Joseph Prince - Prayer is a Conscious Dependence on the Lord
This is an excerpt from: Pray For Good Success Today
"God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble," amen? God resists the proud, gives grace to the humble. What does that mean? Who is the humble? Those who are conscious of their weakness. Actually, the place of your weakness is the place of your strength. Do you hear what I'm saying? The very area that you are frustrated about, "When I am weak," not before or after, "when I am weak, then I'm strong". But you don't realize you are strong at that point. So the world glorifies your strength, so we show our strength. We don't show our weakness. We show our strength. We build our strength. We cover up our weakness. In the kingdom of God, it's the opposite. Show God your weakness and His strength manifest in that area.
I'm gonna show you something else. If someone argues, "Well, Pastor Prince, 'qarah' and all that, and success, it's not success and all that," okay, if you argue it that way, all right, later on the same servant would rehearse, he would narrate the story to Laban, amen, about what happened earlier at the well. And this is what he said to Laban, look below. "And this day," he's talking to Laban, "I came to the well and I said, 'O LORD God of my master Abraham.'" This is Laban, Rebekah's brother. He says, "I cam and I prayed". See what he said? "I came to the well and I said, 'O LORD God of my master Abraham, if You will now prosper the way which I go.'" Now he used the word "prosper," not "qarah". And the word in the Hebrew is not "qarah," but "tsalach," prosper. So you must understand, in the Hebrew mind, "qarah," right time, right place, is synonymous with "prosper," whatever area. Prosper in your relationship with your children, amen. Don't think of prosperity as making money, making money, making money.
In fact, I find that people who are hasty to be rich, especially hasty to be rich, there's a generation coming up, they don't wanna work. They don't want to have, you know, the discipline of work life. They want to make money fast. At home, at the touch of their fingertips, make money fast, amen. I'm not saying this is wrong, all right? If the Lord leads you, there'll be a lot of fingerprints to show that. It won't hurt many people. It won't cause them to lose money and just you make. That's not the nature of God. God starts companies and all that that profits many people, not just the one starting. And we will not allow that also if we see that happening. So listen carefully. Prosperity's not about becoming rich. If your only thought is to become rich, become rich, become rich, become rich, you will never be content with what you have. You will never enjoy your journey on your way to your goal. Does God want to give us with more than enough? Yeah, and not just enough, more than enough so that we can be a blessing. Those who have just enough, me, myself, and little Jimmy, gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme, all right, they cannot be a blessing, amen. So you gotta be blessed with more than enough.
When Jesus blessed the multitudes, the 5,000, with a feeding, right, 12 basketful leftover. After they were full, there were 12 basketfuls leftover, right? Ruth ate at Boaz's table during lunchtime, after gleaning. The Bible says she ate and she was sufficed, she had enough, and leftover which she brought back to her mother-in-law. She tabao. There's more than enough. Not only that, she went back to gleaning again, and before the evening was over, they had to put on her back an ephah, which is ten days' supply, because Boaz told the man drop handfuls of purposely put down on the ground, right, purposely for her, until it was ten days' supply. That's the way God provides, so you have plenty left. But if your target is to become rich financially, rich, one more million, ten more million, after that, I aim for half a billion, you know, you'll never be happy if that's your only goal in life. "Pastor, get on preaching. This is not right time to say this kind of thing". Yes, it is! It is right time, right place, amen.
So then the mind is prospered. God wants us, when I say prosper, it's always prosper in every dimension in life. If you study the Bible, God wants you to prosper in every dimension of your life. Why cut off this short-temperedness and all that? Because it will cause you to prosper in your relationship, correct? Think about it. When you have no more that kind of thing, you are someone, people will love to flock to you, be around you, amen? If you're an unhurried person, you're a calm person, people who are stressed and depressed like to hang around you because it rubs off on them. And you think people like this, when it comes to, you know, the boss's estimation of the workers and all that. They have a good attitude. They are working. They don't come late, you know? They work even if I am not around, I find out they are working hard. And they're always thinking and they're going one step ahead. Who will I promote? And he has integrity, he has honesty, or she has integrity, all right? She's well-loved, and yet she doesn't deceive, manipulate her way. She's not selfish. Who will I promote? The problem with us is we are proud.
You see, if I say that...again, stop there. Don't judge me, judge ourself. When I think of pride, I judge myself. Joseph Prince, do you still have pride? What is it? That's my seat. She took my seat. Why do you say that? Pride. No, it's her problem. No, it's your pride. You gotta kill, you know, and God is exposing this. Wonderful, when God exposes it, you can kill it. It's sad when I see in the body of Christ people not talking to each other because of pride. I wanna talk about, notice, why did he pray? Because he has conscious weakness. There's no way. I'm a very experienced man. I'm an old man. I should know what kind of girl and all that, all right? I'm experienced. I can look at, you know, a gold-digger, whatever it is. I can see. But he doesn't depend on that. Doesn't depend on his experience. He depended on the Lord. That's prayer. Don't allow the knowledge of grace to rob you of prayer. Knowledge of grace should lead you to prayer because it's a life of dependence. It means what? I cannot, I depend on Him.