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Our greatest experiences in prayer are most like heaven. Earth recedes and heaven opens. We are allowed into the throne room of the King (See Romans 5:1-2 to understand this), and everything is changed.

Our failure to experience and understand this is why prayer is so meaningless to so many. We see prayer as a perfunctory duty, a ritual to appease a God we hardly know, a means of getting things, a way of making our lives a tad better.

We fail to realize that, for the born-again child of God, the true citizen of heaven, access into heaven is not only allowed but encouraged. And the avenue there is Word-centered, Spirit-led prayer.

The purpose of this glorious privilege is not only to stand in our home, to experience the glorious presence of God, to lift our perspective and expand our understanding, but also to so gain heaven’s perspective that we can pray heaven down. This is why Jesus invites us to pray “Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is (being done right now) in heaven” (Matthew 6:11). We can see heaven’s activity, and the Spirit gives us God-initiated prayers. God loves to answer prayers He initiates to train His children and advance His kingdom. This is why God says that the “effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much” (James 5:16).

THE PERFECT PRAY-ER

Jesus, during His temporary stay on earth in mortal flesh, illustrated this kind of praying. Luke 9 is filled with His prayers, both public and private. As He was praying up on a mountain with three disciples in tow, notice how the line blurred between earth and heaven.

As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly, two men were talking with him—Moses and Elijah. They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish in Jerusalem. (Luke 9:29-31)

What was this? It was prayer. It was perfect, pure praying by the perfect man who lived in unceasing prayer. It was also the unique preparation from heaven for Jesus for what He was about to endure—the kind of equipping that happens only in God’s prayer-gained presence.

It seems that, while praying, the distinct physical lines were blurred and heaven settled around the praying Messiah. His conversation with two of the greatest men of God was revealed to human eyes—a conversation that was as natural and normal to Jesus the man as breathing. The Father knew that His Son needed the encouragement of the great Lawgiver and the great Prophet.

And then, the glory of God from heaven surrounded Jesus, (perhaps akin to what Solomon saw at the dedication of the Temple), engulfing the disciples also, and they heard God the Father speaking audibly of His Son. God wanted some of His choice leaders to hear (once again) from heaven’s throne how beloved Jesus was and how worthy of their total attention.

What were they experiencing? Prayer. One of the ultimate expressions of the presence of God in prayer. Paul is the only other man of whom it is recorded that he was lifted up into the heavens and saw things in such glory (2 Corinthians 12:1-10). We hear many stories of great saints upon their deathbeds seeming to see past the veil into heaven. Earth receding, heaven opening. The line between earth and heaven is non-existent with God, of course, and thin with those who have become practiced in real prayer.

WHY?

Why does God reveal these accounts of the purest of prayers? Perhaps it is to lift our petty, weak views of intercession, helping us see that prayer is more. That prayer erases the physical bonds that tie us down and create low expectations. It is to help us long for deeper experiences of intimacy and fellowship with the One our hearts long for. It is to help us realize we can enter by faith into the throne room of heaven, shut the door, and “pray to our Father in heaven” and hallow His name. It is to fill our soul with the glorious vision of what is and what can be and what one day will be ours in glorious reality. And it is, right now, to arm us with world-changing, devil-destroying specific, Spirit-initiated intercessions for the souls of men and the kingdom of God, for our battle is not against flesh and blood.

This is our privilege and, we can say with humble hearts and tearful eyes, our birthright as His blood-bought family. We would we settle for less?

 

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