Leon Fontaine - Supernatural Prayer
Hey, everybody! Great to have you with us. You know, God's Word is so rich and powerful. Today, I wanna talk about foundations for prayer that gets answered and these are crucial because so many people talk about prayer and there is so much dysfunction in the Christian world when it comes to prayer. That people couldn't understand prayer what it is the basics of prayer. And so I'm gonna get into some stuff today that I would say is basic. But yet, I would say that the vast majority of the Christian world doesn't understand, in fact, even believes the opposite. So get ready because we're gonna shoot some holy cows. I kind of tease people. I kind of like...
Now, let's get rid of these holy cows and let's get something going on on the inside of you that will make your prayer life rich and alive and cause what Jesus really intended which is that you would have life, His life, and more abundantly. So here's some of the things I want to dive into that I've had to learn and many other men and women of God had to learn to really begin to see the consistent supernatural power of God in their life daily, hourly, and in every area.
All right. Here we go. The first thing I want to talk about is that the agreement for all the new covenant, you know, from the cross and on. This agreement is not between you and God. So many people think that, you know, that I have to believe God and if I do something wrong, this agreement my salvation for example, could be suspect if I do something wrong. Listen, the agreement that you got born again under wasn't between you and God. It was between Jesus and God. The reason that we talk about Jesus coming to the earth taking on a human body and forever changing who He was physically, not who you, but He's representing the human race for the rest of eternity.
So when we go to heaven, Jesus Christ the Son of God is in a human body. And it sounds like when you read the Bible that you're still gonna see the nail prints in His hands. Okay, although your scars are gonna be gone. You're gonna get a brand-new body that Jesus represents the human race. So all of your inheritance, all that you need to believe God for, the covenant is between Jesus and God. And therefore, all of these promises are sure, all of these promises are real and they're yours. But, I've actually talked to people told me things like, "You know, I committed the unpardonable sin. Therefore, my salvation, you know, it's gone. I can never come back to God because I literally curse God". And they have this concept of the unpardonable sin for example.
And I keep telling them, "Okay, the deal that you get to fall from. The fact that this covenant that you are a brand-new creation. That your sins are washed away. That you have a new nature, God's nature. That you have accessed to all of these promises. That you can live in God's best. Actually, wasn't up to your performance". And this is where the Christian world just gets flabbergasted. Well, sure, it's my performance that determines the blessing of God. Every promise has an if, not in the new covenant it doesn't because the new covenant is not between each of us individually and God.
Jesus represented the human race and for us died on that cross, took our sins. He died, and He took the curse. He took the wrath of God against sin and He arose again. He took the curse and He's qualified us. So that's the one thing that is crucial. If you ever thought about this, this is really, really important. That this new agreement of salvation and following Jesus is not between every individual person and God. It's Jesus representing the whole human race.
Now, this is important because then you gotta go to this. Because I am in Christ, I give my life to Jesus. He comes into my heart. I now inherit everything Jesus did. So Jesus died on the cross and it says He took away the keys of death, hell. It says that He's an authority. You know, then He has all authority. Jesus had all of it. There's not a realm that Jesus did not have authority in the physical world, the spiritual world, the mental world, the demonic realm. Jesus has complete authority. There is no authority left that He doesn't have. So because I am in Christ, okay? Then I'm a joint heir with the inheritance that He is one. There is nothing left for God to give. It's open freely given to me.
In Romans 8:17, teaches us this, that He's given us all things freely. So everything that pertains to life. Now, everything in life. What does life need? Well, life needs food, health, great relationships, peace, joy. And then it says and also that not only for our lives but for us to live morally and righteously. It's all been given to us. Now, until you understand this, you will be this. How do I put it? You'll kind of be this begging, pleading, hoping God will answer. Whenever someone says to me, "Why didn't God heal me? Why didn't God protect me? Why didn't God prosper my business? Why didn't God stop my business from going bankrupt? Why didn't God"?
I know they don't know anything about prayer. Because prayer at its very foundation is to believe God and to pray in a way that everything has been given to you and you are simply bringing it from where it all is in your spirit because that's where Jesus is. And it is literally moving it through this established heart into your mind and into your physical world. And Matthew 12 teaches us this that a good man from the good treasures of his heart brings forth good things. It doesn't say that a good man prays earnestly and from heaven comes the answer to his prayer.
Now, in the Old Testament you can find stuff that hints at that, but in the New Testament, it is what's in your heart. God is a heart God. And here is where we've gotta really understand this. That because He is a heart God, we don't have to beg, bug, and plead with Him to get Him on His good graces to feel sorry for us and then finally do it or you have to do enough good deeds. So many people think, you know, "I give a tithe regularly. I've volunteered in the church for years and He didn't heal me". I'm going, "Woah, are you off track for the promises of God". Because nothing you do can earn the promises of God.
You can't be good enough to get rid of a headache or a pimple. But if your faith is in the finished work of the cross, and so Jesus is the author and the finisher of our faith. Then you don't look to your behavior. You don't look to your own righteousness. You don't look to your, to any of these things. You look to Jesus instead. And because I am a joint heir with Christ, then everything that Jesus has is automatically mine. So you have to ask another question. Then, you know, what does Jesus have and what doesn't Jesus have?
Now, some of you have been raised in such religion. Now, religion to me is awful. In fact, I would say that I hate religion when you look at what it has done to mankind. Jesus didn't come to start a new religion. He came to end all religions. You know, when you look at the foundation of religion, religion is man's answer to a sin consciousness, to a condemnation that everyone feels. You know, great minds have tried to say things like, "There is no God. There is no devil". And once they can get themselves to believe it, then there's no sin, then there's no hell, then there's no heaven. But then there is no sin consciousness. There's no guilt and no condemnation. But the problem with fallen men is that everywhere around the world he cannot get rid of this horrid, horrible sin consciousness. He can't get rid of this awful sense of never measuring up. This horrible sense of Murphy's Law and it depends which country when you're in Canada, that's that negative law. That things are going too good. It's gonna go bad.
So this horrible sense of condemnation, I call it. Guilt, in a sense of you'll never measure up, that you're nothing. Now, the problem with Christianity and the way many Christians teach this which is religious, is they attack sin and they get us focus on sin and it actually builds up the sin consciousness even more. To the born-again believer you must stop being so sin conscious and you must become Jesus conscious. By that I mean not a picture of Jesus on the wall with His long hippy hair, a long dress, and sandals. I mean, the Jesus who died in your place, who took every sin you've ever committed or will commit, who took your curse, who paid the price and died in your place as a sacrificial lamb. The lamb of God who takes away the sin of the whole world. But let's focus on you as He takes away that sin. Then you are now, you need to recognize that you are free, that you are righteous.
In fact, it says in Romans 5:17 that righteousness is a gift. And so all of these religions that have been started somehow someway are an answer from all sorts of different, I don't think too many of you will thought this way but from every angle you can come at it, they're trying to get rid of this sin consciousness and they talk about we are God. You know, I am woman hear me roar. I'm a man. I am God. Like whichever way they're trying to work this and they're trying to get rid of this horrible sense of worthlessness that haunts the human race. This fear that seems to rise up in every person regardless of where they are. This dread, this depression that even successful people at the pinnacle of their success plunge into a sense of depression.
I was chatting with a famous woman who's an actor, an actress and appears in television. We're talking about why so much of Hollywood rises, rises, rises to an incredible place of success and then gets depressed. And so I was explaining to her that until they give their lives to Christ well, first of all, they can't have that peace and joy. But even Christians who don't look to Jesus as for their self-worth, their significance, they looked to their gifting. So here's what happens to many people. They literally begin to succeed, succeed, succeed, succeed and they're become a hero. Everyone wants to know their name. Everyone wants to get around them. Paparazzi are all over them. But at some point, they begin to realize they don't know me. They just want my gift. They don't know me. And at that point, they begin to have an identity crisis like you wouldn't believe.
And all of a sudden, who am I? Which role am I that I've played in these movies and who am I? And then you see this depression come. And the only way to get a sense of joy and peace that never goes away is to give your life to Christ and then to look to Him for your significance. So everyone of us needs significance. We need to know that we mean something. We need to know that we are valuable or loved. And so no person can meet that need. And when you look to a spouse, when you look to a crowd for your identity, for your significance, etcetera. Then they control it. If they don't give you enough accolades, you begin to get depressed. And so once you look to Jesus for this identity. You know, the Bible says I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless I live, yet not I, but it is Christ who lives in me, and the life that I now live, I live in this flesh. I live by faith in the Son of God. Not faith in my talents, not faith in the crowd, not faith in my peers who honor me for my successes.
You must remove all identity and sense of significance from what you can produce with your gifts, abilities, and personality and you must look to Jesus. Then as you serve Jesus and look to Him for your identity, your significance which is all in this heart area, this deeper area. You now can go do incredibly gifted things til the whole world is screaming your name and it won't matter because when they're up and down you are secure because who you are, okay, your identity is anchored in Christ. No woman can give you that, guys. No man can give you that. No child can give you that moms, dads. No parent can give you that. There is no success that can give you that. There is no meditation that you can do to continually control your mind from this hauntedness of condemnation and guilt and fear. None of it will last except that you are in Christ and that I am crucified with Christ.
The Bible says, Jesus, if you wanna follow Me, pick up your cross. What is that mean pick up your cross? It literally means die to the old you. Die to every preconceived idea you have of you. Die to every model, every definition of you. Your mom's definition of you. Your dad's definition of you. Your spouse's definition of you. The girlfriend that left you and told you off her definition of you. The coach's definition of your definition of you. When you pick up the cross, a cross is to die on. You are dying. Everyone, you know, there are so many who are living crazy religious life. You know, they have to die to joy. They have to die to any dream. They have to die and live this like, this kind of boring nothing life. No, He's not saying die to your dreams. He's saying die to the selfish you or any version of you that you have, and you must then look to only Jesus for your identity.
And, even you've gotta be careful saying the Bible because in the Old Testament its different when it looks at man than in the New Testament where Jesus has forgiven man, died in man's place. And so the death, burial, resurrection of Jesus and His ascendency to the throne of God. This we call from the cross to the throne. This is the revelation that Paul is trying to get across through all of his letters. And people for some reason aren't grasping this because the news is too good to be true.
Now, you must meditate on this. If people ask me, "Leon, what do I need to learn first"? You need to understand what Jesus did in His death. Most people only look to the historical Jesus and what He did. You know, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Or mainly the historical Jesus where He walked, what He did, and who He did it with. But when you look at the Pauline epistles, that Pauline revelation of the books of the Bible after the books of Acts and on and many of the minor and major prophets. You're gonna find here that all of these beautiful glimpses are what Jesus did when He died on the cross. And here is where no one seems to understand. Where was Jesus for all of these days? Where did He go? Then people argue about, "Did He go to hell? Did He go to heaven? Where was He"? As Jonah was three days in the belly of the whale, so the Son of Man will be three days at the center of the earth. And people just kind of stay away from that. But yet there's some very clear principles as to what Jesus has done.
And so I want you to understand that for you when you begin to pray, if prayer has been really hard for you, there's usually two kinds of people who pray. The first is just the begging, bugging, and a pleading with God hoping that God will notice and do something which that's a way with all that Jesus did on the cross because Jesus won all the stuff you're begging for. Then we have the other group of people who take intercessory prayer, so far that they have to fight the devil for whatever they get. They have to clear the skies. They have to do all of these things to breakthrough and it doesn't make sense either when you don't understand intercessory prayer because you can't take obscure verses from the Bible and put them together. What did Jesus do when He pray? What did the disciples do when they won entire cities, okay? What did they do? And you'll find that a lot of what people pray is defeated prayer and I'm not gonna dive in.
I don't have time to dive into that. But for the believers that are listening to me. You have to understand something. That the way you pray, okay, is defeating you, okay, because to beg and plead with God to do something is a complete retreat from what happened to the cross. The death, the burial, the resurrection of Jesus. All of that, you are literally backing away and not believing that because that cause it all to be given to you because of Jesus. And now you're begging and pleading for it. And then to all of you who have been raised in an intense and often too far intercessory prayer teaching. The teaching that, you know, if you do not spend all this time praying in the Spirit and doing this, then you are the one that's causing this, you know, you're the one that is standing in the gap.
Now, here's a thought. I know that you think you're standing in the gap. But now for believers, there is no gap because Jesus stood in the gap. Okay? Now, for the unsaved we can pray for them and everything. But anyway, I got to be careful. I wanna dive into this prayer. This incredible faith and prayer. Prayer becomes a level you've never experienced when you understand what Jesus did. All right, so that's crucial because I'm in Christ. I'm a joint heir with Jesus. There's nothing left for God to give me. It has all been freely given to me. And I give you some verses to look at that.
In 2 Corinthians another one, chapter 1 and verse 20, it says all of the promises of God are already mine. They are Yes, okay, and Amen. And it talks about being in Jesus. So every promise in the Bible, okay. You've been qualified for by Jesus. It's been given to you. Where is it? It is in your spirit man. That's why you gotta renew your mind, make your body a living sacrifice. And what's happening is as you renew your mind because it's been trained in all the old religious thinking or none at all. You begin to establish your heart in grace. You begin to establish your heart in the finished work of the cross and God is a heart God. That's where He talks to you. That's where faith comes from. You can't doubt in your heart. That's where the God kind of hope comes from.
Abraham, you know, he talks about who against hope believed in hope. This heart, this much deeper sense very few Christians go there. And we're gonna end this. They basically the language of the brain is words and, you know, this wisdom of the world. But yet the language of the heart is dreams and visions and experiencing God, experiencing His Word. And until you connect to the revelation of the God's Word at the heart level, none of it will work for you. In other words, you can believe it, adhere to it and know that you're going to heaven when you die. But to bring that kind of peace, joy, miraculous, prosperity, healing, incredible favor, if you bring this into the physical realm first you gotta connect there. And we'll talk about this in the near future.
Few Christians will do the work that's necessary, some will. But what we gotta do? The Bible says workout your own salvation with fear and trembling. It's this meditative process, this slowing down and instead of just fact quickly learning everything you can about the Word. Now, you begin to experience it. You begin to personalize the promises of God. You actually experience Jesus, His love. Every promise that you speak and pray, you see it answered in your life as Holy Spirit shows you things to come for you. You're healed, happy, prosperous, restored. You know, these things are where Holy Spirit will lead you into all truth and show you things to come. Keep watching. Tell your friends about this program. I believe God will help you in an amazing way in your prayer life.