Bold Prayers

Bold Prayers

By Abraham Israel

“Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” (Heb 4:16).

According to Heb 4:16, we are here asked to pray boldly. Approach the throne of grace with boldness always because of what Jesus has done for you. When you call on God the Father in the Name of Jesus, You are automatically given a elevated standing before God which is equal to Jesus asking the Father directly from the right hand of the throne of God (John 16:23-24, 26-28;Eph 2:5-6). Never be ashamed of yourself because of the constant accusation of Satan who is called as the “accuser of our brethren” (Rev 12:10). Ever since he has been cast down from heaven to the earth, he has no more place in heaven to accuse the saints before God. So the only deceit that he is playing towards every saint now is to accuse them constantly in their mind and make them self-condemned (Rev 12:7-9; Luke 10:18-20; John 12:31).

That why Apostle John says in 1 John 3:20, “…If our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things.” In other words He who is inside the heart is greater than our heart which is used by Satan to condemn us (1 John 4:4; 3:20). In the next verse John also have said, "Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence toward God.” (1 John 3:21). Here the Greek word used for condemn is kataginōskō [pronounced- kä-tä-gē-nō'-skō] which means 1) to find fault with, blame 2) to accuse, condemn. This is an action verb which is used to tell that someone is doing it. And that someone is Satan. John is saying ‘Don’t worry when you feel condemned by Satan, Cheer up! God knows your heart intention which is to please Him.’ The Greek word for heart is Kardia [pronounced- kär-dē'-ä] which means the centre and seat of spiritual life, the soul or mind, as it is the fountain and seat of the thoughts, passions, desires, appetites, affections, purposes, endeavors of the soul so far as it is affected and stirred in a bad way or good way. In other words because you are failing in the weakness of the flesh, Satan is accusing you and using your heart in a bad way to stir up bad emotions to cripple you in your Spiritual life (Rom 7:17-20). Understand that it is sin or lawlessness [Satan and his demons] which is instigating it, but you have a choice here to resist such passions or thoughts imposed on you as you keep growing Spiritually by depending on the power of the Lord (Rom 7:20;1 Cor 10:13;Eph 6:10).

The Bible says, “[Jesus] Having disarmed [and taken back the power and authority of] principalities and powers [including Satan], He made a public spectacle of them [for man to understand its significance (John 12:27-33)], triumphing over them in it [i.e. the Cross which is the symbol of Christ’s victory over Satan and his demons].” (Colossians 2:15). The Cross is a symbol of victory because through it Jesus fulfilled all the requirements of God that He demanded a man to fulfill with perfect obedience. He was the first man to fulfill it, so the moment He fulfilled it, God judged Satan by taking his legal authority over earth and giving it back to Jesus who has become the new chief sovereign controller of this planet earth (Matt 28:18). Apostle Paul understood this very well and found out this evil strategy of Satan and wrote to the believer’s, “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His.” (Rom 8:1,9). The Spirit of God dwells in every believer, considering them to be His temple because of what Jesus has done for them (1 Cor 3:16; 6:19-20). Therefore the crux of the matter is no believer can ever be condemned for his behavior because of what Jesus has done and achieved for them as their substitute on the Cross, Satan knowing this very well, had started a deceptive business 2000 years ago to weaken the believers by accusing them in their mind, thus hoping and expecting the believer to be self-condemned. He is still continuing in this business very fiercely as the end has come.

There are three principles (Rev12:11), when understood and applied correctly will defeat all of our enemies strategies and will give us boldness to approach the throne of grace in the time of our need,

1) “They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb.”

By constantly applying the blood of Jesus in one’s life by a close relationship with God and confessing verbally all the conscious and unconscious sin that we commit daily immediately to Jesus our High Priest and advocate who is representing us in heaven before the Father God (1 John 1:7,9; 2:1-2; Heb 8:1;9:11-12,14). The Greek word for ‘confess’ is ‘homologeo’ which means ‘to say the same thing as another, i.e. to agree with, assent, to concede, not to refuse, to promise, not to deny, to confess- declare, to confess- i.e. to admit or declare one's self guilty of what one is accused of, to profess, to declare openly, speak out freely, to profess one's self the worshipper of one, to praise, celebrate’.

When we make a decision each time to confess our sin to our heavenly High Priest, our conscience will be cleansed by the blood and we will no more feel guilty of breaking God’s perfect law in our inner being of our heart. At the end of the ordeal, always thank God verbally by saying, ‘Thank you Lord for cleansing me by the blood of Jesus.’

2) “They overcame him by the word of their testimony.”

After all these things Satan will come accusing to us in our mind, that’s when we need to speak by faith what Jesus has done for us through ‘The Cross and His Blood’. Speak out like this, ‘Hey devil! I am cleansed by the blood of Jesus! You no more have right’s over me, and I command you to go in the Name of Jesus!’. The enemy will run and flee from you (James 4:7). This part of resisting the devil and his demons should be verbalized because Satan and his cohorts are not omniscient to understand your thought or feeling of being cleansed by the blood of Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit which happens inside your heart and hence you no more feel guilty (Rom 10:6-13;Rev 12:11;Philemon 6;Heb 9:14). Guilt always makes us think that we are accountable or answerable to God for our actions. When Guilt is not again brought back to normality of peace, slowly our mind will get darkened or in other words senseless to God (Rom 1:21; 3:17-20). The one who habitually does wickedness cannot have peace in their lives (Isaiah 57:20-21; 59:1-2,7-8). Guilt is a God given emotion in you that works as a fire alarm, when you move away from Him and His righteous laws. When you break God’s righteous laws which are written in the heart of every human (Rom 2:14-16), this God-given mechanism of guilt which checks us when we do wrong will indicate absence of peace until confession is done and peace with God and Peace of God is restored back (Rom 5:1;Eph 4:6-7). If still Satan reminds you of your past, you better remind him of his future. He will run away from you with tremor and fear.

3) “They overcame Him by not loving their lives to the death [the ultimate death of self life].”

We should unconditionally surrender or submit every area of our lives to God in order to have complete victory over devil and his wicked demons (Matt 11:28-30;16:24-25). To the level you submit to God is directly proportional to the level of victory you will have over the devil. Half surrender will give you only a partial victory over the cruel evil bondage of the devil (James 4:7). Full surrender will happen only when you will become ready to even die for God by crucifying your self-life on the cross that God gives you to carry daily (Luke 9:23; 1 Cor 15:31). This death is just not dying as a martyr, but by dying to our self life [i.e. I, Me and Myself attitude] and walking in the perfect will of God daily. This is the reason the Bible does not say that the saints were ready to die in Rev 12:11, but it says,”…they did not love their lives to death.” In other words, the saints were dead to their self lives.

When we apply these principles in our prayer life daily, we as righteous will become bold as lions against the Satan and his demons (Prov 28:1). Praise the Lord!

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