PEOPLE WHO SAY “WHEN I FOUND CHRIST” CHRIST WAS NOT LOST. CHRIST WAS THE ONE THAT FOUND YOU.

BECAUSE OF THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD, HE RESERVES THE RIGHT AS TO WHEN TO ANSWER A PRAYER. YOU CAN’T QUERY GOD.

YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO PRAY UNTIL YOUR REQUEST IS GRANTED, DON’T COUNT THE NUMBER OF TIMES YOU HAVE PRAYED.

THE ONLY THING YOU MUST DO IS MAKE SURE THAT IT IS NOT SIN DELAYING THE ANSWER TO YOUR PRAYERS

SIN IS AN INSULATOR, IT PREVENTS YOUR PRAYER FROM REACHING GOD AND THE POWER OF GOD FROM MANIFESTING IN YOUR LIFE.

• Pastor E.A. Adeboye at RCCG Special Online Sunday Service

Father Almighty I want to thank You for the salvation of our souls, thank You for all the miracles, signs and wonders You have done for us. We bless Your Holy name because when You speak, it is done and when You command mountains, mountains do move. There is no one like You. Today we have come to You again on behalf of Your children, please arise and scatter all Your enemies and let the doors open wide for all Your children in Jesus mighty name we have prayed.

1 Kings 17:43-44

We move on to GOING HIGHER PART 41, The question we want to ask now is why must God wait until the seventh time before He answers Elijah. Not too long ago, Elijah prayed only once and fire fell so why must God wait for the seventh time before He answers.

1. God is sovereign
   In Psalm 115:3, the Bible tells us that God does whatever He wants and you can’t query Him. In Daniel 4:34-35 even an idol-worshiping king, Nebuchadnezzar told us, “no one can say to Him “what doest thou?”, you can’t query God. In Deuteronomy 32:39, God Himself makes it clear “I kill and I make alive. Nobody can deliver out of My hand”. He made all things and He can do whatever He likes with what He has made. He is a Potter and we are just the clay. In Romans 9:10-14, the Bible tells us that before Jacob and Esau was born, God had already said “Jacob I love and Esau I hate”. If you don’t like it go and sue me.

In Isaiah 43:13, He said “I will work, who can let?” In other words, nobody can hinder me. We sing one of our choruses that when God says Yes, nobody can say no. When God opens the door, no one can close it and when God closes the door, no one can open it. He went as far as saying in Isaiah 54:16-17, He said “I am even the one who made wasters to destroy, I made them all”. There is nothing that was created that was not created by me that is why I can say no weapon fashioned against you shall prosper. In Romans 9:15-16, this sovereign God said “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy on”. That is why I am praying for you today.

• May God have mercy on you.

In Lamentations 3:22, the Bible made it clear that it is of the mercy of the Lord that we are not consumed. Just His mercy, period. Thank God His mercy is renewed every single day. That is why you are able to read this today because God has been merciful to you.

Talking about seven times, in His sovereignty He controls numbers. For example, He reserved number one for Himself. Deuteronomy 6:4 – Number One is for God, that is why He is the only one who should really say ‘I Am”. Exodus 3:13-14 says “I am that I am”. So when you say I am the boss, who are you? There is only one fellow called I AM who is number one.

Number One tells us the power of unity, that when people are united they become as powerful as God. In Genesis 11:6 when the people wanted to build the Tower of Babel, God said the people are one, they were united and there is nothing they want to do that anyone will stop them from doing. Even I can’t stop unity from achieving their goal.

He made Number 2 the number of cooperation. In Ecclesiastes 4:9 He said two are better than one. In Matthew 18:19, He says ”if two shall agree as touching anything on earth, it shall be done for them”. In Genesis 2:24, He said “a man will leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife and the two shall become one”. Cooperation is the next thing to the Almightiness of God. I hope you will learn from that, particularly those of you who are married, cooperate and you will be able to achieve marvelous things. Two of you, pray together and you will be able to get an answer all the time.

Number 3 is the number He has assigned to trinity: God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Mathew 28:19. What does three stand for? Trinity, Stability, Establishment. Number 3 stands for something that is firmly settled, that is why you have the tripod stand.

Anytime you want to cook, you can put anything on it knowing it’s not going to fall down. He said in His word, Ecclesiastes 4:12 “a threefold cord is not easily broken”. That’s why you find in Acts 10:38 “How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power who went about doing good for God was with Him. God, Jesus of Nazareth, the Holy Ghost and then the three of them began to move together and miracles began to happen.

Number 4 is the number for pillars and boundaries. When we talk about the four corners of a house, in Genesis 13:14-15, God said to Abraham “I am about to give you this land, walk through it length and breadth. From the east to the west, from the north to the south”. Four corners, four boundaries.

Number 5 is the number for grace. That is the number representing help that you do not really deserve. In Genesis 6:1-8, the Bible tells us that Noah found grace in the sight of God. The Bible didn’t tell us that he was much better than the others but he found grace.

• My prayer is that you too will find grace in the sight of God.

In Ephesians 2:4-9, it is by grace that you are saved, not your work. We have said it again and again that when some people are giving testimony they will say “when I found Christ”. Christ was not lost, it was Christ that found you. Jesus Christ says it very clearly in John 6:44, “no man can come unto me except my Father draws him”. It is grace that brought you not yourself. When you hear a sermon and all of a sudden you feel hungry to surrender your life to Christ. It is grace at work, It is the Father bringing you help.

Number 6 is known as the number of man. Special number assigned to man, probably because man was created on the sixth day (Genesis 1:26-31). Double 6 – 66 is not even a bad number. Six is not a bad number, it is the day when God decided to replicate Himself in another man. In my own tribe, number six is regarded as a very favourable number. 66 is not a bad number, the Bible is made up of sixty six books. 6 becomes dangerous when it is repeated three times- 666. How come that one which is the number of the Anti Christ which I am sure you know very well. It becomes dangerous because it is man trying to challenge the supremacy of the divine trinity, it is when man wants to say “I am God” which makes it a dangerous number. (Revelation 13:11-18).

Which brings us to the number we are talking about and that is the number 7. That is the number of perfection, the number of rest (Genesis 2:1-3), the number of excellence, the number of completion (Genesis 1:31). Seven is the number of perfection. So maybe God was waiting for the prayer of Elijah to become perfect. Because of the sovereignty of God, He reserves the right as to when to answer a prayer. He can answer you only when you pray only once. In Matthew 14:22-32, when Peter was walking on water and He began to sink, he cried only once “Lord help me” and He brought him out”. He didn’t wait for Peter to cry the second time because it may have been too late. If He had asked Him to pray seven times, they would have had to pump out a lot of water out of him.

Occasionally He wants you to pray twice like in Mark 10:46-52, when Bartimaeus cried the first time, they silenced him or tried to silence him. It was when he cried the second time louder than before that Jesus stood still and he got his miracle. At times, you have to pray thrice before your miracle happens, 1 Kings 17:17-24, Elijah had to pray three times over the dead son of the widow of Zarephath before the boy came back to life. Same thing was repeated in 2 Kings 4:18-37, Elisha had to pray three times before the son of the Shunamite woman came back to life.

Occasionally God waits for you to pray seven times. For example, In Joshua 6:1-20, the Angel told Joshua “you must go round the city seven days”. Once for six days and seven times on the seventh day before you shout. In 2 Kings 5:1-14, Namaan had to dip himself seven times in the River Jordan before he was cleansed. What lesson are we to learn from this? You are supposed to pray until your request is granted, don’t count the number of times you have prayed. In Matthew 15:21-28, that woman whose daughter was grievously vexed of the devil kept on praying. The apostles tried to drive her away, she didn’t pay attention she kept on praying until she got her request. Jesus said in John 16:24 “ask until your joy is full”.

In 1 Thessalonians 5:17, the Bible said we are to pray without seizing. Keep on praying, stop counting. The only thing you must do is make sure that it is not sin delaying the answer to your prayers because Isaiah 59:1-2 makes it clear that God is not deaf that He can not , His hands are not shortened to save you but sin can block the way. So before you begin to pray at all, check that there is no sin blocking my way. Which is why I keep crying to those who are not born again and are praying without answering, stop pretending that you are His child when you are not, surrender your life to Him and let His blood wash away your sins. If you have been born again and you have backslidden, sin is an insulator, it prevents your prayer reaching God and the power of God from manifesting in your life. Sin is a killer, it won’t allow your prayers to get through. Come back to God.