How to Pray: Isn’t God’s Way the Best Way?

Sometimes God gives you exactly what you want when you pray.  Is that a good thing?  Have you ever prayed and God gave you what wanted but then you later understood why God did not want that for you?

As followers of Jesus Christ, sometimes we want what we see others have, but be careful with that! Let’s continue our prayer journey!!!!

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#pentecostal 

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Transcript

Press means to apply force. When God said press, prayer reaches every single situation. He gave us permission to apply force to every situation that we will go through.

And in this podcast, we are going to learn to apply force to what's applying pressure to us. Welcome to the Press Podcast. It is so amazing that you are here.

We have officially crossed over into 2024 and I am grateful to see a new year. I do not know what this year holds and I am cautious with that. I am grateful for how God has kept us and we'll just use that as proof for the fact that he can keep us again.

But coming into a year, you don't know what you're going to get. Sometimes people are so anxious to run forward that they don't realize the good and what they were running from. And I don't know that that will be the case in 2024, but I do know that that was the case in our prayer today in 1 Samuel.

The prayer itself is found in 1 Samuel chapter 14. But to adequately understand this prayer, we've got to go back to 1 Samuel chapter 12. For us in our studies, this is a new character in the Bible and the character's name is Saul.

Saul was the first king of Israel. He was the king that the people always wanted. The Bible lets you know that he was head and shoulders above the rest in terms of his stature and height.

And when you first see Saul in terms of the Bible, he is a man of character. He is handsome. He cares about his family.

He seems like this great guy. And yet the people, the Bible says, sinned against the Lord. They did evil, asking for a king.

God still gave them a king, but he let them know he wasn't happy about it via Samuel. They, however, wanted what everybody else had. Samuel in 1 Samuel chapter 12 takes them through their history with God.

From Moses up until now, through the prophets, he talks about how faithful God has been to the people. He starts it off by saying to them, I've never cheated you. I've never taken anything more than I had to.

I've never oppressed you. I've never been bribed. He tells them basically all of that concerning the prophets himself, from Moses until now.

He says all of that to say, isn't God's way the best way? Hasn't God been faithful to you? He says in verse 11, and the Lord sent Jeroboam and Bedan and Jephthah and Samuel and delivered you out of the hand of your enemies on every side. And ye dwelt safe. Haven't you been saved? Haven't you been kept? But you saw that Nahash, the king of the children of Ammon, came against you.

You said to me, nay, but a king shall reign over us. When the Lord God was your king, you want flesh and blood to take God's place. And God allowed it.

He did what they wanted in verse 13. They eventually even called it, as I stated before, they called it evil in verse 19. But God loved them and promised them, fear not.

You've done all this wickedness yet turn not aside from following the Lord, but serve the Lord with all your heart and turn you not aside for then should you go after vain things, which cannot profit nor deliver for they are vain. For the Lord will not forsake his people for his great name's sake, because it has pleased the Lord to make you his people. In other words, God's like, I'm still committed to you as long as you're committed to me, even though you've done this.

So the people get their king. They begin to realize this is a bad ideal, but it's an ideal they're committed to seeing through anyway. After Saul had reigned one year in chapter 13, the Bible says that Jonathan went down and he fought some of the Philistines by himself and won.

In verse 5, the Philistines, they gathered themselves together to fight Israel. But in verse 6, when the men of Israel saw that they were in a strait for the people were distressed, then the people did hide themselves in caves and in thickets and in rocks and in high places and in pits. The people were scared out of their minds.

They were hiding from the Philistines and the Philistines are ready to fight them. Saul calls for Samuel. He was at Gilgal in verse 7 and all the people followed him trembling there and he tarried there seven days according to the set time that Samuel had appointed.

So basically Samuel said, hey, I'll be there in seven days. But Samuel didn't show up in seven days to Gilgal and the people were scattered. Saul is looking at this scenario where the people are all over the place.

They're scattered. They're nervous. They're on the verge of war and Samuel is late.

So Saul takes it upon himself to do the job of Samuel. Saul, against the protocol of God, begins to offer a burnt offering to the Lord. But as soon as he finishes, Samuel comes and Samuel says to him in verse 11, what has thou done? Saul says, it's because I saw that the people were scattered from me and that thou camest not within the days appointed and that the Philistines gathered themselves together at Michmash.

In other words, you're late. The people are scattered. I'm on the verge of war.

I had to do something. I didn't want to fight before offering God a sacrifice or getting his input. I forced myself, therefore, and offered a burnt offering.

And Samuel said to Saul, thou hast done foolishly. Thou hast not kept the commandment of the Lord thy God, which he commanded thee. For now would the Lord have established thy kingdom upon Israel forever.

But now thy kingdom shall not continue. Saul gets rebuked because he didn't do it God's because he didn't keep his commandments. This is relevant to me because when we get to chapter 14, to the prayer of Saul, the children of Israel are again in a battle.

They actually win the battle in chapter 14. But during the battle, Saul commands them not to eat at all until the battle is done. When he does that, these people are starving.

They fight, they win, but they begin to eat whatever they can as soon as they win. So they eat things that were not okay for them to eat. It was a sin for them to eat things with blood and things like that.

So they just eat whatever they can find. Verse 32 says, And the people flew up on the spoil, this is as soon as the battle was done, and took sheep and oxen and calves and slew them on the ground. And the people did eat them with the blood.

They didn't even bother to cook it. They were starving. Then they told Saul saying, Behold, the people sin against the Lord and that they eat with the blood.

He set them up to fall. In the meantime, Jonathan didn't hear any of this. He didn't hear the command not to eat anything.

So he actually eats a little bit of honey and the people tell him, Your father said we can't do that. Jonathan says, My father have troubled the land. See, I pray you how mine eyes have been enlightened because I tasted a little of this honey.

Basically, he says my father was wrong. And after he does that, the people sin. As the story continues, Saul prays and in verse 37, he has already built his first altar to the Lord.

And he's already asking counsel of God concerning the next battle. Shall I go down after the Philistines? Will thou deliver them into the hand of Israel? The Bible says concerning God, but he answered him not that day. That was the whole prayer.

God, do we fight now? And the Lord did not answer. And when the Lord did not answer, Saul knew something was wrong. So Saul casts lots to find out who sinned.

And eventually, it gets down to the lot being between him and Jonathan in verse 41. And when he cast lots between himself and Jonathan, verse 42 says Jonathan was taken. In other words, they could see it was Jonathan that sinned.

Now, all the people had sinned. Everybody was doing something wrong. They were eating bloodied animals.

Saul, you've already done wrong against the Lord in chapter 12. And now we have Jonathan who has the same attitude his father had concerning commandments. Saul proceeds to say, Jonathan has to die.

He was prepared to kill his son for not obeying his word. The irony of this is how God did not take the same posture with him in his disobedience when he knew he was wrong. But with his son and his word, the word of Saul isn't a life or death thing.

In fact, Jonathan lived not because of his father, but because the people, the Bible literally says in verse 45, the people rescued Jonathan, that he died not. Then Saul went up from following the Philistines and the Philistines went to their own place. After that, Saul just goes to battle.

So God didn't answer and Saul figures out it's Jonathan's fault and he believes his word should be obeyed to the place that you'll die for not following it. I just can't get over in this particular scenario and I wonder if the Lord had the same approach that he was speechless as well. Not that he could say nothing, but just found nothing worth saying because Saul can be so wrong and judge so harshly those who are in the same scenario as himself.

Jonathan should repent. His father has the office and the Lord demands respect, but Saul also needed to take inventory. Why not ask God for mercy? Why not ask him for help? Why jump to judgment? There's a lot to be learned about the character of Saul as we look at this particular prayer and I believe that this prayer shows us the kind of man that Saul became.

He didn't start off the way he's going to end up, but as we're journeying through the Bible, every person who prays doesn't have a nice little bow on their story. In this story, we see the demise of Saul. We see how he got there.

We see the choices he made. His choices started with disregarding the law of God and the people did what he did. The people followed their leader, including his son.

The people were already disobedient, rebellious, and so they chose a leader that could show those qualities as well, even though it didn't look like it at first. This is part of a greater story. The story of Saul's rise, the story of Saul's fall, the story of what it looks like to try to get something great outside the will of God.

Whenever you do that, you're going to see these gaps. You're going to see these holes. You're going to see the silence of God.

You're going to see things that don't make sense. Why? Because he wasn't in it to start with. A lot of times you want to add God to the story.

You want to add him to the hard part, but you got there because he wasn't in it to start with. He just consented. He just relinquished himself to let you have your way, but this isn't what he wanted.

This isn't the way he wanted it. So sometimes silence is because you're out here now. I don't see Saul do this in the scripture, but I will say to you the best thing to do in that scenario is repent, run, turn, change, but don't just keep going your own way, your own direction.

When God is silent, pause, wait, beg. Yes, I said beg because you need him and what got you here is going your own way. Today, follow him.

Follow him with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all your soul, and remember the warning of Saul's life that we see through this prayer that God can go silent when you do your own thing, your own way, and that it's contagious. You being rebellious affects everyone around you. It affects the way they function and it affects how you can lead them.

Today, submit yourself to God and follow wholly after him and believe that prayer reaches every single situation. Join the movement. Join the community.

Like, share, and subscribe to this podcast. Visit us at PressToPray.com or find us on Instagram or Facebook. Did you know that when you are quiet, your voice is missing to God's ears? I know some of us have prayed and were wondering, how long should I pray about this? Why should I pray if God already knows? How will I know God is answering? And what do I do when I feel like God's not listening? But God is listening for your voice.

It's too quiet in this world for the troubles we have. You have to raise your voice and God wants to hear from you. It's Too Quiet, a book about prayer, is designed to answer your prayer questions and build your faith.

Visit PressToPray.com.

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