One major benefit of
prayer is captivity turning. The righteous is always Satan's target and he has
just one objective for doing that; he wants to frustrate the believer and wear
him out. He wants him to stop believing God, and to curse God so that he can be
drawn out of the safety of divine covering to the open where he will be made an
easy prey for satanic forces to deal with. But Psalm 34:19 says, "Many are
the afflictions of the righteous but God delivereth him out of them all."
Not out of 'some', but out of them all. That means, all afflictions are
resistible and destructible. There is an answer to every kind of oppression and
a way out of all captivities.
God said in Jeremiah
29:12,14, "Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me,
and I will hearken unto you... and I will turn away your captivity..." God
is ever ready to turn away our captivities, but only on one condition - when we
call upon Him and pray unto Him.
In Acts chapter 12, we
are told that Herod had killed James the brother of John and because there was
no reaction from the Church, he proceeded further to take Peter. He put Peter
in prison, intending to bring him out to be killed after the Easter
celebrations. But the Bible says, "...Prayer was made without ceasing of
the church unto God for him..."
Peter was in captivity
and would have been killed. He was put in prison, bound with two chains, kept
between two soldiers and there were keepers outside the prison doors. Maybe you
are in a similar situation, it looks as if you have been chained on every side.
But we also see in that chapter that as the saints kept praying for Peter, the
night before he was to be killed, the following happened: (1) The angel of the
Lord came down, (2) a light shined in the prison, (3) the angel smote Peter on
the side and raised him up, (4) Peter's chains fell off from his hands (5) the
iron gate that led into the city opened to them of it's own accord (Acts
12:4-12).
Until the oppressed
prays he cannot be free from oppression. But when you pray God will send His
angel for your deliverance, the light of heaven will shatter every darkness
around you, your chains will fall off and new doors of opportunity will begin
to open to you on their own accord so that you can enjoy total restoration of
all that you may have lost. In the model prayer that Jesus taught His
disciples, one of the recommended prayer points is, "...Deliver us from
evil" (Luke 11:2,4). Prayer is the gateway to freedom from oppressions and
turning of captivities. That is biblical prescription. "Is any among you
afflicted? let him pray"(James 5:13)
Meditate on these: Psalm 50:15, Psalm 34:17
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