There is no greater invitation from God than to dwell in His presence through prayer. But we have to let God define what prayer means to Him to gain His perspective on the sanctity of prayer. Without God’s map to His presence, ministers get caught up defining prayer in their own way.

Because no one wants to be a slave to religious ritual, it has become popular to describe prayer in a non-religious way. Joyce Meyer, for example, defined prayer saying, “Prayer is simply conversation with God. It’s asking Him to meet your need or someone else’s. It’s praising Him and thanking Him.”

Meyer goes on to say, “I think some people don’t pray much because they don’t understand how powerful prayer really is. The truth is it’s one of the greatest privileges we have as Christians. When we pray, we open the door for God to come into our problems and situations and work on them.”

This familiar route to prayer, whereas God is invited to come into our problems to work on them, is so popular that many ministers have fallen after the same example of unbelief. It might surprise you to know that unbelief about prayer doesn’t mean that a minister doesn’t believe that prayer is important, but that they don’t believe that God placed prayer as a tool inside the covenant of Jesus Christ. They don’t believe in the sanctity of prayer.

Prayer is powerful for a Christian when it is placed inside Jesus’ covenant. Ministers of the false gospel took prayer out of the covenant and anchored it to your problems where God does not sanctify it and where He does not work. In one fell swoop, false ministers stripped prayer of its power, yet still want to believe that prayer is powerful.

Everything that God placed inside Jesus’ covenant is designed to work His righteousness, holiness, peace, rest, and sanctification, as He builds in us His divine nature. God joined our faith to prayer to produce His fruit in us to empower our walk with Him and enable us to reciprocate to Him on His level; and this is why prayer (praying in tongues) is a token of power.

2 Peter 1:3-4
³ According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue:

⁴ Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.

I’ve underlined “divine power” and “knowledge” in verse 3 to lift out God’s connection that we can access His power only by the knowledge He sanctified for our contact with Him. And then in verse 4, Apostle Peter tells us what God’s divine power is for – to design Christ within. Prayer is connected to God’s will to create His divine nature in us. That’s God’s plan for prayer.

Let’s move on with Apostle Peter’s further teaching point in verse 4, where he says that God’s precious promises are given to those who have “escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.”

Having escaped the corruption that is here in this world means that you cut the cord to Satan’s throne and influence of thought. When you take on God’s covenant knowledge and step into your priesthood, you’ve joined yourself to God’s throne, and this also is pleasing to God.

God is breaking down walls and barriers to your understanding about prayer.

For generations Christians were taught how to get God involved with their life and how to pray effectively to get God to move on their behalf, but they were outside of Jesus’ covenant where the life of God would never reach them.

You can’t understand the mysteries of God and the power of prayer outside of the experience that joins you to Him.

In these end times, God restored the covenant of Jesus Christ to remove the gospel of similarities that creates many false witnesses of God. While God sanctified prayer as a tool of Jesus’ covenant, those outside of the covenant teach about the idea of prayer, the idea of faith, and the idea of a relationship with God.

Knowing the terms of Jesus’ covenant alters the way in which you view prayer, faith, and a relationship with God. As these are rightly fit into Jesus, they become the reality we live each day.

Establishing God’s plan for prayer means that we’re on the same page as God about His purpose to create in us His divine nature.

But can we also petition God for our needs and ask for direction? Of course we can. These are the precious promises that we just read about in Apostle Peter’s exhortation, “Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises.” (2 Peter 1:4)

God lays out both His great promises and His precious promises. The great promises are the eternal promises of our inheritance in Christ that were sealed to us by the engrafting of the Holy Spirit into our hearts when we entered into a covenant relationship with God. We were adopted into God’s family and now our names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.

The life of Christ that we NOW live in the flesh is accompanied with God’s precious promises as He hears each petition we make and takes those petitions into our growth cycles to initiate fruit bearing for our soul. The anointing takes the things of Christ and makes them known through your petitions.

We know that whatever we ask of God, He hears us and we receive of Him because we keep His commandments and do those things that are pleasing in His sight.

1 John 3:22
And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight.

What is pleasing in the sight of God?

Your faith is pleasing to God. And what I’m talking about here is your priesthood. When we said that God enables us to reciprocate to Him on His level, that’s His expectation. So, we can see why prayer is joined to your priesthood.

Your labor of faith to build the kingdom of God and His house, that’s pleasing to God. Your labor of faith in your priesthood has eternal value because of the fruit that God is creating in you. But it begins here. God’s work in you begins here and now in your growth cycles that He initiates.

God’s precious promises have to do with His work in your soul now as you live your life here on this earth. So, you can make your petitions known to God and He will hear you if you are keeping His covenant commandments.

I want to share a word of knowledge that the Lord ministered to me recently that touches on the importance He places in prayer. The Lord said, “Dwell in prayer.”

If you want God to initiate and oversee your growth cycles, leave prayer where God designed it, in the covenant of Jesus Christ. That is where God dwells and where God dwells so also is His power experienced.

1 John 3:24
And he that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him, and he in him. And hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us.

– Are you troubled by something a co-worker said, then dwell in prayer, which means to allow God to answer these prayers through your priesthood while you answer God according to the purged conscience, remaining consistent to offer your spiritual sacrifices of charity to Him.

Dwelling in prayer is both God’s commandment for us and also His wisdom as it is a two-edged sword. God’s commandment to dwell in prayer goes hand-in-hand with His commandment to dwell in truth.

Did you know: Your prayers reflect the foundation of your faith. And this is why God sent the master builders, His apostles, to teach and instruct the church by setting order to His knowledge. If you’ve ever heard that God follows a blueprint, that’s what He is saying about His apostles. The apostles are given the blueprint of truth to give to the church.

– Are you troubled with impure thoughts? You’ve fasted and prayed and you’re still stuck in the same loop. We find out why fasting is not a tool of Jesus’ covenant. Keep prayer joined to Jesus’ priesthood where you are empowered to filter your thoughts through truth as God separates the kingdom of the flesh from His kingdom to rule your mind in peace.

Dwelling in truth means allowing God to accomplish His work in your growth cycles and to return to Him the spiritual sacrifices of prophecy that the anointing gives you as a gift.

When we say that we believe in Jesus, it means that we believe that He is the original standard of truth, the true and original pattern we follow to know God and serve Him.

This is a watershed moment for the church.

There is no greater invitation from God than to dwell in His presence. God restored His apostolic government to return the one blueprint of truth to the church so that all Christians can once again know what it means to be IN Christ and to pray according to His will.

Ephesians 2:10
For we are his workmanship, created IN Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.

I underlined the words “IN Christ” so we can talk about what that means. The word “in” has to do with access and the word Christ has to do with covenant. The Messiah, our Saviour and Lord, came down from heaven to establish a new covenant in Himself.

Think of God’s covenant as a house. If you built your own house, you would design it how you like it. From the frame of the house, to the furniture, to the bedding, to the kitchenware, everything is handpicked to create an environment that suits you.

God did the same thing with the house of Jesus Christ. He placed everything in the new covenant for your faith to engage Him with His power tools beginning with the baptism of the Holy Spirit evidenced by tongues, to the apostolic government, to the new altar constructed with the elements of the gospel, to the priesthood He installed. God created an environment for your faith to flourish.

The glass ceiling that God is shattering for you is that the idea of prayer is the same as covenant prayer.

God’s design for prayer follows the path of the covenant priesthood. Let’s look again at 1 John 3:24 to see how God bears upon the mind that accepting Jesus means accepting the call to serve Him in a daily living covenant relationship.

1 John 3:24
And he that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him, and he in him. And hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us.

God’s desire is for us to dwell in Him and He in us. This He made possible for us by establishing a covenant through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

So, a joining takes place – we are joined to God through the baptism of the Holy Spirit which is evidenced by speaking in tongues. (You can read more about the 5 steps to covenant faith on our website at s8w.org. These steps are 1- grace 2- faith 3- righteousness 4- the seal 5- discipleship.)

Ephesians 1:13
In whom ye also trusted, AFTER that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also AFTER that ye believed, ye were SEALED with that holy Spirit of promise,

Through the seal, or the baptism of the Holy Spirit, we no longer wander in darkness looking for more of God, because we now dwell in Him, partaking of the substance of His life as we use His tokens. The Holy Spirit having been placed within the chambers of our heart means that God is dwelling within us and that we have been removed from the kingdom of darkness and now dwell in Him.

Even as the groom gives the token of a wedding ring to his bride to signify his love and their joining together to build one house, so too does God grant the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which is evidenced by speaking in tongues as a gift to His beloved.

Prayer in tongues is the new prayer token of the new covenant.

Our soul, having suffered under the abuse of Satan, has many scars of iniquity within that now needs to be healed by the hand of God. This cannot take place apart from the covenant of Jesus Christ and our service in His priesthood which includes praying in tongues.

Not only do we remain joined to God as we pray in tongues, not only does the Lord grant understanding and wisdom when we pray in tongues, not only are we edified when we pray in tongues, but the process of spiritual transformation takes place as we use this valuable tool.

We dwell in Jesus through praying in tongues and He dwells in us when we exercise our faith with His tools. Our prayers are in agreement with His covenant. We are no longer praying for God to enrich us financially or to bless us with goods or to solve our problems for us. We now value that which is on God’s mind and that is spiritual transformation and the healing of the soul.

Let’s look at the pattern of conversion set by Jesus after He appeared to his apostles, shortly after He rose from the dead.

Acts 1:4-5:
⁴ And, being assembled together with them, commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which, saith he, ye have heard of me.
⁵ For John truly baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.

Let’s continue to Acts 2:1-4
¹ And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.
² And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.
³ And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them.
⁴ And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.

Jesus made known to His apostles that something would happen that would set their faith on a new course where they would no longer worship Him using physical tokens like those of the first covenant of Moses (water baptism, communion of bread and wine, monetary tithe, Sabbath day observance, offering of physical sacrifices etc).

During the time of Jesus’ ministry on earth He had already made known that He came to transition the covenant of Moses to the new covenant which He is now the author and sustainer of. (Heb. 8:6-7)

What He had started would now be brought to completion through the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which His apostles would receive which would be evidenced with speaking in tongues.

Why Tongues?

Jude 1:20
But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost,

To pray in tongues and to pray in the Holy Ghost or Holy Spirit is the same thing. God bears upon the mind that praying in tongues cannot be removed from the process of salvation. To remove the tool of tongues from your faith and still expect a working relationship with God would be like removing an engine out of a car and still expecting it to run.

There are a few key systems when looking at a car that guarantees its mobility. The wheels need to be in good working order, the engine needs to run smoothly, the braking system needs to be in order and the car needs fuel of course. When one of these things are not working like they are supposed to, then the car cannot get you from point A to B.

In the same way, your faith needs to be tethered to God’s spiritual government, His truth, and Holy Spirit. This is the threefold cord that joins us to God. Your faith needs to follow the 5 steps of conversion to come out of the system of darkness and into His kingdom, and your faith needs to be sealed with God’s divine token of power.

Revisiting our example prayer from Joyce Meyer again, we see a disconnection. When stating that prayer is “simply conversation with God”, prayer is disconnected from the way God designed Jesus’ covenant. In truth, people don’t pray simply because they don’t understand the environment of the covenant that God created for us to walk with Him. There is no greater invitation from God than to dwell in His presence through prayer.