Joseph Prince - The One Prayer to Prioritize This Year
This is an excerpt from: Pray For Good Success Today
So, Pastor, is there anything the Lord is telling us about kairos? Yes, I just wanna drop one thing in your heart about kairos, okay, about right time, right place this year. The thing that He want us to do, and this is what He said to me very strongly, He says, "My people need to learn to pray and get more into prayer". Now, the moment I say that, some of you are saying, "Well, you know, it's very hard. I don't have the time," and all that because you have this religious idea about prayer. Your idea of prayer is that one hour of prayer or two hours prayer like you hear some men of God, they kneel down there, they pray for one, two hours, and three hours, or whatever it is. "And there's no way I can do that, Pastor Prince". No, I'm talking about communication with God.
One of the most outstanding things that the disciples saw about Jesus is that at any time, He will talk to God. One time, they were persecuting Him and all He was talking about the cities that rejected Him: Chorazin, Bethsaida, Capernaum, and all that. At that moment, He lifted up His eyes and He says, "Father, I thank You that You've hidden these things from the wise and the prudent of the world, but You have revealed them unto babes". He praised His Father, "I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You've hidden these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them unto babes". Then He turned to His disciples and said, "Come unto Me, all you that labor and are heavy-laden". While He was being persecuted, while He was being rejected by all these towns and villages, amen, He was rejoicing, talking to the Father, and then looking at the disciples and says, "Come unto Me, all you that labor". Ooh, the beauty of the man, amen? Amen? Some of us would be crushed. I'll pray to you another time, Lord.
Now I'm just crushed. Right? And there's so, very freely He can talk to God anytime, even when you are driving. But Pastor, I must close my eyes. Don't! So all these religious ideas come into your mind, amen, and I wanna say this. Okay, listen carefully, especially for this church and those that are following this ministry. Do you know that you can even allow the knowledge of grace to stop you from praying, because you will say, "It's by grace, lah. Grace will happen. Grace", you know? No, no, no. Grace is the idea you cannot, but the Lord can. It is actually conscious weakness. You will always, your place of strength before God. Your place of power before God is conscious weakness, but don't stop there. If you go, "Oh, I'm so weak. I'm so weak. I'm so weak," no, don't stop there, but you need to know or else you'll be going around the mountain to learn the lesson that you are weak. You will find that you'll fall, and fall, and fall until you learn that you are weak.
People think they are weak but they're not weak enough. That's why you cannot save a drowning person too fast. You cannot jump into the water too fast, why? As long as he still has strength, he will pull you down. You must wait until he's weak, he cannot help himself, he cannot save himself. Then you can save him. We are still quite strong. We think we are weak, but we are not. But we're actually weak. That's why all these daily irritations, God allows them to come in so that you want to be more like Jesus. One of the best things you can do when you're arguing with your spouse and you're impatient, and all you can think is, "It's her fault, his fault, her fault, his fault, her fault, his fault," is to stop and judge that irritability in you and tell yourself, "I judge that irritableness. Joseph Prince, why are you so irritable"? Don't talk about the rightness of the situation. Leave that for awhile.
Why are you so irritated? Why are you so vexed? Why are you so angry? I don't want that in me. I judge that. And then you realize that has been taken at the cross, amen. So conscious weakness on one hand and then dependence on God, on Christ. These are the twin, it's a power twin for victory in your life. So we see the first occurrence of right time, right place, Genesis 24, is this, the servant at the well. He prayed this prayer, "Then he said, 'O LORD God of my master Abraham, please give me success this day, and show kindness to my master Abraham.'" So we all know the story, right? You heard the story for the past few messages that we have shared. The servant doesn't know which girl. The village has a lot of young girls and they're all coming out at the same time to take water. It was the responsibility of these young girls to take water for the family, okay? Usually they have two timings: early in the morning and in the evening, all right, when it's less hot, and they will all come.
So at the time in the evening, the Bible says, Abraham's servant who was sent on an assignment by Abraham to look for a bride for Isaac, all right, he sat at the well. He doesn't know which girl, right? So he prayed, "O God, give me success". So the word there in the Hebrew is "qarah". Qarah, all right, which is right happening. Right happening, good happening, fortunate happening. The world calls it serendipity, all right? You happen to chance upon a favorable opportunity, amen? A surprise, but a pleasant surprise. You didn't plan for this. That is what qarah is all about, right time, right place. That's qarah happening to you. So he prayed for qarah, "Give me a right time".
Do you know God actually stopped, for some reason, God actually stopped all the young ladies from coming out. That while he was praying, he didn't finish his prayer yet, he told God, "The woman that will come and offer me water, the young woman that come and offer me water," he thought that there'll be many, many woman, lah, come to draw water, "but the one that comes, Lord, the one that comes and offer me water, and not only me water, but all my ten camels". And one camel, 30 gallons minimum water. Can you imagine? "She will also give them water. She is the one that you have appointed". He made it hard. But while he was still speaking, before he finished speaking, the Bible says, before he finished speaking, show them verse 15, "And it happened, before he had finished speaking, that behold, Rebekah, appeared".