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Growing In God with Gary Hargrave


Nov 8, 2023

Growing In God Podcast

Web Description: For the children of Israel in the wilderness, there was only one place they could go to pray. Their prayers to God had to happen in the Tent of Meeting in the presence of God. Today we can pray in any physical place we want, but in truth there is a place where we are to go when we pray. That place is the spirit realm where we communicate with God in His presence.

 

Show Notes: According to the Bible there is a specific place we are to go to pray. This is not something that gets much focus in the Church because we understand that we can pray anywhere we want to—at any place and at any time. But I feel it is wise to open our hearts to the teaching of the Scriptures about prayer and how prayer is to be accomplished. The Scriptures in fact direct us to pray in the Spirit. We are to enter the realm of spirit to engage in prayer.

 

Moses taught the people, “Don’t just sit in your house. Don't just hang around the camp and pray. Leave where you are, walk to the tent of meeting, and pray where the presence of God is.” Yeshua (Jesus) also taught that we are not to pray where we are seen and heard by others. Instead, we are to go to our inner room, close the door, and pray to God alone in secret. And Paul taught that we are to pray at all times in the Spirit. All these teachings tell us to go to another place to pray. We are not to sit around in the natural level. We are to go to the spiritual level and pray in the presence of God who is Spirit.

 

It is essential for us to grasp how important it is to exercise our prayer life in the Spirit. We should enter the spirit realm when we pray. When we do not learn how to engage in prayer in the realm of spirit, we are actually losing the power and potential that is the purpose of our prayer. Reject this concept of praying to God as someone separate, in another place than you. In Christ we have the ability and the enabling to come into His presence. We are to commune with the Father and commune with the Son in a world of oneness, and this is where they are beckoning us to come.

 

Key Verses:

 

       Ephesians 6:18. “Pray at all times in the Spirit.”

       1 Corinthians 14:13–15. “If I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful.”

       Matthew 6:5–6. “Pray to your Father who is in secret.”

       John 12:26. “Where I am, there My servant will be also.”

       Matthew 17:1–3. “He was transfigured before them.”

       1 Corinthians 2:16. “We have the mind of Christ.”

       Romans 12:2. “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

       Exodus 33:7–11. “Everyone who sought the LORD would go out to the tent of meeting.”

 

Quotes:

 

       “There is a place of prayer that I believe the Lord has directed. And that place of prayer is in the Spirit.”

       “As we speak into this level of prayer and proclamation from the realm of spirit, that's when things will then change in the natural level.”

       “I want this for the Body of Christ—to enter into His presence and commune rather than to have some prayer that is just an expression of the natural world’s separation from God.”

 

Takeaways:

 

1.    God has filled us with His Spirit, allowing us to pray in the Spirit in unknown tongues. But also, because we are filled with the Spirit, we have an enabling to enter into the world of spirit. And we must get it clear in our minds that we are to learn how to enter into the world of spirit and function there.

2.    Christ came to reconcile us to the Father, which we often focus on as being about the forgiveness of sin. And He did do that. But in doing that He opened the door for us to enter into the presence of the Father, just as Moses entered into the presence of the Father and spoke to Him face to face. If that door was open for Moses, how much more in Christ is it open to us?

3.    When we pray, we must first enter into the world of spirit, into the very presence of the Father where Christ dwells. And anytime that we pray just in a natural plane in some other place we are lacking the power of creativity. We are lacking the power to bring about the fulfillment of what we are praying for.