Prayer Convictions

Convictions are a funny thing. It’s what makes us certain that whatever goes up must come down, our clothes will dry in sunlight, our wells will be filled with water and certain plants will ultimately grow during certain seasons.

Things like this in life have been tried and are true. They’re not determined by our beliefs, moods or cultures. It’ll happen because it’ll happen. All we have to do is utilize the systems to our favour.

Even if it seems your balloon will float away into the space, just wait and see how it’ll come back down as a lessened blob of rubber.

You know how convinced you were in secondary school that if you failed in school, your parents would properly flog you? Yeah, that’s how convinced you should be with knowing that your prayer works.

From last week’s post, we saw that the word gives us the idea of who we are in Christ Jesus. So, in the Bible, the word of God; that’s where convictions or assurances concerning God’s promises and desires for us are born.

“Faith comes by hearing, and hearing the word…” (Romans 10:17). For you to believe all that God has said about you, you need to be studying (reading, hearing and meditating) on God’s word.

Studying the word is like reading the manual on how to play a keyboard. It’s only when you’ve read the manual repeatedly that you would know how to use the keyboard and be convinced that you can play it.

But are there people who actually know what the word says, hold on to it for dear life and everything opposite of what they are praying for is just happening to them that they eventually give up?

Yes, there are LOTS of people like that, and I’d tell you why.

1 Timothy 6:12 says, “Fight the good fight of faith…” (KJV)

2 Corinthians 10:3-4 says, “It is true that we live in the world, but we do not fight from worldly motives. The weapons we use in our fight are not the world’s weapons but God’s powerful weapons, which we use to destroy strongholds.“ (GNBUK)

We live in a fallen world where, because of the fall of Man, things won’t naturally follow after God’s plan.

There’s no time we won’t find ourselves being tested in this life because the fall of Adam reworked the earth to be against us. Thus we have trials, poverty, sickness, death etc.

That’s why we have tsunamis and earthquakes and bodies that would rather do anything else than do God’s plan.

For instance, you could be using your phone until past midnight and not feel weak or tired but once somebody just suggests praying for like 30 minutes, sleep that wasn’t there before will just appear out of nowhere.

Or you probably don’t eat breakfast in the mornings but once they announce fasting in church, na so so blues your stomach go dey play.

To add salt to injury, there are men that would rather have their wicked ways stand above God’s way and would do anything to keep it that way.

Plus, the devil is on another side trying to make you question and doubt God’s word any chance he has so that he can bring you down to his level of fear and hopelessness.

And because of this, we fight. We war with the words of God to ensure that, amidst all these obstacles, they come to pass exactly as God said it would.

But what’s our right to subjecting the world around us to God’s word? The blood of Jesus. His sacrifice paved the way for the Earth to favour us despite what Adam’s sin reduced it to.

This is your victory that whatever it is you pray for in God’s will, will surely come to pass.

I remember when I learnt that if the sun was beating me too much, I could say to the clouds to cover the sun, or when I was told that I could stop the rain from falling or if I was too hot, I could ask for breeze to cool me down.

I saw people around me do these things, I witnessed it with my very own eyes and I was excited to try it.

But when I tried it the first few times, it didn’t work and I was discouraged.

Imagine if Abraham stopped believing in God for his promised child because it was taking too long to happen.

Imagine if Moses stopped believing in God about entering the promised land because of how tough the Israelites were making the journey to be.

Imagine if David stopped believing in God’s word that he’d be King because of King Saul’s hatred towards him and how miserable his life became because of it.

Our heart towards God’s words for us is that no matter what happens or what’s happening around us, no matter how that cancer is growing inside your mom’s body and it’s looking like it’s winning over God’s promise of healing, you take a hold of God’s promise and insist on it coming to pass until you see it come to pass and you accept no other reality other than the fact that she’s healed.

When things are looking tough while you’re praying, it’s a sign to keep praying because what’s happening is that, that situation is trying to resist God’s word from winning.

If you had a younger sibling growing up, you can understand this. When your parents left you in charge of the house when they went out, did you ever try to send your younger sibling on an errand to sweep the house but they ignored you?

I bet you didn’t take that. You demanded that they did as you said. Now, when they realized that you had the upper hand because you were the one in charge, did that still make them do as you said?

They most definitely tried to resist you or start whining and dancing Ajasco all because they were trying to get you to leave them alone. But that didn’t stop you.

You knew your place and that resistance only motivated you to push them into doing that errand because their whining or resistance showed you that they’ve realized you’re the one in-charge.

The reason why any situation in your life will submit itself to God’s will is because you were totally and utterly convinced in your heart that, “Nah, this thing go work.”

Whatever situation in your life that is trying to exalt itself above the word of God was defeated and conquered in Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection. And it knows that.

If you can only move past that initial gra gra that it’s showing, you’ll come out victorious.

This is the only fight we’d ever fight in this life. That’s why it’s called the good fight of Faith. If any situation wins over you, it shows that you weren’t persistent in holding onto the finished works of Christ.

Brother, sister, be fully persuaded in your heart all that the God has said concerning you; whether in the word or through prophecy, hold onto those words with your life.

War with them until you see it come to pass because if you can only persist, the victory is already yours.

If you were still wondering, I eventually spoke to the sun to stop beating me, spoke to the rain to stop falling and spoke to the wind to cool me down one hot afternoon like that.

I persisted, I insisted and I made sure that I didn’t rest until I saw what I wanted happen. You can see these things happen in your life TODAY! Just try it. Be convinced, persist and it’ll be yours.

I pray this encourages you to hold on to God’s word concerning your life, that you hold onto it for dear life and never let it go because God has said it, and it’ll come to pass.

Stay praying, stay persistent and stay winning, child of God xx