PRAYING WITH EXPECTATION & WITHOUT EXPECTATION

          FIRST I HAVE TO GIVE YOU A CLUE ON WHAT IS PRAYER, IMPORTANCE OF PRAYER, BENEFITS OF PRAYER, AND DIFFERENT BETWEEN PRAYER OF EXPECTATION AND PRAYER WITHOUT EXPECTATION.

        What is prayer.......................

The word prayer or prārthanā (in Sanskrit) is derived from two words ‘pra’ and ‘artha’ meaning pleading fervently. In other words, it is asking God for something with intense yearning.

Prayer includes respect, love, pleading and faith. Through a prayer a devotee expresses his helplessness and endows the doer ship of the task to God. Giving the doer ship to God means that we acknowledge that God is helping us and getting the task done. Prayer is an important tool of spiritual practice in the generic spiritual path of Devotion.

               Importance of prayer

One important criteria in determining our spiritual progress is the extent of the dissolution of our mind, intellect and ego. (Refer to footnote 2 below.)

The issue that we all face from birth is that we have had our parents, teachers and friends enhance our five senses, mind and intellect. In the current world a lot of emphasis is given to things related to the five senses, mind and intellect, such as outer beauty, our salary, our circle of friends and the list goes on. For most of us, at no point are we told that the purpose of our lives is to go beyond ourselves to tap into the God within.
So when we start spiritual practice we also have to unlearn years of conditioning that taught us to focus on our five senses, mind and intellect. Prayer is an important tool to reduce our reliance on the five senses, mind and intellect and help us unlearn years of conditioning.
The very act of prayer implies that the person who is praying considers the power to whom one is praying to as superior to oneself. Hence by praying a person expresses his helplessness and surrenders to the higher power and pleads for help. This is a blow to the individual's ego as praying implies that one is looking for help from a higher mind and intellect than one's own. Thus by praying frequently we transcend our limited mind and intellect and access the higher Universal Mind and Intellect. Over a period of time this contributes to the dissolution of our mind and intellect. Thus, frequent and sincere prayers for spiritual growth help in the dissolution of mind, intellect and ego.

                               BENEFITS OF PRAYER

• Improves spiritual practice: Prayer impacts our spiritual practice at three levels, action, thought and attitude:
  
  • Action: All actions that are preceded by prayer for spiritual benefit are performed with spiritual emotion; hence fewer errors are committed. Thus by praying, various actions in one’s spiritual practice.
    
  • Thought: So long as the mind is active, thoughts will continue. They pose an obstacle to the dissolution of the mind. Useless thoughts also cause wastage of energy. Prayer is an extremely useful tool to prevent this waste. Prayer reduces worry and enhances contemplation.
    
  • Attitude: A prayer done with spiritual emotion initiates the process of contemplation within a seeker, and this assists him in becoming introverted.
    
• Enhances the potency of chanting the Name of God: A seeker chants the Name of God with the aim of realizing God. Only if accompanied by intense motivation for God realization and spiritual emotion will the Name repeated (chanted) be truly effective. One Saint would be so engrossed in chanting the Name of God that He would become oblivious to the world. One rarely finds someone who can chant the Name of God with such intense spiritual emotion. However, repeated prayers about being graced with quality chanting, along with chanting the Name of God, helps in generation of spiritual emotion and makes our chanting reach God.
  
• Divine help in spiritual practice: When a seeker sincerely prays to God to get a particular action/thought/attitude pertaining to his spiritual practice, done through him (the seeker), a seemingly impossible task is easily accomplished by the Guru’s grace.
  
• Receiving forgiveness for mistakes: Having committed a mistake, if one makes a prayer and surrenders unto God or the Guru, then God or Guru forgives one for the mistake. However the prayer and surrender have to be commensurate in intensity with the mistake committed.
  
• Reducing the ego: While praying we plead before God; it is therefore the place where pride is abandoned and we humbly admit our need/human frailty as well as our dependence upon God. It therefore helps to reduce the ego faster. Refer to importance of prayer.
  
• Protection from ghosts: Prayer is a powerful tool that helps protect one from ghosts (demons, devils, negative energies, etc.) and creates an Armour around oneself.
  
• Increase in faith: When a prayer gets answered, faith in God or the Guru increases. Faith is the only currency on our spiritual journey.
       
      DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PRAYING WITH EXPECTATION AND WITHOUT     EXPECTATION
  

  1. Prayer with worldly expectation

  This is the commonest variety of prayer. This type of prayer is said with the expectation of fulfillment of some worldly requirement. The prayer may or may not be accompanied by any other spiritual practice.
  Some of the prayers with worldly expectation would include prayers about:
  
• Gross material requirements like job, partner, child, etc.
  
• Subtle material requirement like recovery from illness, happiness, etc.
  

Prayers that are said with expectation of some worldly benefit are generally said by people in the initial stages of their spiritual journey. Even those whose prayers about some worldly benefit are regularly answered, are generally in the initial stages of their spiritual journey. The reason is because people in later stages of spiritual growth make prayers only for their spiritual growth as explained in the next section.
When we pray for the worldly benefit of ourselves or others, the prayer may get answered but we end up using our spiritual energy gained through spiritual practice. This spiritual energy could be either from this birth or an earlier birth.
People who continue praying lifelong with worldly expectations use prayer as a tool to obtain a little something from God rather than striving to increase spiritual practice to attain the all encompassing continual grace of God. The important disadvantage of this type of prayer is that one tends to remain trapped in worldly desires and needs instead of transcending to surrender to God’s will and being able to rely on Him to provide as per our requirement (and not as per our wish).

2. Prayer without worldly expectation (for spiritual growth)

This type of prayer is said by the seekers of God who are serious about their spiritual journey. In such prayers also there is a pleading to God, but it is not about worldly expectations. The expectation is about being able to do better spiritual practice to achieve spiritual progress. Seekers may also pray for removal of obstacles in their spiritual practice, reduction of their ego, etc.

Seekers who pray without worldly expectations have the double benefit of being graced with spiritual progress as well as their material need being taken care of as per the requirement. Here as the person who is praying surrenders much more than the person who prays with worldly expectations, he is able to access much more grace of God. Also the surrender contributes to dissolution of mind, intellect and ego. Both these factors result in rapid spiritual progress.

No 2. The Secret and Power of the Prayer of Jabez

   The Secret and Power of

   the Prayer of Jabez

The prayer of Jabez, a man of God, is found in I Chronicles 4:10. Jabez prayed, calling on the God of Israel, saying, “Oh, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory [border], that Your hand would be with me, and that you would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain.” The Scripture says, “So God granted him what he requested” (NKJV). 

      Who was Jabez? Why did he pray this way? What is the real story behind this short, powerful prayer?

Jabez, in Hebrew, means “he makes sorrow.” His childbirth was very difficult for his mother, hence she called him “Jabez.”

The story of Jabez, in the Bible, amounts to a very brief but significant passage, which occurs in the genealogy of Judah, inserted as a brief but cogent and powerful comment on the man’s actions and character hidden as if a marginal reading or commentary, of remarkable detail, in a genealogy connected with Bethlehem. As Christ the Messiah said we are to live by every word of God, this short

passage takes on whole momentous significance (Matt.4:4; Luke 4:4). No doubt the story of Jabez is intended by God to inspire each reader to greater heights, spiritually, to attain divine blessing and success in life, no matter how insignificant, painful, or problematical his beginning in life. No matter how inauspicious or lowly one’s beginning, one can accomplish great things through prayer and devotion serving God with faithfulness, integrity, and earnest, fervent desire.

The book of First Chronicles says, “And Jabez was more honorable than his brethren: and his mother called his name Jabez, saying, Because I bare him with sorrow. And Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, O that thou wouldst bless me indeed, and enlarge my coast, and that thine hand might be with me, and that thou would est keep me from evil, that it may not grieve me! And God granted him that which he requested” (IChron.4:9-10). 

      “There are several things in the account of Jabez that are very instructive:

“1. He appears to have been a child brought into the world with great difficulty, at the risk of his own life and that of his mother. So much seems to be implied in, she bare him with sorrow, i.e., with peculiar sorrow and danger.

“2. To perpetuate the merciful interposition of God in her own and her son’s behalf, she gave him a name that must have recalled to her and his remembrance the danger to which both their lives were exposed, and from which they could not have been extricated but by the especial help of God. She called name Jabez, etc.

“3. He was brought up in the fear of God; he was no idolater; he worshiped the God of Israel, and he showed the sincerity of his faith by frequent and earnest prayer.

“4. His prayer at once was both enlightened and pious. He had piety towards God, and therefore he trusted in him: he knew that he was the fountain of all good, and therefore he sought all necessaries both for body and soul from him. He prayed to the God of Israel.

“5. Both the matter and manner of his prayer were excellent. His heart was deeply impressed with its wants, and therefore he was earnest and fervent; O that thou wouldest bless me indeed; ‘O that in blessing thou wouldest bless me!’ Let me live under thy benediction! Do thou diligently and frequently bless me!

“6. He prays for the things necessary for the body as well as for the soul: And enlarge my coasts— grant me as much territory as may support my family. Let the means of living be adequate to the demands of life; let me have the necessaries, conveniences, and, as far as they may be safely entrusted with me, the comforts of life! O that thou wouldest enlarge my coasts!

“7. He is conscious that without the continual support of God he must fail; and therefore he prays to be upheld by his power: That thy hand might be with me! May I ever walk with thee, and ever feel the hand of thy power to support and cover me in all the trials, dangers, and difficulties of life; and the hand of thy providence to supply all my wants in reference to both worlds!

“8. He dreads both sin and suffering, and therefore prays against both: O that thou wouldest keep me from evil, that it may not grieve me! Sin and misery are in every step of the journey of life; keep me from sin, that I grieve thee not; and keep me from sin, that I render not myself miserable! We can never offend God without injuring ourselves, he that sins must suffer. Thorns and scorpions are everywhere in the way to perdition; and he that walks in it must be torn and stung. He alone is  happy who walks in the ways of God.

Keep me from evil, that it may not grieve me.

“9. Prayers that have a right aim will have a right answer—Jabez did not pray in vain, for God granted him that which he requested He was continually blessed; his family was increased; the hand of God was upon him for good. He was saved from sin, and saved from the pangs and sufferings of a guilty conscience.

“10. If we take up the character and conduct of Jabez in the view given by the Chalice, we shall not only see him as a pious and   careful man, deeply interested in behalf of himself and his family, but we shall see him as a benevolent man, laboring for the welfare of others, and especially for the religious instruction of youth. He founded schools, in which the young and rising generati on were taught useful knowledge, and especially the knowledge of God. He had disciples, which were divided into three classes who distinguished themselves by their fervor in the worship of God, by their docility in obediently hearing and treasuring up the advices and instructions of their teachers, and by their deep piety to God in bringing forth the fruits of the Spirit. The spirit of prophecy, that of prayer and supplication, rested upon them.

“11. He did not do these things merely as duty he owed to God and his fellows, but from the abundance of a generous and loving heart. In his counsel he erected a school of disciples. God had blessed him with temporal things, and he secures their continuance by devoting them to his service; he honours God with his substance, and God hours him with his especial blessing and approbation.

A Time for Fervent Prayer It would surely behoove us all, during this end-time of woe and trouble, and tribulation, to emulate Jabez, and follow his excellent, fervent example, and pray his prayer, and many like it, for ourselves, our families, and all God’s true people in this fast-moving end-time, perilous age!

As the apostle James wrote, “Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much” (James 5:16). Moffatt says, “has much impact.”

No 1. HANNAH'S PATTERN OF PRAYER

        "HANNAH - A WOMAN OF FAITH"

                           1 Samuel 1:1-2:10

INTRODUCTION

1. The Old Testament contains many role models for us today...
   a. Great men like Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, David, Daniel
   b. Great women like Sarah, Ruth, Esther

2. A wonderful role model for women of faith today is that of Hannah...
   a. The mother of Samuel, one of the greatest prophets of Israel
   b. Whose story is told in the first two chapters of 1 Samuel

[From just a simple reading of the material in these two chapters we can
glean several lessons from "Hannah - A Woman Of Faith".  For example, as
we read 1Sa 1:1-8, we learn that...]

I. WOMEN OF FAITH ENDURE REAL PROBLEMS

   A. HANNAH'S PROBLEMS...
      1. Womb closed by the Lord - 1Sa 1:1-5
      2. Provoking by her rival - 1Sa 1:6-8

   B. WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM HANNAH...
      1. Women of faith are not without problems in this life
         a. The righteous often suffer (remember Job)
         b. Sarah likewise suffered ridicule from her handmaiden Hagar
            - Gen 16:3-5
      2. We should not let others deter our trust in the Lord
         a. Hannah could have used her misfortune and mistreatment as an
            excuse
         b. Yet year after year Hannah continued to worship the Lord
            - 1Sa 1:7

[Women of faith have problems just like other women.  What distinguishes
them as women of faith is what they do when faced with their problems,
as we glean from reading 1Sa 1:9-18...]

II. 
     God answer Hannah because of........
      1. With the bitterness of soul - 1Sa 1:10
      2. With weeping in anguish - 1Sa 1:10
      3. With offers of a solemn vow - 1Sa 1:11
      4. With persistence - 1Sa 1:12
      5. With her heart - 1Sa 1:13
      6. With all her soul - 1Sa 1:15-16
      7. With faith in God's promise - 1Sa 1:18

   B. WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM HANNAH...
      1. Pray fervently - she put her soul in her prayers - Col 4:2a
      2. Pray persistently - she continued steadfastly in prayers - Co
         4:2b
      3. Pray faithfully - she believed that God would answer her
         prayers - 1Jn 5:14-15

[Women of faith believe in the efficacy of prayer.  God takes notice of
such faith (2Ch 16:9), so we should not be surprise to see as we
continue reading (1Sa 1:19-20) that...]

Note that God personally shot her womb not to concieve. what made God to do so? Hannah

was a child of God, she serves God. if she is Gods own child what could make God to shot her womb?

There must be an agreement that took place in the past. But what changed Gods mind to bless hannah   

with a child was the pattern Hannah prayed to God, which is listed before. 

IV. WOMEN OF FAITH EXCEL AT KEEPING PROMISES

   A. HANNAH'S PROMISE...
      1. She planned to keep her promise - 1Sa 1:22
      2. She carried out what she promised - 1Sa 1:24-28
      3. She worshipped the Lord - 1Sa 1:28

   B. WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM HANNAH...
      1. We should keep our vows
         a. God has no pleasure in fools who do not keep their vows
            - Ec 5:4-5
         b. As Christians, even our 'yes' and 'no' are as solemn vows
            - Mt 5:33-37; Jm 5:12
      2. We should worship the Lord
         a. Fulfillment of vows or promises should not be done
            begrudgingly
         b. We should with gratitude of heart do the will of the Lord
            - cf. Col 3:17

[Finally, we note Hannah's prayer of thanksgiving (1Sa 2:1-10), which
is reminiscent of Mary's 'Magnificat' (Lk 1:46-55).  Both prayers reveal
that...]

V. WOMEN OF FAITH EXPRESS THEIR PRAISE

   A. HANNAH'S PRAISE...
      1. With great joy in her heart - 1Sa 2:1
      2. With praise for the Lord for His help - 1Sa 2:2-10

   B. WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM HANNAH...
      1. We should rejoice in blessings received
         a. For we are to rejoice always - 1Th 5:16
         b. How much more so when we have received blessings from the
            Lord!
      2. We should offer praise for blessings received
         a. As David offered thanks, and promised to praise God - Psa
            18:49
         b. Praising God is how Christians offer spiritual sacrifices to
            God - He 13:15

CONCLUSION

1. "Hannah - A Woman Of Faith" serves to remind us that all women of
   faith...
   a. Endure real problems
   b. Extend vibrant prayers
   c. Experience God's provisions
   d. Excel at keeping promises
   e. Express their praise

2. Today, anyone can become a person of faith...
   a. Even though you face many problems
   b. If you are willing to come to God in prayerful obedience to the
      gospel of Christ
   c. Receive the gift of salvation provided through God's Son
   d. Remain true to your commitment to His authority as Lord of your
      life
   e. Offer your life and the fruit of your lips in praise to Him

May everyone, whether male or female, be able to say together with
Hannah:

   "My heart rejoices in the Lord; My horn is exalted in the Lord.