Smith Wigglesworth- Praying with an Open Heaven
“And this is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him.”
1 John 5: 14, 15
What a thought to be able to ask and know we stand below an open Heaven, and what we ask for we receive. For most the concept of prayer is a hope and maybe situation. Yet when we look at Jesus, we see that He never failed to get His prayers answered. In fact, Jesus never doubted the Father would answer His prayers.
Smith Wigglesworth said-
“It is necessary that we find our bearings in this Word. There is nothing that will bring to you such confidence as a life that is well-pleasing to Him. When Daniel’s life pleased God he could ask to be kept in a lions’ den.
When we face situations in which we absolutely need our prayer answered we understand the importance of knowing how to pray with such confidence and get results. To do so we must have our bearings in the Word and not our circumstances. We must think about Daniel and how he was cast into the lions den and lions either eat you or simply kill you to eat you later. Now, think that had Daniel died that night we would have lost such rich and key prophesies. But Daniel got into alignment with Heaven, and it put him under an open Heaven.
Smith explained-
“But you cannot ask with confidence until there is perfect union between God and Jesus. The foundation is confidence in and fidelity to God.”
This union is forged in the Secret Place of His Presence. It is here we are invited to discover the Secret Place of His heart. The deep things of our heart are so precious to us that we protect them and rarely if ever allow anyone access to them. Life has taught us that if we do open up we will get hurt and injured, and these damages go extremely deep. So, when the Father calls us to come into the Secret Place, He calls us to come and open up the secret place of our heart. Through simply coming to know Him, we discover we can truly trust Him. The Lord comes in His absolute truth which he reveals in His Word.
Smith explained-
Some people think that Jesus wept because of the love He had for Lazarus, but that could not be. Jesus knew that these people around the grave, even Martha, had not come to the realization that whatever He would ask of the Father He would give.”
Jesus wants us to come to the same place.
“And whatever you ask in My Name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask Me anything in My Name, I will do it.”
John 14: 13, 14
Jesus didn’t say that He might do, or if we earned it he would do it for us but that He would do. Smith added-
“The moment you pray you find that the Heavens are open. If you have to wait for the Heavens to be opened something is wrong.”
There is a life that we can live in which we walk under an open Heaven and experience a successful prayer life. Smith explained-
“I tell you what makes us lose the confidence is disobedience to God and His laws. Jesus said it was because of them who stood around that He prayed; but He knew that He heard Him always. And because He knew that His Father heard Him always, He knew that the dead could come forth.”
Jesus walked in boldness of faith because of the intimacy of fellowship He enjoyed with the Father. We are called to experience the same intimacy of communion with the Father and as a result that same confidence in our prayer life. Smith said-
“There is a divine revelation within you, that came in when you were born from above, and this is a real faith.”
In the Secret Place, we need to forge a deep fellowship with that Lord and we learn obedience. Our hearts become soft and we learn the walk of obedience through coming in tune with Him. Here is an important key that Smith explained-
“You cannot talk about things which you have ever experienced. It seems to me that God has process of training us. You cannot take people into the depths of God unless you have been broken yourself. I have been broken and broken and broken. Praise God that He is near to them that are of a broken heart. You must have a brokenness to get into the depths of God.”
We look at Jesus, Our Role Model, and see how He learned obedience through the things He suffered. He had to walk daily in absolute obedience to the will of the Father. That meant daily seeking His face and His strength.
“Seek the Lord and his strength, seek His face continually.”
1 Chronicles 16: 11
As we look at Daniel we see he understood the importance of seeking the Lord’s face and strength continually. This requires us to be broken and humbled to seek His face. We must broken of us, our rights, our opinions and our need to be heard.
Smith said-
We fail to realize the largeness of our Father ‘s measure, and we forget that He has a measure which cannot be exhausted. It pleases Him when we ask for most, ‘How much more.’ “
The Lord always wants to ask for more because He is the God of the exceedingly abundantly above and beyond. He desires to go beyond that he might demonstrate His greatness. We think so small because we need to understand the greatness of our God.
Smith said-
“This confidence comes not from our much speaking, but it comes because of our fellowship with Him. There is a wonderful fellowship with Jesus. The chief thing is to be sure that we take time for communication with Him. There is a communion with Jesus that is life, and that is better than preaching. If God tells you definitely to do anything do it, but be sure it is God that tells you.”
This brings us back to the need to press into the deeper waters of the Secret Place.
“Draw near to God and He will draw near to you”
James 4: 8
We are able to come as close to Him as we want. But there is a price to be paid to draw close. Access is given through the blood but if we are to draw close we must lay aside the old, put to death our flesh and come in simple faith. The Word declares that “who can ascend the hill of the Lord accept he who has clean hands and a pure heart.” What contaminates us is the flesh and so it is the flesh that must be purged and removed.
Smith explained-
“If the sword ever comes to you, never straighten yourselves up against it, but let it pierce you. You must be yielded to the Word of God. The Word will work out love in our hearts, and when practical love is in our hearts there is no room to vaunt ourselves. We see ourselves as nothing when we get lost in this divine love.”
The Word must be allowed to prune us and prune us, exposing all that needs to be removed and then allowing it the Word to remove it. The Word wants to lift us to see from Heaven’s perspective.
“You can never pray ‘the prayer of faith’ if you look at the person who is needing it; there is only one place to look and that is to Jesus.”
Jesus is the Word and we need in the Secret Place, to allow the Holy Spirit to reveal the Word to us. We need the Bread of His Presence, a now Word, and life. We must eat of this until every fiber of our being partakes of it and we become what we eat. Smith found himself in a challenging situation and said-
“My soul was stirred, I was anxious for God to get a chance to do something and to have His way.”
We must be stirred in the Secret Place so that we get disturbed with a vision from Heaven. Smith said-
“Oh, beloved, may God help us this afternoon to get our eyes off the conditions and symptoms, no matter how bad they may be, and get them fastened upon Him, and then we shall be able to pray the prayer of faith.”