John Hagee - The Decision To Prayer With Power
What is prayer? Prayer is conversation with God. You don't have to talk to God in the King James. You don't have to speak in a foreign language or make it I am a pentameter. Some of the best prayers I've ever prayed sounded like this, "Help"! And that's a fact. Prayer is not sending God to run on your errands. A Christian must get on his knees before he gets on his feet. Prayer is not getting God prepared to do your will. Pray is getting you ready to do God's will. The Lord's prayer, say this, "Not my will but thine be done". Say that with me. "Not my will but thine be done".
Prayer is the only way to release the supernatural power of God in your life, in your marriage, in your business, to show you great and mighty things. But the question is, as powerful as God is, God cannot answer prayer until you pray. You often hear or I often hear people say, "Well I wonder when God is going to do something". The initiative rests with you, not God. God says, "When you pray, I will answer". "What you bind on earth, I'll bind in heaven. What you lose on earth, I will loose in heaven". But the initiative rests with you. God's not sitting there wondering what you want. He wants you to tell him, because if you tell him in faith believing, you will receive it. Give the Lord praise in the house.
As powerful as God is, he cannot answer prayer until you pray it. Prayer is the key that unlocks the gates of heaven and closes the gates of hell. I saw the power of prayer all of my life in my mother. When she got on her arthritic knees and starting whispering the name of the Lord, every demon in harris county started running for Louisiana. Prayer has the power to cure sickness and disease. My older brother was healed of epilepsy because of my mother's prayer. Medical science couldn't touch it. But God Almighty healed my brother. Prayer can shatter the shackles of misery and habits that enslave you. The torments of your son, the thing that's destroying your daughter, your husband, your wife: prayer can change that.
Prayer does not need proof. Prayer needs practice. Intellectuals in America are jabbering about God being so distant and God being so far off. He's a cosmic being, doting grandfather, sitting benignly in the heavens, totally unaware and out of control. Listen up, dummy! God is as close as your next prayer. He can move heaven and earth. He's waiting on people of prayer to simply prevail in the authority of Jesus' name. Prayer is the weapon that God has given to his children to wage war in the heavenlies. When we say, "We bind and loose," what are we talking about? Paul said we're talking about powers and principalities in the heavenlies. There are supernatural beings that have structure and order, who are under the command of the prince of darkness. That would be the devil.
And if you really get in a heavy weight fight, you're going to meet these people. And the way that you meet them is in the authority of Jesus' name. You bind them in your family. You bind them from your children. You bind them from your business. You bind them from your future. And you do so in the authority of Jesus' name, and it happens! Church of Jesus Christ, stop complaining about the attacks on your life by the prince of darkness. Attack him, bind him, curse him, in the authority of Jesus' name. Put the your foot on the head of the devil and watch him squirm. The victory is ours through Christ the Lord! Satan is a defeated foe! Think like it! Talk like it! Act like it! Pray like it! The victory ours! Hallelujah to the Lamb of God!
Is your marriage under attack? Pray. Is your child being tormented by the prince of darkness? Pray. Is your business failing? Pray. Are you fighting a dreaded disease? Pray. Are you lost and without God? Pray. Is your life empty? Pray. Is your life meaningless and hopeless? Pray! Pray! Pray! God answers prayer! Hallelujah to the Lamb of God!
The tragedy of our day is not unanswered prayer, but unoffered prayer. Prayer will either make you leave off sinning, or sin will make you leave off praying. You will either embarrass sin or sin will embarrass you. Why pray? Because anointed prayer raises above the need level. "Dear God, water the grass and take care of the post nasal drip of my parrot". That's not spiritual warfare. Anointed prayer rises above the need level. Consider saint Paul. Paul was stoned and left for dead. That means the bones in his body were broken. He was whipped with a Roman cat-o-nine-tails three times. That means he had almost 120 series of scars on his body.
He did not ask the church to pray for his broken bones or the arthritis caused by broken bones, or the fact that he was in jail again, or the fact that the Romans had whipped him again, or the fact that his name was in the fake news again as being a religious fanatic. He said, "Pray for me that I may speak the Lord with more boldness". What? That's what got you put in prison, boldness. Boldness is what got him in jail. He wanted boldness, boldness. Are you listening, pastors of America? We need boldness to come back to the American pulpit.
There are spiritual cowards in the pulpit, who have produced an environment where moral corruption in our government is acceptable. It's not acceptable! Abortion is not acceptable! The defiance of the moral laws of God is not acceptable! Take a stand against this hot tub Christianity that's preaching to be comfortable at all cost, including the exclusion of the Word of God!
Proverbs 14:9 says, "fools make a mockery of sin". And America has made a mockery of sin. And we have become Sodom and Gomorrah, because the people of America can't identify sin because of the moral cowards in America's pulpits. God is sitting in heaven, saying, pray to me. Ask me for great things. Ask me to pull down strongholds. Ask me to break satan's grip over your job, over your family. Elevate your prayer list from "Now I lay me down to sleep" to spiritual warfare. Go to war! Go to war, in the authority of Jesus' name! Call those corrupt politicians by name and pray the wrath of God down on them.
You have that kind of power. Use it! Ask him to send revival to America. Ask him for a righteous revolution. Ask him for righteousness that exalts a nation. But sin is a reproach to any people. Can I get a witness here this morning? When you pray, ask God for big things. Ask God for big things. Nothing is impossible! When that gets really in your brain, nothing is possible with God. Ask him to defeat the giants in your life. When you have a big need, ask big. Ask him to send fire from heaven. Ask him to walk you through the fiery furnace. Ask him. He's the God who cannot fail. And he's just waiting to show you his awesome power. You need to turn that power loose, in the authority of Jesus' name. Give the Lord praise in this house!
Let me give you eight reasons God doesn't answer prayer. One, "Ask and you shall receive". You do not visualize prayer: you ask God out loud. You don't visualize a prayer: you say a prayer. You do not stare into a crystal. That's idolatry. As powerful as God is, he's not going to answer you until you ask him in the authority of Jesus' name.
Secondly, ask in faith believing. Mark 11:22, for verily I say unto you, "Whosoever shall not doubt in his heart. But shall believe that those things which he says shall come to pass, he shall have whatsoever he saith," not thinketh: "Saith". Say it with me. "Saith". God Almighty gave you the ability to speak so you could pray, not so you could have a telephone ministry, but pray. God is not a statue of stone or wood. He speaks. He talks. He thinks. He feels your infirmities. He answers our prayer. He's alive. He is in this place. Jehovah shalom: the Lord our peace, he is in this place! The victory is ours through Christ the Lord! Give him praise in the house of God!
When did the day of miracles start? In Genesis 1, "In the beginning, God created". That word "Created" is the Hebrew word "Bara," which means to make from nothing. He didn't come here and recreate something that was floating around in space. He created this magnificent world from nothing. That's a miracle. The Bible says, "And God said," and it happened. "And God said," and it happened. "And God said," and it happened. And God created man in the image of God, and man said. And then God created Eve, and she said, and she said, and she said, and she continued to say. God gets excited when you get down on your knees. Look angels: here they come. Let's see what they're going to ask for. Get ready to go. Get ready to go to earth and answer this. And then you get down and ask him to water the grass.
When you pray, ask big. Say that with me. Ask big. Ask according to his infinite power. Years ago, in the early 1990's, we had gone to Los Angeles, John Hagee ministries, and conducted a major crusade there. And it was a lot more expensive than we calculated, because of those unions that are out there. We came home and the chief financial officer said, "We're paper thin in our television account".
So what I did like a brave man, I called momma. I said, "Mother, here's my situation". And my mother's a very direct, plain-spoken woman. She did not waste words. She said, "Well, what did you do with the money God gave you"? I said, "I spent it having the crusade". She said, "What happened"? I said, "More than 1500 people came to Christ in two nights". She said, "Well that's God's bill. You were doing God's work and that's God's bill. We're going to ask God to pay it". And she prayed a prayer. And she said, "Let's pray". And I said, "Okay: you pray".
She prayed, and two days later, I get one of the strangest calls I've ever gotten in 60 plus years of ministry. There's a man on the phone, my secretary hooked me up. And uh, he said, "Are you John Hagee"? I said, "Yes". He said, "first, I want to tell you I'm not a Christian: two, I'm going to tell you I don't like preachers: and three, I really don't like TV preachers". Well, such a warm greeting. And I thought I was getting ready to get my ear chewed off. He said, "But I saw you preaching on TV the other night, and America needs to hear what you've got to say. And I'm going send you some help". I thought, he's drunk. Yeah, drunk.
I said, "Okay. Thank you very much". I said, "What's a little help sound like"? That's mother talking. He said, "I'm going to send you a million dollars". He is really drunk. I thanked him profusely and hung up, forgot it: you know, I didn't even think about the reality. Two days later, we get a little envelope about that long, a personal envelope. Pulled it out, a check for one million bucks. Getting too happy too quick. I called the bank. I said, "I know you can't tell me about this person, about this, but is this check good, signed by X"? She said, "Many multiples over. That's a small check for him". Whoa! We put that hummer in the bank, and then we said, "Thank you Jesus"! I've learned from that and I've never forgotten. When you ask God for something, ask for more than you need. Get it all!
The fourth reason God does not answer prayer is we don't pray in the name of Jesus. John 14:14, "If you ask anything in my name, I will do it". That's the name. And let me while I'm touching on this, touch on this: I've heard people say, "Dear God". There's a pantheon of Gods. That's why the Lord's prayer says, "Our Father, which art in heaven". That's the God we're talking to. That's why when we pray, "God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," there's only one God that answers to that. "Behold, o Israel, the Lord your God is one". He is the only one.
Therefore, when you pray to God, say that. God's fifth condition for answered prayer is asking God according to the will of God. 1 John 5:14, "And this is the confidence that we have in him: that if we ask anything in his name, he will hear us". Some people think the will of God is mysterious: it's not. The book of Isaiah said, "The way of the Lord is so simple, a fool cannot err therein". God's will is consistent with his word. You can know the will of God by the Word of God. The word and the will of God are exactly the same.
When you pray, and you pray the Word of God, you are using a nuclear bomb in the supernatural. "God is light". The revelation of God is in the word. "God is light". That means he's against darkness. He's against witchcraft. He's against the occult. He's against satanism. He's against fortune telling. He's against Harry Potter. He's against horoscopes. He's against mind control. Get away from that! That's darkness: that's not light!
Six, God's sixth condition to answered prayer is to pray in faith believing, if you have faith and doubt not. The Bible says, "Have faith in God". Say that with me. "Have faith". It doesn't say, "Try to have faith in God". It said, "Have faith in God". It takes faith to believe in a car that only starts one time out of four. But God has never failed you! Therefore, it doesn't take great faith to believe in a great God. The Bible says, "have faith in God". Don't try to have faith. You try broccoli. You try low-fat ice cream. That's where the Bible verse comes from, was born. "I will spew you out of my mouth". Right there.
God's seventh condition is to pray specifically. "The Lord's prayer," "Give us," that's who. "This day" is when. "Our daily bread," that's what? All in one sentence, don't pray to God in vague terms. Nail it down so that when God answers, you know it was him. God will not hear your prayer with unconfessed sin in your life.
Eight, Psalm 66:18, "If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me". How do you get there? Repentance. Consider the supernatural power of two. Two in agreement can do more than two million in discord. Matthew 18:19 and 20, "Again I say to you that if any two of you shall agree as touching anything on this earth, you shall do it".
Listen quickly. Joshua and Caleb whipped giants that two million people were afraid to attack. Paul and Silas demonstrated the power of two. They sang in the jail at Philippi. The foundations were shaken and they walked out free. Two witnesses in the book of revelation 11:3, Elijah and Enoch, have the power to make the governments of the world do their bidding. Jesus sent his disciples out. How? Two by two. Authority to bind and loose comes in the power of two. You have the power. You have the authority. Use it! Use it!
In closing, how much power do you have when you come into agreement? I'm going give you two illustrations quickly and stop. This is a declaration from president Abraham Lincoln, calling America to a day of fasting and prayer to end the civil ware. It's a declaration by the U.S. Senate asking the citizens of America to take that day off and go to their houses of worship and ask God to end this horrible war. Six hundred thousand Americans were killed in the civil war. That's more than everybody in world war I, world war II, Korea. Every war we've had doesn't even get close. Six hundred thousand. America had this day of fasting and prayer, and a few weeks later, that horrible war came to a close.
The power of fasting and prayer, right here. This is a true story. One of our friends, Derek Prince, was involved with this. How many of you know brother Prince? Certainly one of the great scholars, a man of impeccable integrity. Joseph Stalin, who murdered 30 million Russians, trying to bring godless communism to Russia: let it be known that he planned to murder the Jewish people in Russia. The believers in England where brother Derek Prince was, heard that report. And they committed themselves to fasting and prayer for the Jewish people of Russia. They bound the forces of the prince of darkness, in the authority of Jesus' name, the forces of dark that were controlling Joseph Stalin.
Three weeks later, three weeks later, Joseph Stalin has a brain hemorrhage. Sixteen gifted surgeries worked on him for eight hours, and Joseph Stalin stepped into eternity to meet the Son of God, a Jewish guy from Bethlehem.
What area of your life is under attack? Finances? Health? Relationships? Business? Marriage? Children? I want you to stand your feet right now. I would like for you to make this confession. Say, pastor, there's an area in my life that I need the supernatural power of God to invade it and solve it. Let me see your hand right where you are. 100% of this congregation. I want you to find someone right now where two of you can pray together. And I want you to take them by the hands. And right now, in the authority of Jesus' name, I want you to start praying about that thing. Right now, pray about it. Let God solve the question for you. Let God solve the question for you.
Father, hear our prayer. In the name of Jesus, in faith believing, we bind the prince of darkness that we may have liberty, peace, and prosperity. Let a spiritual awakening come to this nation. Let corruption be exposed. Let liars be driven from public office. Let us experience a starburst of the amazing grace and light of the Gospel. In Jesus' name. Amen.