Derek Prince - 5 Stages of Effective Prayer
This is an excerpt from: How To Pray For Israel
Second is based on Psalm 100:4 which says: Enter into His gates with thanksgiving and into His courts with praise... This is a great fundamental principle which unfortunately many Christians are not familiar with. The only way of direct access into God is through the gates of thanksgiving and the courts of praise. If you do not come with thanksgiving and praise you can lift up your voice like the ten lepers who cried to Jesus from a distance and, He will hear you. But you don't have direct access to God. There is no way into His presence except through the gates of thanksgiving and the courts of praise. This applies to praying for Israel. The most effective way to pray for Israel is to begin by thanksgiving. God has given us a pattern in the prophet Jeremiah 31:7. God says this: Sing with gladness for Jacob and shout among the chief of the nations...
How many times have you read the word shout in the psalms? Have you ever shouted? That's right. That wasn't much of a shout, but at least it was a good try! I'll show you how it should be done. Hallelujah! Will you join me and shout Hallelujah? That's more like it! I tell people I'm not a singer, I can't keep a tune, but I can shout. Here we are, going back to Jeremiah 31:7: Sing with gladness for Jacob and shout among the chief of the nations... Would you count the United States among the chief of the nations? All right, then you have an obligation to shout. You've got to choose the right time and place but don't mutter, be clear, be bold, be articulate if you can. Sing with gladness for Jacob and shout among the chief of the nations, proclaim...
You know this little book of ours, Prayers and Proclamations, that's a way you can proclaim. Sometime in this message Ruth and I will give you some pattern proclamations for Israel. Proclaiming is releasing the Word of God into a situation. I've told people, and it's in this little book, when Moses stood before the Lord and the Lord said, "I want you to go back and redeem my people from Egypt," Moses said, "I've got nothing to go with. What can I take"? The Lord said to Moses, "What have you got in your hand"? Moses said, and this is a little paraphrase, "Just a staff like every shepherd carries". He didn't think there was much to his staff. The Lord taught him a lesson. He said, "Throw it down on the ground," and it turned into a snake. Moses ran from his own staff, he had no concept of the power that he held in his hand. Well, then the Lord said, "Pick it up by the tail".
I'm sure in Arizona you have some experience of snakes. Everybody knows you don't pick a snake up by the tail. But Moses did it, I'm sure, with trembling and it became a staff in his hand again. The Lord said to Moses, "Take your staff and go". This is a little paraphrase, "That's all you'll need". If you follow the story of the exodus, Moses never needed any other instrument or weapon but his staff. Every miracle was released through the staff of Moses including the opening of the Red Sea and the closing of it on the Egyptians.
I want to suggest to you, you may be like Moses, you have a staff in your hand and you don't know how powerful it is. The staff in your hand is your Bible. You release its power by proclamation. Boldly and in faith you proclaim the Word of God into any given situation and you release God's supernatural power into that situation. And so, the Lord says in this verse "proclaim". Release my promises into the destiny of Israel. And then He says: give praise... So, there's a time for giving praise.
I believe probably at the end of this message we will take some time to praise the Lord. I hope so. and say, O Lord, save your people, the remnant of Israel. Notice there are five things the Lord said to do: sing, shout, proclaim, praise and pray, because to say, "O Lord, save your people" is prayer. So those are five responses we can make to the promises of God. Sing, shout, proclaim, praise and pray. But notice pray comes at the end. What makes prayer effective is going through the previous stages. So, enter into God's gates with thanksgiving and into His courts with praise. And specifically give Him thanks and praise for what He is doing, and for what He's going to do for Israel.