If there is an area in your life where you are longing for a breakthrough but it’s just not happening, it could be that there is a barrier of some kind between you and God that is preventing Him from doing what you can’t do on your own.
It could be that you just need to ask Him. That’s what James said. “You have not, because you ask not” (James 4:2b). Our all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving heavenly Father may simply be waiting for you to come before His throne of grace, in your time of need, and ask for His help with something that you can’t do in your own strength.
That’s part of the problem, isn’t it? Our strength. Our ingenuity. Our independence. That’s what we’ve chased our whole life. It’s
what our parents wanted for us – that we would grow up to be responsible, independent, hardworking, successful adults. And all of that is obviously a good thing in this world. But… God wants us, as we grow to be independent of our parents, to also grow more and more dependent on Him. He wants us to understand that we can’t do this on our own. He wants His children to come to Him in prayer, again and again, and seek His help, wisdom, peace, provision, plans, power, and more.
This lesson isn’t easily learned, especially in our self-sufficient “we can do this” world. Even Jesus’ disciples learned this lesson the hard way. After failure. They were trying to do miracles – which they had done before – but now it wasn’t working. They were confused. And when they asked Jesus about it, He replied, This kind can only come out by prayer.
Mark 9:29 The disciples had started out depending on God’s power to work through them, and they saw amazing things happen. But they had become confident in themselves as time went on, and forgot that it was God alone who could do the impossible. God wants us to come to Him in prayer and ask for His help.
But simply asking is not enough. Simply coming to God and saying, “I need you to fix this” is not enough. How we ask is important too. What’s going on in our hearts and minds and lives matters. That’s what the Only by Prayer study looks at.
We will look at some of the barriers that could be keeping you from seeing God work mightily in your life. We will think about how God wants you to pray to ask for His help so that He will intervene and help you break through those areas of need that you are struggling with in your life.
It is our prayer that God will use this study to infuse your prayer life with new power and passion, and as a result, that you will see God‘s hand working mightily in and