Becoming More Effective in PrayerSample

POWER OF PRE-EMPTIVE PRAYER

Do you know that if you can keep the hour of prayer, God will keep you from the hour of trial? There's the hour of trial that comes upon people in the world. The hour of trial came upon the Lord Jesus Christ and He needed prayer at that time. Do you know why many trials overtake people and overturn their lives? They did not have an hour of prayer with God before that thing came, so it caught them unawares; but in the place of prayer, if you keep your hour of prayer with God, it will keep you from the hour of trial.

Now, what is the Lord saying here for us to learn? Watch and pray! There is a prayer that I call pre-emptive prayer. It's the kind of prayer that you pray in advance before trial comes, having watched in the spirit or being led of the Holy Spirit to pray. The implication of what the Lord Jesus Christ is saying here is that if you don't watch and pray, you will enter into trials. Trials don't come from God. God knows what the devil is planning, what he wants to bring across the path of His people and He gives us advance information. The Lord says it like this in John chapter 16:13.

Part of the things to come that He will show you are the trials that the devil is planning to bring against you. In that passage in Matthew 26, the devil was planning to take Peter and the rest of the disciples through a trial of betrayal of the Lord Jesus Christ, but because they didn't keep the hour of prayer, that trial caught them unawares, overturned them and they all backslid. The Lord had to go after them after He rose from the dead and gathered them back.

PRAYER: Lord, I receive the grace to yield to divine pulls when the Holy Spirit calls me into the place of prayer, in Jesus’ name. Amen!