Prayer Focus

What we focus on in prayer is critical to the proper outcome and to the obtaining of the results we want. The first thing we are going to do today is this: Take your thumb and forefinger and put them together like an “O”. Do this with both hands and put them up to your eyes like a pair of glasses. We are putting on our Jesus Word glasses to change our vision from the negative to the positive. If your focus has been on sickness and disease, change your focus to health and healing with your Jesus Word glasses. If your focus has been on want, lack, or poverty, change your focus to wealth with your Jesus Word glasses.

Next, take a sheet of paper and write these words on that paper “WORD OF GOD.” If you have a scripture verse you want to put on that sheet of paper, do it. Then take another sheet of paper and put the negative thing on it, such as, “SICKNESS AND DISEASE.” Now, put the Word of God paper over the sickness and disease paper. What do you see now? All you see is: WORD OF GOD.” This is what God wants us to do in prayer. He wants us to focus on being healed rather than getting rid of sickness and disease, being wealthy, rather than getting rid of want and lack and poverty. He wants our focus to be on the positive and not on the negative. We are told from the Word of God that we overcome evil with good. We are to think good, to talk good, and to act good, instead of thinking on the evil that is involved. Yes, many times, there is evil involved, and we are not to stick our heads in the sand and ignore it. Neither are we to dwell on it. What we dwell on is what we will focus on in prayer. We are to dwell, to focus on the goodness of God and His health, His prosperity, His righteousness.

Many times we find ourselves praying from the vantage point of fixing people when God has already fixed them. Jesus has already died and become sin and sickness and disease for us. He took on poverty and want and lack, that we might take on righteousness and health and prosperity. Jesus has already fixed it. Our prayers release the results into people’s lives. Then our steadfast prayer focus on the results produces a desire in the people for whom we are praying. That desire is God’s desire for their well-being, whether it be for their health and healing or salvation or prosperity. Whatever it is they need, God has the answer. Our prayers open the door for them to walk through. Then our prayers surround them with a desire for health, a desire for salvation, a desire for prosperity. They walk through the door, and we see prayers answered. What we must remember is that God is the one doing the work. All we are doing is being his mouth in the earth to release His Word and His attitude of love, mercy and forgiveness. The rest is up to Him.

Let me make another point here. We don’t pray against something. We pray for something. We don’t pray against sickness and disease. We pray for health. We don’t pray against lack and want; we pray for prosperity. We don’t pray against sin; we pray for righteousness to prevail. Sin, sickness and disease, lack, and want have already been dealt with by Jesus. He has taken care of all of them. It is our job to pray and make the way for His righteousness, health, prosperity to come into people’s lives and set them free from the sin and lack in their lives.

We are not praying to get rid of something. We are praying to institute something. That is why we pray the word instead of our own ideas. As far as I am concerned, one of the best ways to pray is to pray in the spirit until we get the direction from God on what scriptures to pray and how to pray for a situation and the people involved. Then we are praying the precise word that will produce results in that situation and for that person. We must always get God’s clear-cut direction for the prayer. We are never to assume we know what we are doing. Each situation is different, with different people, with different personalities and backgrounds. Assumption is a deadly enemy to effective prayer.

We also must have God’s mindset as we pray. We are not to judge people or condemn them as we pray for them, even if they are evil and doing evil things. We are to take on God’s mindset. He has already judged His Son for all of us with everything evil. God said that He did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, to judge the world, to pass a sentence on the world or to reject the world. Rather, God said that He was sending His Son into the world that they might find salvation and be made whole once again. That is John 3:17, the very next verse after the most quoted verse in the Bible, John 3:16. We also need to look at verse 17 when we quote verse 16.

Oh, what a privilege we have as people of prayer to change the world to become whole again, without the brokenness of sin, sickness and disease, want, lack, depression, rejection, loneliness, etc., all the things that make for a miserable life. Jesus came that we might have and enjoy life, have it in abundance, to the full until it overflows (John 10:10). Consider yourself blessed to have the opportunity to pray for others. It is one of the greatest gifts that God ever gave to us. Take this great gift and use it for all of mankind. You will make a difference!