Stick a pin in your decree and declare

It is a popular routine for people who, instead of talking to God in prayer, adopt the position of a preacher, announcing what is sure to be the result of prayer.  You are in a fortunate class if you have not heard someone decreeing and declaring things that every child of God possesses and declaring others to which no one has any right. Prosperity is the believer’s nickname because he stands totally and spiritually blessed, with no guarantee of gold, silver, employment, perfect physical health or exemption from common human troubles.  If believers choose to decree and declare instead of praying and believing we should not be surprised at the sound of balloons popping like clockwork.

It is telling that people asked to pray end up decreeing and declaring things for which the public has neither microscope nor telescope  to see and verify as granted. No Apostle of Jesus Christ or prophet of Yahweh ever ended a prayer with a decree and declare. Prayer is perfectly defined in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, so no one needs to redraft what effective prayer looks like. Back to the drawing board, please.

God did not authorize any eavesdropping on prayers by any agency for prayers to be fulfilled

We do not need anyone listening to our prayers and inventing the wheel by pretending to have insight into what God wants to accomplish in our lives.  The Lord Christ himself has assured us that our attitudes in prayer should include faith – assurance – that God hears us and confidence that God will not give us scorpions when we ask him for eggs.  In our current global distress with corona virus it is unimaginable that God has not heard the millions of people who have requested a specific end to the pandemic.  We should also be certain that speaking things into existence is a rare ability even among the royal priesthood.  Things we and our neighbours need and want should all be appearing day after day because God grants power and authority to his children to act as His Son does.

Decree’s terminology spaces

“Decree” in Job 22:28 (NASB, King James Version) means to cut, not speak.  The first time the term  appears in the Bible it means just that, cut or divide, and had nothing to do with talk.  “The king said, “Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one and half to the other.”  (1 Kings 3:25, NASB).  It comes again in verse 26 “Divide him”.  Aramaicic gazar in Daniel’s prophecy is also  CUT but 5 times refers to the activity of soothsayers.

The chances that Eliphaz is roasting Job with a soothsaying charge are high indeed.  The term from which the translators get decree, gazar, is prominently related to speaking in Daniel’s prophecy as soothsaying.  Otherwise gazar means cut, and an emer is clearly related to talking, but what does cutting (off) a saying have to do with establishing something? We can be sure that no-one in the Job speech cycles embraced the idea that human sayings make a thing happen.  This, however, is not what the DECREE AND DECLARE CREW is doing.  Man!  We would have no hospitals, no need for grocers and bankers, men and women to procreate.  We would all be single having miracle babies, and unemployed making tons of money.  Can believers also grow in grace and knowledge apart from due diligence? It is obvious that our prayer and work experience are the critical contributors to our growth.

Is “decree and declare” to be taken as God’s standard answer?

Perhaps few of us are recognizing that prayer involves listening as well.  Prayer is not monologue but dialogue.   If we know anything about God it should include his treasury of things to say to us.  I cannot imagine any child of God approaching his throne and not expecting timely help in the areas God has promised, and just plain love talk.  It is next to Impossible to speak with God and not hear his loving reassurance that everything we need is in place.  Impatience is as oil to water in the prayer exchange.  Timely ( eukairon )  help is an essential part of the Lord’s prayer service, and we surely cannot think that timely means anything beside God’s timing (Hebrews 4:16). If the declarers and decreers are on a power trip then we should expect to see things happen by fiat such as when God said in the beginning “let there be”. Is it sufficient to imagine that everything they decree and declare is happening just as spoken, despite evidence to the contrary week after week, month after month, and year after year? Do we not know how many seasons of prosperity, how many deliverances from bondage, how many triumphs over evil spirits, how many demons have been sent back to hell by decree and declaration? Of course we don’t!

Everything we need for life and godliness affirmed by promises

2) Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord; 3) seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.”

2 Peter 1:2-3, NASB

Expectations from divine words, written or otherwise, do not stray from the following.

• teaching
• reproof
• correction
• training in righteousness
• adequate (complete)
• equipped for every good work (2 Timothy 3:16-17, NASB)

For getting the gospel banner

There seems to be no lack of space for reinventing the wheel in handling God’s word.  What happens when people pray is not rocket science. People should expect answers in word and deed.  Maybe it is our public prayer model that is baldly broken,   Even when we pile up promises around specific prayer requests we more often than not have no evidence of the answer.  it seems more likely that we have forgotten that all things that flow from Christ’s intervention are shaped by the gospel, not by the law, and not through creation models of speaking things into existence. How much time does a church service have to invest in the kind of waiting for the answer that goes with private (the essential quality!) prayer?  We should be leaving the answers to prayer in God’s capable hands.  Our hurry to see the answer to prayer is inconsistent with confidence, faith, and familiarity with God’s intervening mercy and grace. Perhaps a new translation of Hebrews 4:16b, NASB will help “… so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need”, lest we keep thinking that decreeing and declaring is a thing to take to prayer meeting.

… receive mercy and find grace towards (εις) timely help

We receive mercy and we receive grace in the direction of God’s timely help, because God controls the timing of the help.