We want to hear from you. Please send your comments about this book to us in care of [email protected]. Thank you. ZONDERVAN Mighty Prevailing Prayer Copyright © 1990 by Wesley L. Duewel This title is also available as a Zondervan ebook. Visit www.zondervan.com/ebooks. Requests for information should be addressed to: Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530 This edition: ISBN 978-0-310-33877-2 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Duewel, Wesley L. Mighty prevailing prayer / Wesley L. Duewel. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-310-36191-5 1. Prayer—Christianity. I. Title. BV220.D84 1990 248.3'2—dc20 89-28486 All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by per- mission. All rights reserved worldwide. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher. Cover photography: Getty Images® Printed in the United States of America 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 /DCI/ 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents Foreword 7 Preface 9 1. God Has Answers for You 10 2. The Importance of Prevailing Prayer 13 3. Prevailing Prayer—The Need of the Church 20 4. Prayerlessness Is Sin 29 5. The Prevailing Christ 36 6. Your Welcome to the Throne 44 7. Why Is Prevailing Necessary? 54 8. You Must Prevail Before God 60 9. The Dynamic of Desire 67 10. The Dynamic of Fervency 73 11. The Dynamic of Importunity 80 12. Importunity Prevails 86 13. The Dynamic of Faith 91 14. How to Increase Faith 98 15. The Use and Command of Faith 103 16. The Dynamic of the Spirit, Part 1 109 17. The Dynamic of the Spirit, Part 2 115 18. The Dynamic of Uniting in Prayer 123 19. God Honors United Prayer 129 20. The Prayer of Agreement 136 21. Mighty Answers Through Agreeing in Prayer 143 22. The Dynamic of Perseverance 149 23. How Long Must You Persevere? 156 24. God's Will and Prevailing Prayer 163 25. The Dynamic of Praise 167 26. Levels of Intensity in Prevailing Prayer 171 27. Jesus Said We Would Fast 180 28. Fasting Strengthens Prayer 187 29. Carrying a Prayer Burden 194 30. How to Carry a Prayer Burden 205 31 Wrestling for Prayer Answers 208 32. Holy Wrestlers 216 33. Prayer Groans and Prayer Agony 221 34. Prayer Warfare Defeats Satan 229 35. Strategies in Prayer Warfare, Part I 238 36. Strategies in Prayer Warfare, Part 2 245 37. Dangers in Prayer Warfare 253 38. How to Bind Satan, Part I 263 39. How to Hind Satan, Part 2 270 40. The Militant Use of Jesus' Name 278 41. The Militant Use of the Word 289 42. Holy Pleadings and Argument Before God 296 43. How to Plead Before God 301 44. Will You Become Mighty in Prayer? 309 Will You Join Me in This Prayer? 515 Notes 519 Bibliography 329 Index 333 Foreword IN KEEPING WITH his title Mighty Prevailing Prayer, the author at once bombards you with the strongest and best kind of praying. And he never lets up on it. This is no kindergarten book on prayer but a summons to the battlefield. And you know it! It challenges you to mature and militant praying. You are at once on the high road, not the low. As in the book of Acts, you are immediately taken into the Upper Room where followers of Jesus persist obstinately in prayer and supplication. But isn't this the best way to learn prayer? When I saw Babe Ruth hit home runs, it did something for me right away! It stepped up my hitting and my whole vision of baseball. I said to myself, "Can you hit a ball like that?" When you hit a home run, you touch all the bases. Great praying helps you through all the other forms of praying, and steps it all up! The same thing happens when you see the praying of Jesus. You say to yourself, "Can a person pray like that}" Nor do you have to be old to become strong in prayer. Jesus was young and so were His disciples. In a few short years, His followers became mighty in prayer. How? By seeing and learning the best and greatest at once—through Jesus. It's best to learn from the best—at once! Hitch your wagon to a star! You still have to cover all the ground, but you avoid a lot of unnecessary delay. I learned prayer that way. What got me into it was revival. When I started to read the accounts of great revivals, I said, "I want that . I'm going for it." This book will help everybody—the mature and the immature in prayer. It is loaded with Scripture—almost a 7 MIGHTY PREVAILING PRAYER compendium. It will be a great help to leaders, churches, groups—to anyone. Each chapter is complete in itself, and, taken together, they sparkle like the many facets of a diamond. Along with larger illustrations are a "thousand points of light" that dart along the way. The style is the man—Wesley Duewel. He has his own style. Why not? This book will wake you up for prayer and motivate you to be your best for God. Armin R. Gesswein Founder and Director Revival Prayer Fellowship, Inc. 8 Preface THIS LIFETIME COLLECTION of Dr. Duewel's jewels on prayer is priority reading. It is a superb manual. I see it as a desktop encyclopedia on the awesome subject of Mighty Prevailing Prayer. It should be a lifetime manual for the serious student of the prayer life. Immense profit in spirit will be developed when a family uses it as a daily devotional and practices its exhortations. I was stirred by its truths. Leonard Ravenhill 9 CHAPTER 1 God Has Answers for You ARE YOU LONGING for power in prayer, the ability to get urgent and needed answers? Do you feel deeply tested at times by the unexplained delay in answers to your prayers? Are you longing for the secret to answered prayer? Prevailing prayer is prayer that obtains the answer sought. It overcomes delay, opposition, and unfavorable circumstances. It often involves the Spirit's guidance in how you pray and His deepening of your desire for the answer to prayer. It involves His specially empowering your prayer and strengthening your faith until you receive the answer from God. Do you really know how to prevail in prayer, how to obtain difficult answers that you have long needed or desired? Is your prayer list effective in bringing blessing to others? Are you satisfied with the answers you are receiving? God wants your prayer life to be filled with petitions and intercessions for others and for the advance of His kingdom. He wants answers to such prayer to become your thrilling and frequent experience. One of the great joys of prayer is securing wonderful answers that seem so long delayed and so humanly impossible. 10 GOD HAS ANSWERS FOR YOU God wants answers to your prayers to be frequent and blessed. He wants you to prove repeatedly the mighty power of prayer in your own experience. He wants you to become not only a prayer veteran but also a constant victor in situations where the answers bring great glory to God and great consternation and defeat to Satan. He wants you to experience frequently His prayer-answering power, His intensely personal concern and love for you, and the tremendously varied means available to His wisdom. God is never perplexed or surprised, and never ultimately defeated. He desires you, through prayer, to share in bringing His will to pass on earth. I invite you to join me in seeking God's answers to the tremendous needs you and I face. What are the keys that will unlock heaven's resources and release the prayer-answering power of God? What further steps can you and I take to bring God's sovereign and irresistible power to bear? Let us sit at the feet of God. Let us listen for His word. Let us turn to the lives of some of the heroes of our faith to see how they were able to see God's power released and God's answers made known. Prevailing prayer is at times so simple that even a child can get mighty answers—often in an amazingly short period of time. Even new believers sometimes pray with such faith and so much of the Spirit's help that mature saints of God are amazed and can only praise God for the answers. On the other hand, Jesus Himself indicated that some situations or needs were far more difficult than others (Mark 9:29). There can be many reasons for such cases, as we shall discover in the coming chapters. God does not deliberately hide His deepest truth from you. He does not reserve power in prayer for certain special occasions or prayer victories for some specially chosen favorites of His. Prayer is so vital to all of Christian life and to the advancement of Christ's kingdom that He desires all of us to be mighty in prayer, experienced in getting prayer answers, and undismayed by the most complex or longstanding needs.