Prayer Revolution: A 14-Day DevotionalExemplo

 What Jesus’ Prayer Accomplishes

Jesus created a new world order, and He gave a prayer to accomplish its establishment. Meditating on and then praying these seven petitions on your own and in community will forever deliver you from constricted and self-focused prayer. It will introduce you to—and invite you into—the advance of God’s kingdom.

Our Lord aims to transform us into His likeness. He honors us by enlisting us in His world-changing mission. In order to expand our hearts and accomplish His kingdom purposes, He teaches us to pray the directives of this supreme “kingdom come” prayer. Tertullian, an early Christian author, contrasts prayer before the coming of Christ and after His coming, highlighting what mighty things prayer can now do:

Of old, prayer was able to rescue from fire and beasts and hunger, even before it received its perfection from Christ. How much greater then is the power of Christian prayer. No longer does prayer bring an angel of comfort to the heart of a fiery furnace, or close up the mouths of lions, or transport to the hungry food from the fields. No longer does it remove all sense of pain by the grace it wins for others. But it gives the armor of patience to those who suffer, who feel pain, who are distressed. It strengthens the power of grace, so that faith may know what is gaining from the Lord, and understand what it is suffering for the name of God.

In the past, prayer was able to bring down punishment, rout armies, withhold the blessing of rain. Now, however, the prayer of the just turns aside the whole anger of God, keeps vigil for its enemies, pleads for persecutors...Prayer is the one thing that can conquer God. But Christ has willed that it should work no evil, and has given it all power over good.

It's only art is to call back the souls of the dead from the very journey into death, to give strength to the weak, to heal the sick, to exorcise the possessed, to open prison cells, to free the innocent from their chains. Prayer cleanses from sin, drives away temptations, stamps out persecutions, comforts the faint-hearted, gives new strength to the courageous, brings travelers safely home, calms the waves, confounds robbers, feeds the poor, overrules the rich, lifts up the fallen, supports those who are falling, sustains those who stand firm.

When prayed in the name of Christ, there is nothing that this prayer cannot accomplish. We engage with all of life. We neglect no area of the Christian world. Praying this revolutionary prayer gives us the assurance that we are asking according to the revealed will of God, and therefore it fills us with boldness to ask and with confidence to believe that God will both hear and answer our pleas.