lord one day and hear Him tell me,
“Well half done.
You started off good, but you missed My plan for your life.”
So in those circumstances, I pray the prayer of consecration.
I say, “Not my will, Lord, but Yours be done.”
Finish the Course
One of the reasons the prayer of consecration is so important is that we all face choices like that—not just once, but again and again.
So this isn’t a prayer you can pray once in your life.
It has to be prayed continually.
It has to be the rudder that directs your course.
Paul said in 2 Timothy 4:7,
I have fought a good fight, I have finished
my course, I have kept the faith.
The course that Paul was referring to was the will of
God for his life.
Each and every one of us has a course to run.
Hebrews 12:1 NKJV says,
Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by
so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside
every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares
us, and let us run with endurance the
race that is set before us.
The Amplified translation says that we are to run
our appointed course.
That means my course won’t be the same as yours.
Your course won’t be the same as someone else’s.
All of our courses are different, because God has a
different plan for each of our lives.
Picture a road that winds and turns from the time
you surrendered your will to Jesus to the end
where you finish your course.
That road represents the will of God for your life.
It will bend and turn and go to all kinds
of exciting places.
There will be different things along your course
that try to pull off the road.
It could be a business opportunity or a relationship
that beckons you.
But there is only one way to reach the end
of your course, and that is to seek out and follow
the will of God.
Don’t Hold Your Life Dear
Paul was talking about all the things that were
trying to get him off his course in
Acts 20:24 NKJV when he said,
But none of these things move me; nor do I count
my life dear to myself, so that I may finish
my race with joy, and the ministry which
I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to
the gospel of the grace of God.
First, he said that none of those things moved him.
Second, he said that he did not count his life dear.
If you hold your life dear, mark it down—you’re not going to finish your course.
If it means everything to you to have a good reputation,
don’t plan on finishing your course because the Devil
will set a trap to make you popular.
If it means a lot to you to have a nice house, you’ll probably get one, but forget about
finishing your course.
Forget about hearing the words, “Well done,” because
the Devil will provide a way of getting you a
nice house that will be guaranteed to get you
off your course.
Does that mean you can’t have a nice home and
still finish your course?
No, not at all.
But if a house means more to you than God’s will,
you’ll jump up and accept the enemy’s plan
rather than wait with patience for God’s plan.
If you can be snagged by money, don’t
plan on finishing your course.
That doesn’t mean you have to run your race in poverty.
God wants you to prosper.
And if you’ll serve Him in faith,
He will bless you financially.
But if you love money, the Devil will use it
to lure you off track.
He’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse, and you’ll
end up saying,
“Not Your will, Lord, but mine be done.”
Nothing is as high as the call of God.
Yet I’ve seen single people make marriage their prize
and high calling.
They will fight, claw and scratch to get a marriage relationship.
Then, when they get it, they despise it because
it cost them the peace of living out of the plan of God.
Small Steps to Gethsemane
Jesus didn’t develop the Gethsemane attitude of consecration overnight.
Many small steps of surrender paved the way for that
final decision, and you’ll have to take a lot of small
steps in your life, too.
You will have daily opportunities for consecration when
somebody wrongs you, and God tells you to bless them
instead of giving them a piece of your mind.
You’ll take small steps forward on those days when
you want to go home and relax after a hard day
and God tells you instead to go to the
church and pray.
There will also be big steps of consecration
along the way.
When you are offered a chance to fulfill your dream but
God directs you another way, for instance,
what will you do?
If you’ve practiced the prayer and the attitude of
consecration, you’ll make the right decision.
You’ll turn down that good opportunity and wait for
a God opportunity instead.
To make choices like that, your love for God has to
be in first place.
You must simply trust that surrendering to His will for you will take you to the highest possible kind of life.
You must believe that His plan will eventually be much
better than what you could have gotten on your own.
I’ll warn you now, there will be occasions when you
have a dream in your heart that God Himself put there,
but the direction He is leading you seems to be taking
you away from that dream instead of toward it.
Don’t worry about that.
Just keep walking with God.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought,
What does this job have to do with what’s in my heart?
The answer, of course, is everything.
There are people who are not doing the will of God for their life, because they’re too busy trying to fulfill their God-given dreams in their own human way.
Sometimes you have to die to those dreams to stay on course.
(Remember when God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac?)
But if you’ll do it, God will surely resurrect that dream
at the right time and in the right way.
At those times of consecration, you learn like the apostle Paul did not to count your life dear to yourself.
Remember, however, that doesn’t mean that God
does not hold your life dear.
He holds it so dear that He shed His own blood for it.
So trust Him to do something with your life.
If you will, He will surely give you the desires of your heart.
Delight in God Of course, those kinds of dying-to-self decisions hurt in the short run.
But that’s okay because every time you make a
decision that hurts—perhaps you decide against a relationship, a business or some other opportunity—you’re making a long-term investment toward
God’s plan for your life.
The more it costs you now to follow God’s plan, the less
likely you’ll be to let something cheap pull you
off your course later.
God’s plan is more valuable than anything else in life.
That’s why consecration, though sometimes painful,
is not a negative thing.
It will endear the Will of God to your life.
It will cause you to treat it as the precious treasure
that it is.
Notice that when Paul said in Acts 20:24 NKJV that he didn’t count his life dear, he talked about two distinct things:
his race and the ministry.
But none of these things move me; nor do I count my
life dear to myself, so that I may finish my race with joy, and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.
He wanted to finish his course and his ministry.
They aren’t the same thing!
Your course isn’t just ministry; it involves many things.
One key to completing your course is being joyful every step of the way.
You’ll never get further down the road if you despise where you are.
If the only thing you have to be happy about is
that you’re in the will of God—that’s enough!
“Praise God, I’m on my course!”
Learn to delight in the scenery around you, and you’ll learn to delight in the will of the Lord even if it takes
you through the jungles in Afghanistan.
Delighting in the Lord will bring divine appointments.
God Wants You To Be Strong-Willed.
Before you reach the end of your course, you’ll
learn to be very good at the prayer of consecration
and dedication.
Three times in Matthew 26, Jesus asked that
the cup pass from Him.
But He didn’t stop there.
He added, Nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt.
God does not take us through the consecration
process to cause us to lose our will.
He does not want you to be without a will.
If that had been His intent, He would never have created
you with one.
Truthfully, by the time you finish your course, you’ll
be very strong-willed.
But your will always will be used to fulfill God’s will.
Jesus didn’t want to have nails hammered in
His hands and feet.
His flesh didn’t want to die.
Everything in Him drew back, but when He
prayed the prayer of consecration—“not as I will”
—He became very strong-willed.
Strong enough to endure the cross.
James 4:13-15 NKJV admonishes us to consecrate
every day to the will of God.
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow
we will go to such and such a city, spend a year
there, buy and sell, and make a profit”; whereas
you do no know what will happen tomorrow.
For what is your life?
It is even a vapor that appears for a little time
and then vanishes away.
Instead you ought to say,
“If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.”
Don’t just exercise your will in big things.
Practice the prayer of consecration daily.
It will keep you conscious that God has a plan for you.
The following are a few scriptural prayers of
consecration you can pray:
Colossians 1:9-12 (NLT)
9 So we have not stopped praying for you since we first heard about you. We ask God to give you complete knowledge of his will and to give you spiritual wisdom and understanding.
10 Then the way you live will always honor and please the Lord, and your lives will produce every kind of good fruit. All the while, you will grow as you learn to know God better and better.
11 We also pray that you will be strengthened with all his glorious power so you will have all the endurance and patience you need. May you be filled with joy,
12 always thanking the Father. He has enabled you to share in the inheritance that belongs to his people, who live in the light.
Psalm 143:10 (NLT)
10 Teach me to do your will,
for you are my God.
May your gracious Spirit lead me forward
on a firm footing.
Psalm 4:8 (NLT)
8 In peace I will lie down and sleep,
for you alone, O LORD, will keep me safe.
[Not in your own strength] for it is God Who is all the while effectually at work in you—energizing and creating in you the power and desire—both to
will and to work for His good pleasure and
satisfaction and delight.”
Philippians 2:13 AMP
Praying these Scriptures will help you start turning
your heart in the right direction.
At times, even as you pray them, your soul may be
making you miserable with thoughts of how hard it’s going to be to obey God in a certain circumstance.
If so, be honest with God about it. Jesus was.
He said, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful” (Matt. 26:38).
God won’t mind your being in His throne room, saying,
“Oh, God, I want to do Your will, but my soul hurts.”
Once you consecrate yourself, don’t stop there.
Learn to get on your face before God until you know exactly what His will for you is.
Then, the next time you come to a crossroads in your
life, pray the prayer of consecration.
And finish your course.
