The following is a SUMMARY of what we have learned of the power and effectiveness of
Prevailing Prayer from Wesley L. Duewel
(This is for your edification, encouragement, and empowerment)
1. Prevailing prayer is prayer that obtains the answers sought. It overcomes delay, opposition, and unfavorable circumstances. It often involves the Holy Spirit’s guidance in how we pray and His deepening of our desire for the prayer answer.
2. Prevailing prayer is God’s ordained means for extending His kingdom, for defeating Satan and His empire of darkness and evil, and for fulfilling God’s eternal plan and bringing into effect His good will on earth. Prevailing prayer is God’s priority strategy for our age and dispensation.
3. Results, not beautiful words, are the test of prevailing prayer.
4. God seeks people to prevail, to triumph in prayer. It is His ordained means to move the world toward righteousness and the people of the world toward salvation.
5. All prayer is an approach to the throne of God. Prayer is not a casual or trivial act, but instead, it is an amazing privilege, a glory of God.
6. We are spiritually to share Christ’s exaltation now. We are to participate in the throne life and role now. Since all things are under Christ’s feet (Eph. 1:22) and we are in Christ, then all things are potentially under our feet also. Jesus said, “I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy.” (Luke 10: 19) This conquest must be accomplished through prevailing intercession. In virtue of Christ’s Cross and in His name, we can even issue commands to Satan. From our position where we are seated with Christ on the Throne, we look down in spiritual vision upon Satan. We sit beside Christ on his Throne, triumphant in Him, triumphant through Him.
7. Jesus wants it to be normal for us to exercise throne authority in our prevailing prayer. It is not presumptuous to act on God’s Word. We are not to tremble before Satan, but are to confront him from the throne. We are not to cower in the dust before him. We are to initiate prayer attacks on Satan’s strongholds, force his retreat, and release his captives. Nothing but throne life and our exercising our delegated throne authority befits us as priests and kings of God through Christ. Prevailing prayer alone is adequate and befitting for us as those enthroned with Christ.
8. Prevailing prayer unites us with all the forces of heaven. Prevailing prayer, more than anything else, links us with God and His almighty kingdom power.
9. To prevail in prayer involves being spiritually strong, committed to the prayer goal, and persevering until God’s answer of victory is received.
10. Satan has darkened the understanding, perverted the desires, and enslaved the wills of people so that many of the problems that need to be solved are very complex. Some needs have existed for so long that they seem impossible to change. Some people are so resistant to God’s will, so hardened in their sins, and so bound by Satan that there is tremendous prayer struggle in envisioning and believing for God’s answers.
11. Satan will not give up his strongholds without strong resistance and spiritual battle. He is not only insolent and inveterate in his hatred of God and man, but he is full of wrath at his repeated defeats by the prayer offensives of God’s children.
12. God has ordained to dislodge and defeat Satan by the prayers of His people. The triune God has chosen for the Spirit to empower and pray through us as He indwells and fills us. The Holy Spirit has been charged with the responsibility of engaging in conflict all the powers of darkness and enforcing Christ’s victory. This is the age of the Holy Spirit and also the age of battle.
13. The first dynamic of prevailing prayer is desire. The deeper our desire to see God’s answers, the deeper our hunger to see God at work, and the more urgent our heart-cry to see Christ triumph, the more powerfully the Holy Spirit can pray through us. Holy desire is a holy power that energizes prayer.
14. The second dynamic of prevailing prayer is fervency, which adds love, desire, and zeal to our praying.
15. The third dynamic of prevailing prayer is importunity or utter shamelessness. It includes the concept of great boldness, of urgency, of pressing our request, claim, or demand to the very limits, and it includes determination to persist in that urgent boldness until we receive the answer.
16. Laxity in prayer, timidity in intercession, and weakness in importunity are fatal to mighty prevailing prayer. Awaiting the onset of our importunity and insistence is the Father’s heart, the Father’s hand, the Father’s infinite power, the Father’s infinite willingness to hear and to give to His children. Importunate prayer is a mighty movement of the soul toward God. It is a stirring of the deepest forces of the soul toward the throne of heavenly grace. It is the ability to hold on, press on, and wait… It is a passion of the soul. The wrestling quality in importunate prayer does not spring from physical vehemence or fleshly energy. It is not an impulsive energy, nor a mere earnestness of soul; it is an inwrought force, a faculty implanted and aroused by the Holy Spirit. Virtually, it is the intercession of the Spirit of God within us.
17. The fourth dynamic is the dynamic of faith. The purpose of prevailing prayer is to bring to pass things that are divinely possible and that are in God’s will. It is prayer willing to believe and prevail for God’s answer in situations that are utterly impossible; we require no external confirmation, but believe God in spite of appearance. Our eyes are on God, not on the situation. We obey God in any way He leads so as to help hasten the answer. We rejoice in God’s answer even before it is visible to us.
18. All the dynamics of prevailing prayer are dependent on the dynamic of the Holy Spirit. He helps, enables, and coordinates all. He is the Lord of prevailing prayer. We listen to His voice, respond to His touch of power, and offer ourselves in total surrender to His active Lordship so that He may indwell us, infill us, and pray through us. Through prayer the Spirit places all the powers of the heavenly world at our disposal.
19. The sixth dynamic of prevailing prayer is the dynamic of united prayer. There is unusual power in united prayer. In unity there is strength, a principle that is true in all of life, in the family and nation, and among the people of God.
20. The dynamic of perseverance is essential in most prevailing prayer. In George Mueller’s autobiography, we read his formula for prevailing prayer. “It is not enough to begin to pray, or to pray aright; nor is it enough to continue for a time to pray; but we must patiently, believing, continue in prayer until we obtain an answer.”
21. There are some important reasons why we need to give God time to answer prayer. Sometimes demonic resistance delays God’s answers until we and heaven prevail. Sometimes it takes time for separate parts of complex situations to fit together. God knows the perfect time to get maximum results. Sometimes it takes time for God to coordinate circumstances to bring pressure on the person until that one becomes willing to do what God wants him or her to do.
22. We must persevere in prevailing prayer as long as Christ does. We are chosen to be Christ’s prayer partners. He has seated us in the heavenlies beside Him on His throne. We are to join His rule of intercessory grace by joining our prayers with His. He still loves. He still longs. He still intercedes. We dare not give up while He is praying.
23. One secret of prevailing prayer is the inner assurance that we are praying in the will of God.
24. God has predestined that our Christian lives bring praise and glory to Him. (Eph. 1: 5-6) Praise focuses our hearts on God. Praise lifts our hearts to God in adoration, worship, and love. The most important fact of prevailing prayer is that it is made to God.
25. Asking is the most simple, most basic form of prayer.
26. Seeking is a more intensified form of prayer than asking. Seeking implies greater earnestness, continued perseverance, and often deeper hunger and desire. Seeking is prayer that is willing to hold on in intercession until the answer comes.
27. At times our seeking becomes so urgent, our souls so desperate, that we actually begin to knock at heaven’s door. When the need is crying for God’s answer, but the answer is still not forthcoming, and when our soul is also crying out to God in holy desperation, it is not irreverent to knock at the entrance to Heaven’s door.
28. When prevailing in prayer for needs that are very urgent or resistant, fasting is often used by the Holy Spirit to give the extra power to bring Satan’s defeat and Christ’s victory into view.
29. A higher level of prevailing prayer is interceding with a prayer burden. This level of intensity is marked by urgency, commitment to the priority of the need, and holy determination to pray until God answers. It is not only knocking at heaven’s gate, but prevailing in the Spirit. We prevail with prayer burden only by the enablement of the Holy Spirit. He summons us to prayer for the deed, guides us in our praying, and fills us with holy desire so intense that it becomes not only a deep concern, but a consuming spiritual passion to prevail with God and over Satan.
30. Wrestling prayer is agonizing in prayer. It is prayer effort so strenuous that it becomes an agony. Agonizing prayer is always for a limited period of time. An agonizing prayer burden, a strenuous wrestling in prayer, is perhaps the highest level of prayer intensity of which man is capable. These efforts are often used by God to bring great victories.
31. Prayer warfare is the highest level of prevailing prayer. It is the prolonged, intensified form of prevailing prayer focused on defeating and routing Satan so that Christ’s will may be done and His kingdom advanced. Prayer warfare is militant, prevailing intercession. It is fought individually and collectively. It requires constant alertness and readiness and is coordinated by God the Holy Spirit.
32. Prayer is the nemesis of Satan. There is nothing on earth that Satan so fears as prayer, so he concentrates on keeping us from prayer or getting us to give up before we get prayer’s answer. He can often manipulate persons and circumstances so as to delay prayer’s answers, but he cannot stop God’s answers. He cannot triumph over prevailing prayer.
33. As prayer warriors, we need to know well the weapons and methods of victory in our warfare arsenal. We must not only be aware of Satan, his schemes, and his methods, we must be wise and skilled in our God-provided means of defeating and routing him. God has made available all the strategies we need for prevailing. We must put on the armor God provides. (Ephesians 6: 10-18)
34. We must beware of the dangers: neglecting prayer time; fearing Satan’s opposition; unfocused prayer warfare; unguided prayer; giving up too soon.
35. Jesus has delegated to us the authority to act on His behalf, to use the authority of His name, His cross, and His resurrection – to restrain Satan’s activities in many significant ways. We can bind and restrain his demon cohorts, back them off from the places they claim for Satan, and help the Spirit set Satan’s captives free.
36. We can present our arguments before God. There is a sense in which prevailing with God can take the form of holy reasoning, yes – even presenting arguments before God. The Bible at times uses court terms for our face-to-face meeting with God. “Come, let us reason together,” says the Lord. (Is. 1: 18) This holy debate with God is a passionate presentation to God of the many reasons why the request is in harmony with His nature, His righteous government, and the history of His holy intervention on behalf of His people.
37. When God’s honor, glory, name and reputation are at stake, we can prepare a very strong plea.
38. In summary, the Holy Spirit is the only real Teacher of prevailing intercession. We learn to pray by praying.
39. God has ordained to bring His will to pass through our prevailing intercession, joined to the prevailing intercession of both God the Son on heaven’s throne of grace and God the Holy Spirit.
40. The Spirit longs to possess us more and more fully that He may pray through us more and more prevailingly. The servant whom the Holy Spirit uses must resist the tyranny of overwork. He must resolve to be alone with God. God seeks men and women who will specially give themselves to persevering prayer.
I love the LORD, because He has heard the voice of my supplication, because He has inclined His ear to me whenever I called upon Him. Psalm 116: 1
