Faith grows with exercise

Prayer is the breath of the believer. It is the heartbeat of the spirit - constant, subconscious, the very foundation of our life. I have learned that in prayer is the secret of a prosperous and blessed life.

We have to season all the projects of our life in prayer: If your children are having problems, difficulties, present them to the Lord continuously. Your finances, bathe them in prayer. Pray preventively, continuously, so that the devil does not have a chance to take away the blessing you enjoy. Don't wait to have debtors at your door then start praying for financial provision.

Present your health to the Lord in great detail — every bone, every organ. Visualize God's blessing on each specific part of your body. Find yourself an anatomy book and learn all the parts of your body and point out each of them part by part, from the gallbladder to the spine, from your heart to your lungs. Bathe everything in prayer and specifically saturate it with God's blessing.

God likes specific requests, God likes people who cry out to Him continually. If a father knows how to give good things to his children, how much more will the Lord not give to those who cry out to him day and night? But we have to fill ourselves with that idea that if I cry out to the Lord, He will answer me.

And the Bible is full of promises for those who pray. John 16:23 states: "On that day you will not ask me anything" speaking of when Jesus went to heaven and we were here on earth simply with the Holy Spirit, which is what we have now. He says: "On that day you will not ask me anything. Truly, truly, I tell you, whatever you ask the Father in My Name, He will give you."

And he adds: "Until now you have asked for nothing in My Name", because they still had Christ physically with them and they spoke directly to Him. Then he invites them: "Ask and you will receive so that your joy may be fulfilled."

If you look in a concordance for the word 'ask' or 'pray', you will see how many invitations there are from God himself to you to ask the Lord. If God tells you to ask, why not ask? Why not take advantage of that opportunity that God himself offers us? Why not create a habit of prayer and crying out in all circumstances?

No, again, merely pious and religious prayers, but prayers of war, prayers that reach up to the very Throne of God and that move the heart of the Lord.

There are many, many affirmations of this principle of crying out to the Lord in an effective way. All these texts emphasize the need to ask as a prerequisite for receiving what we need. James in chapter 1 says that we ask in faith, he encourages us to exercise faith, to believe that if we ask we will receive what we ask for.

Faith is an attitude of trust. It is something that grows with exercise. Faith is like a muscle. If you exercise it it grows, why does it grow? because when you exercise even a small amount of faith you are going to see even a small result. And when you see that small result, your faith will grow, and then you will dare to ask the Lord for bigger and more ambitious things, and finally you will dare to undertake gigantic and daring things.

But start exercising your faith. Faith, says the Word, comes by hearing and hearing the Word of the Lord. It grows as we meditate on the promises of Scripture, as our minds are saturated with the patterns and teachings of God's Word. It is an attitude that is being cultivated. It grows as we gradually replace depressive and shy attitudes with an attitude of hope and militancy in God. And as your faith grows, God will have room to do bigger and more beautiful things in your life.