Do your prayers reach God? Now that God has restored His spiritual government to oversee the church, believers can talk in plain language about their faith and what God expects and how prayer reaches Him. Thankfully, true faith is no longer a mystery, so we don’t speak about faith or prayer in ambiguous ways.

Ambiguous means: “Open to more than one interpretation; having a double meaning; unclear or inexact because a choice between alternatives has not been made.” (lexico.com)

Faith is a covenant choice. And what is the alternative to know God according to His agreed upon terms? The alternative is the kingdom of the flesh and the offer there is to know God according to what is natural or familiar to us; and I’m speaking here of the natural man, and, of course, that is Satan’s choice for us.

It’s clear: If a choice has not been made for covenant faith and a vow made to God to love Him and serve Him and know Him only according to the things that He sanctified in Jesus Christ for our contact with Him, prayer is double minded.

I’m not saying that a person wonders if God hears their prayers, or questions what the Bible says about prayer, I mean that prayer, along with God’s gifts, His will and purpose for us, how and what we sacrifice to stay a separate people, the fear of God – all of it – has a double meaning. Without the lens of truth to focus faith on Jesus and His promise to know Him according to His covenant terms, the choice to follow God’s true purpose for prayer cannot be made.

Another word for ambiguous is wishy-washy, which is defined as: “Irresolute or indecisive: a wishy-washy supervisor who can’t decide what to do. Lacking in purpose; weak or ineffective.” (thefreedictionary.com)

If we look at the current calls to revival, calls to prayer, and calls to experience a fresh intimacy, these things feel like they have true purpose to them. Who doesn’t want this illusive intimacy with God? The person who doesn’t bite at the hook is the person who is already walking in all the fulness of Christ. We have already agreed to increase in the virtues of Christ according to God’s vow of promise to us in the new spiritual priesthood and we already draw from the anointing those gifts, which we faithfully steward to the body for the increase of all.

You are able to now weigh these promises of intimacy with God as wishy-washy. They lack God’s true purpose for prayer in that it is not joined to Jesus’ covenant and has not been divided from the kingdom of the flesh.

God does not want your faith to be ambiguous or wishy-washy and that’s why He called and sanctified apostles and gave them the blueprint of truth to put in the hands of His people. Working from the blueprint of truth, all of faith’s functions are clearly framed in Jesus’ new covenant and we are given spiritual tools to labor in God’s kingdom with purpose.

When our faith follows God’s blueprint, our human ideas about intimacy with God and fellowship with Him fall away. God’s purpose for intimacy with Him is no longer a sought-after mystery. The danger of reserving intimacy with God as a sought-after mystery is that the flesh will always, without fail, step in to interpret what intimacy with God should look like and direct intimacy inward.

True intimacy with God is an equal exchange, meaning that we return to God that which we have been given with increase, and we reason with God based on terms and conditions for which Jesus shed His blood. We have a covenant mindset.

You might be surprised at how many believe that prayer and faith and intimacy should remain a mystery, or unknown, sought after thing. In other words, you say, “I don’t know what God’s will is, but I’m seeking Him.” This rings true to the fleshly ear of the carnal minded believer because it allows him to seek without being responsible to the terms God made in Jesus’ blood for our being joined to Him. As far as God is concerned, seeking without accepting the responsibility of the covenant is not obedience.

This is the false altar of good intentions and it is reflective of self. Self-examination is inward. True faith is reflective of Jesus, even as the surface of a lake reflects the sky.

It’s normal or natural to examine your heart like this and think that this is a good thing, but this examination is not an equal exchange with God and it does not come from a covenant perspective, so it is not the kind of prayer that reaches God.

Don’t misunderstand, prayer is good. It is one of the 9 spiritual tools of Jesus’ new covenant, but when prayer is offered at the wrong altar, it doesn’t reach God.

Proverbs 28:9
He that turneth away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer shall be abomination.

In that we are now under the new law of grace and truth, God is now referring to those who neglect Jesus’ doctrine and the truth He gave to His apostles. He that turns away from hearing the doctrine of Christ, his prayer shall be abomination, or not reach God.

DID YOU KNOW: God starts His examination of prayer by first examining what your altar is constructed of. In the old testament God gave specific instructions (commandment) that the altar first be constructed of 12 whole stones before a sacrifice was put upon it.

God’s instructions went further, the stones that were selected for His altar could not be chiseled with any tool of man. If a person touched any of the stones of the altar with a tool, the altar was polluted and so was the sacrifice that was offered to God. Let’s look at that scripture.

Joshua 8:31
As Moses the servant of the Lord commanded the children of Israel, as it is written in the book of the law of Moses, an altar of whole stones, over which no man hath lift up any iron: and they offered thereon burnt offerings unto the Lord, and sacrificed peace offerings.

God’s instruction to the church today is that BEFORE prayers can be offered to God, BEFORE gifts can be given to God, an altar must be constructed and it must be made of spiritual whole stones, which means that the stones cannot reflect the nature of man and his traditional ways of self-examination and spiritual flagellations. God examines these stones and does not accept them as stones of the altar of Christ. These stones are found in false prayer altars.

We’re going to look at Joshua chapter 4 to further understand the sign that God placed in the altar of 12 stones and how that now points to the spiritual altar of Jesus Christ that is constructed in the heart of each believer with the 12 elements of the gospel.

Joshua 4:5-9
5 And Joshua said unto them, Pass over before the ark of the Lord your God into the midst of Jordan, and take you up every man of you a stone upon his shoulder, according unto the number of the tribes of the children of Israel.

6 That this may be a sign among you, that when your children ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean ye by these stones?

7 Then ye shall answer them, That the waters of Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord; when it passed over Jordan, the waters of Jordan were cut off: and these stones shall be for a memorial unto the children of Israel for ever.

8 And the children of Israel did so as Joshua commanded, and took up twelve stones out of the midst of Jordan, as the Lord spake unto Joshua, according to the number of the tribes of the children of Israel, and carried them over with them unto the place where they lodged, and laid them down there.

9 And Joshua set up twelve stones in the midst of Jordan, in the place where the feet of the priests which bare the ark of the covenant stood: and they are there unto this day.

In these scriptures God gives us the pattern for our altar to reflect the face of Jesus Christ. First of all, the 12 tribes made up one nation of Israel and as their passage through the Jordan into the Promised Land was accompanied by a sign from God as the waters parted from them and they passed over on dry ground.

Who went before them? The priest which carried the ark of the covenant. So here, we have all our connections. The 12 whole stones were erected as a memorial of their miraculous passage into the Promised Land. The hand of God was with them because they followed the ark of the covenant and priesthood.   

In Christ, we have passed from darkness of the kingdom of the flesh into the kingdom of God’s marvelous light. The first thing we do when we enter into a covenant relationship with God is to build the new spiritual altar in our hearts with Jesus’ 12 whole stones upon which no tool of man has been lifted.

Jesus’12 stones of faith must be first set in your heart in order for the altar to reflect Him. Learn the names and meanings of each spiritual stone and why God is setting them in your heart. These 12 whole stones are:

[You can learn more about the true altar of Christ and how to build it in your heart. Register for free for our IDCCST online Course here: s8w.org/idccst-online-course]

These 12 stones are placed as the altar of our soul, as a living memorial of Jesus and marks the beginning of our priesthood as we begin to reason with God from a covenant perspective, as those risen with Christ.

Each whole stone is a memorial of Jesus; it is a stone of our reflection; they are the DNA of our faith in that our faith follows this holy and glorious pattern to reflect Jesus perfectly. God uses these spiritual stones as DNA markers of Jesus’ image and likeness, which He creates in us. The pattern has to be there first before the likeness can be seen.

So, now you understand why God’s commandment is that we first build the altar with the spiritual whole stones of Jesus’ 12 elements before He creates in us what He is. God’s Intelligent Design for Christ-Centered Spiritual Transformation means that He works from the pattern of truth to claim you as His own.

Once you have built the altar of Christ in your heart, you are ready to offer spiritual sacrifices of prophecy to God because the anointing will confirm the work of God in you as it is in Jesus. This is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

We examined the construction of the true altar of Christ to understand why God selected the whole stones (the elements of the gospel). It’s now time to examine the construction of your altar to compare and contrast. God developed this crossroad to offer each person the opportunity to choose to build the new and better altar.

Earlier, we said that the habit of man is to revert to his fallen nature to ask questions about what kind of prayer reaches God. We made a list of things a person usually says when examining his heart for the things he thinks should or shouldn’t be there.

In that we’re examining what your altar is constructed of, imagine, if you will, that each of the 12 items in that list are spiritual stones that have been selected to build an altar to God. They are building blocks of the mind and the basis for prayer, so an altar of prayer is constructed with these stones of concern and desire.

It is clear that these stones are not whole stones because they represent man’s fallen nature and not Jesus’ divine nature.

Man has the bad habit of wanting to base his fellowship with God on his desire to rectify his seeming failures and his yearning to prepare himself for the return of the Lord. But his perspective is not built upon Jesus’ 12 elements, so he can’t bond with the Spirit. He’s trying to bond with God with a defiled conscience. Let’s look at the list again.

A person examines his heart for the things he thinks should or shouldn’t be there, such as:

Let’s examine the stones of this altar. I want you to see these desires in a new way; in a way that you haven’t seen them before. These stones of desire have been washed with good intentions and chiseled and hammered upon until a person sees in the stone his desires to be whole with God. And to do that, to approach God in this way, is to cast off God’s covenant perspective and to neglect building your altar with Jesus’ 12 spiritual stones.

It is clear in a person’s mind what he desires, but his approach to God is not according to Jesus’ covenant, so even though the desire is clear, his faith is ambiguous. Because your desire is clear, it’s really quite natural to use desire as a defense. That mistake would sound like this:

What you want cannot be your defense. Jesus is our defense when our faith reflects His 12 elements. This is why returning the church to the blueprint of truth is God’s heart.