Tie yourself to your confession

Faced with the greatest military crisis of his entire reign, King Jehoshaphat not only took time to pray and cry out to the Lord, but publicly and visibly pledged to seek and await an answer from God.

When King Jehoshaphat commanded the entire nation to pray and fast, he was binding himself to his dependence on divine help. He was committing himself publicly and spiritually! He was saying, “I believe in the power of prayer. I believe in the God who has promised to intervene on behalf of his people the day we cry out to him. And I believe enough to summon the entire nation and publicly compromise our faith. " Jehoshaphat was taking a great risk by doing this. He was, in a sense, testing in a final and irrevocable way the entire religious system that underpinned the nation of Israel.

How many times have many of us decided not to pray publicly on an issue for fear of failing and looking bad to others? Let's be honest! That kind of omission, born out of a defensive attitude and a lack of faith, represents a subtle expectation of defeat that robs our prayers of power. When we let others know that we are praying about a specific issue, we establish a spiritual commitment that adds power and weight to our prayers. By verbalizing our requests in a public way, this constitutes a prophetic act, a statement of faith that unleashes the power of God and invigorates our prayer.

Obviously, this does not apply to occasions when the Spirit Himself directs us to reserve certain intimate requests in private that only at a later time, or perhaps never, are shared with the people around us. But generally, the outsourcing of our spiritual requests and decisions represents a declaration of war on the principalities that seek to overwhelm us, and a strong declaration of confidence in God's faithfulness.

I tell my congregation, “Get engaged! Hold on to your spiritual goals. Declare them. Share them with two or three people who believe and remember what you have stated ”. There is a time to cultivate visions of God in silence, quiet, and privacy. But the time also comes to announce the vision, to declare it, and prophesy it (Hab 2: 2). That way, you are committed and tied to your statement of faith, and it is more difficult to back down and leave the battlefield prematurely when the going gets tough and tough.

So, we see that Jehoshaphat not only prayed, but gave importance, public value, to his prayer. He made clear efforts to show his confidence in prayer, and he declared his faith in the Lord publicly. He understood that there is great power in public and community prayer, and he engaged the entire nation in a powerful act of faith.