Isaiah 35:4 He will come to save you

• DAY 8 BIBLE READING

Luke 6-10


• DAY 8 PRAYER DEVOTIONAL

Isaiah 35:4 HE WILL COME TO SAVE YOU

THE LORD JESUS WILL BRING SALVATION TO THOSE WHO ARE WAITING FOR HIM (HEBREWS 9:28)

After 70 years in captivity in exile Israel would be in a place of desolation and feeling totally abandoned by God…. 70 years would be a long time .. It would feel as though God had totally disregarded her, that he had forgotten and rejected her .. as if his hands were tied somehow and he was for some reason unable to act.

In Isaiah 40 we read of God bringing comfort (verse 1) and coming with saving power (verse 9). God was big enough to act on her behalf… and he would do so… He would dramatically intervene in rescuing her from captivity and from exile…and Jesus would dramatically intervene in human history many years later…. and he will do so again … in the second coming at the end of history.

In the journey of praying and seeking God for answers to prayer, seeking national revival and personal revival it is important to keep praying like the persistent widow (Luke 18) until the answer comes…..the persistent widow kept coming to the unjust judge asking for justice against her adversary, until he gave in and gave her justice. Following his parable of the persistent widow, Jesus in Luke 18 says …’however, when the Son of man comes will he find faith on the earth?’

God’s promise is ‘he will come to save you.’ Yield to the Lord’s will, persevere in prayer and wait before the Lord. He will surely come.


• Lord I hold on to your promise that you will come and save me. You are my saviour and deliverer. You have saved me from my sins on the cross and I trust that you will save and deliver me completely from all my present struggles, my apparently unanswered prayers …I bring them to you today. In my weakness with my fearful heart…. I yield to your will. I will keep praying and I will wait for your deliverance. Come Lord Jesus.

Isaiah 35:4 he will come with vengeance; with divine retribution

• DAY 7 BIBLE READING

Luke 1-5


• DAY 7 PRAYER DEVOTIONAL

Isaiah 35:4 he will come with vengeance; with divine retribution

HE WILL JUDGE SIN

If we are Jesus’ disciples, seeking a more intimate prayer life with Him, we will be seeking to follow him, yielding to his authority in our lives preparing for his coming …. so that he will come and reign in us. He will come…. but are we yielded and are we open to him dealing with areas in our lives that are not submitted, knowing that he will judge sin in our lives?

Here are a few key areas where you and I need to be yielded. Ask the Holy Spirit to highlight any specific areas where you do not have a disciplined Christian life – read over the list below slowly-

Are you an example to others? - e.g. punctuality, quiet times, ‘weight’, thought life, attitude to work, tidiness, courtesy, use of time, dress, faithfulness in assignments etc.

Are you growing in faith? If so is this demonstrated by active participation in church meetings, in prayer, praise and spiritual gifts?

Are you growing in humility evidenced by willingness to open your life to others? Are you growing in ability to share other people’s problems with compassion and faith?

Are you positive in attitude and showing wisdom and restraint in your speech? Are you growing in your desire and ability to share your faith with non-Christians? Are you willing to act on counsel and to receive correction with humility. Do you show initiative together with being a good follower?

Are you growing in confidence and in your ability to help others, becoming free from feelings of inferiority and inadequacy? Are you free from resentment and anger, and able to quickly forgive those who have hurt you? Are you growing in faith and responsibility with money i.e. you are a cheerful giver to God’s work. Also are you quick to pay your bills? Do you have good relationships in marriage and with your children? Are you maintaining good relationships with others in the church and with leaders?

Knowing that he will judge sin when he comes, will we yield these areas of our lives to the Lord now and repent where we are not yielded to Him? Do not slip into condemnation believing the lie that you are a compete failure in every area… but if the Holy Spirit is highlighting ( convicting you) of a particular area which you know needs to change – confess it to the Lord! As you confess it… believe the promise in I John 1:9. If we confess our sins he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. As you confess your sin to the Lord , you are cleansed and you are forgiven!


• I confess the following specific areas where I am not following you closely Lord Jesus ……In your mercy Lord forgive me and help me to walk in your ways. I receive your forgiveness and your cleansing and yield this area of my life to you and as I submit it to you today I ask you for your help to change.

Isaiah 35:4 '...your God will come.'

• DAY 6 BIBLE READING

Mark 10-16


• DAY 6 PRAYER DEVOTIONAL

Isaiah 35:4

YOUR GOD WILL COME

‘If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done to you’ John 15:7

E.M. Bounds says ‘Prayer is not a duty which must be performed, to ease obligation and to quiet conscience.. Prayer is the child’s request not to the winds, not to the world, but to the Father. Prayer is the outstretched arms of the child for the Father’s help. Prayer is the child’s cry calling to the Father’s ear, the Father’s heart, and to the Father’s ability, which the Father is to hear, the Father is to feel, and which the Father is to relieve. Prayer is the seeking of God’s great good, which will not come if we do not pray.'

God wants to answer our prayers… he wants to come and respond …. but will we abide in Christ, will we approach Him as a child approaches a father ? He is calling us to pray. He longs for us to enter into life with him, but are we abiding in the Son?

Andrew Murray says 'It is Christ whom the Father always hears; God is in Christ, and can only be reached by being in Him, to be in Him is the way to have our prayer heard; fully and wholly abiding in Him; we have the right to ask whatsoever we will, and the promise that it shall be done unto us.'

God will come .. it will be done to us, according to our asking, as we abide in Christ, as we abide in the Son.


• Let the truth that you want to answer my prayers sink deep into my heart, Lord. Come and let it be done to me according to my asking as I abide in Christ. I stretch out my arms to you Father.Come and hear my prayer.

Bounds, E.M Complete works, 230-233

Murray, A. With Christ in the School of Prayer,150,151

Isaiah 35:3 Strengthen the feeble hands, steady the knees that give way; say to those with fearful hearts, “Be strong, do not fear;”

• DAY 5 BIBLE READING

Mark 4-9


• DAY 5 PRAYER DEVOTIONAL

Isaiah 35:3

HAVE FAITH IN THE PROMISES OF GOD. DO NOT FEAR

The devotional on Day 1 asked the question –‘How do you see your prayer time? Do you see it chiefly as an obligation or duty …as a means of maintaining your own Christian life. If your prayer life is motivated primarily by a sense of obligation or duty then it is really guilt and fear that are the driving forces behind your prayer life. If you have a rising faith that is quickened by the promises of God that He will answer your prayers and if you have a growing desire for those prayers to be answered, then you are well placed to begin to cry out to God in prayer and supplication.

Fraser wrote ‘ real supplication is the child of heartfelt desire, and cannot prevail without it; a desire not of earth nor of our sinful hearts, but wrought into us by God himself. Oh for such desires ! There is a sense in which your deep holy desire is in itself prayer. We read in Psalm 10:17 ‘ You hear O Lord the desire of the afflicted… you listen to their cry…’ Andrew Murray says ‘desire is the soul of prayer, and the cause of insufficient or unsuccessful prayer is very much to be found in the lack or feebleness of desire.’

Instead of fear and guilt, before we pray we should surrender our emotions, surrender our desires. Fear is the enemy of faith in the promises of God. Yield every bit of fear and anxiety and surrender wholeheartedly to the will of God.

Call out to God for your desires to be stirred..…and persevere.. and when you are sure that you know the will of God concerning a matter that God has placed on your heart, do not give up until you have prevailed with God and God has lifted the prayer burden from you. Without the dynamic of perseverance much prayer remains unanswered. If the wilderness is surely to blossom, if life is going to break out in our personal prayer lives and if revival is break out in our nation then we will need to be listen to God’s promises, believe them and allow Godly desires to grow in us, so that we hold on in faith and persevere in prayer until the answer comes. There is no other way. It is by faith and perseverance that we inherit the promises of God.. not by fear and doubt.


• Lord I surrender my fears to you. Fears of not being acceptable. Having been orphaned at the Fall, in the garden of Eden, so I surrender that deep fear of rejection to you Lord. Thank you Lord Jesus that you have made a way for me to be restored into relationship with the Father. I pray for that quickening of my faith and the stirring of my desire to pray. Revive me by your Spirit, strengthen and steady me again that through faith and perseverance I might inherit the promises of God!

Duewel, W Mighty Prevailing Prayer, 67, 68, 149, 150

Fraser, Mrs J.O Fraser and Prayer

Isaiah 35:2 The glory of Lebanon will be given to it, the splendour of Carmel and Sharon; they will see the glory of the Lord, the splendour of our God.

• DAY 4 BIBLE READING

Matthew 25-28, Mark 1-3


• DAY 4 PRAYER DEVOTIONAL

Isaiah 35:2

LET THE FATHER’S GLORY BE OUR CHIEF OBJECT IN PRAYER

Andrew Murray says ‘That the Father may be glorified in the Son; it is to this end that Jesus on His throne in glory will do all we ask in his name.’ See John 14:13 ‘Every answer to prayer he gives will have this as its object; when there is no prospect of this object being obtained, He will not answer. It follows as a matter of course that this must be with us, as with Jesus the essential element of our petitions; the glory of the Father must be the aim and end , the very soul and life of our prayer.

It was so with Jesus when he was on earth, ‘I seek not mine own honour: I seek the honour of Him that sent me; in these words we have the keynote of His life. In the first words of the high priestly prayer He says: Father glorify your son that your Son may glorify you .’I have glorified you on earth, glorify me with yourself.’ The ground on which he asks to be taken up into the glory he had with the Father, is the twofold one: He has glorified Him on earth; He will still glorify Him in heaven. What he asks is only to enable Him to glorify the Father more. It is as we enter into sympathy with Jesus on this point, and gratify Him by making the Father’s glory our chief object in prayer too that our prayer cannot fail of an answer. There is nothing of which the Beloved Son has said more distinctly that it will glorify the Father than this, His doing what we ask; He will not, therefore, let any opportunity slip of securing this object. Let us make his aim ours: let glory of the Father be the link between our asking His doing: such a prayer must prevail.

This word of Jesus comes indeed as a sharp two-edged sword piercing even to dividing of soul and spirit, and quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart. Jesus in his prayers on earth, in His intercessions in heaven, in His promise of an answer to our prayers from there makes this His first object - the glory of His Father. Is it so with us too? Or are not in large measure self-interest and self-will the strongest motives urging us to pray? Or if we cannot see that this is the case, have we not to acknowledge that the distinct conscious longing for the glory of the Father is not what animates our prayers? And yet it must be so.


• Lord may the glory of the Father be the aim and the end , the very soul and life of my prayer. I yield my self-will, my own fleshly desires to you and say may your will be done and your kingdom come in and through me. … for it is all about your glory, Lord. I yield to you this day. May more of your glory Father and more of your splendour be revealed this day as I pray.

Murray, A With Christ in the School of Prayer 49, 143, 144,145

Isaiah 35: 1,2 Like the crocus, it will burst into bloom; it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy.

• DAY 3 BIBLE READING

Matthew 17-24


• DAY 3 PRAYER DEVOTIONAL

Isaiah 35:1,2

HE SAYS THAT YOUR PRAYER WILL BE JOY-FILLED

In John 16:24, Jesus says ‘Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive and your joy will be complete.’ Andrew Murray says, ‘ The power of this promise lies in a loving relationship between us as children and the Father in heaven; when we live and walk in that relationship, the prayer of faith and its answer will be the natural result.’ He says Live as a child before God and pray as a child and… you will most assuredly be heard.

‘And what is the true child-life? The answer can be found in any home. The child that by preference forsakes the father’s house, that has no pleasure in the presence and love and obedience of the father and still thinks to ask and obtain what he will, will surely be disappointed. On the country he to whom communication with the father, and the honour and love of the father are the joy of his life, will find that it is the father’s joy to grant his requests’. Scripture says ‘As many as are led by the spirit of God, they are the children of God:’ the childlike privilege of asking is inseparable from the childlike life under the leading of the Spirit. He that gives himself to be led by the Spirit in his life, will be led by him in his prayers too and he will find that Fatherlike giving is the Divine response to childlike living. As Jesus says ‘Ask and you will receive and your joy will be complete.’

Beni Johnson says, intercessors should be the happiest people on the planet because they know the plans of God. God is in a good mood and he wants to give good gifts to His children. As intercessors our job is to look ahead to the good gifts that God wants to give to us and to agree with those plans. We read in Hebrews12:2 that ‘Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross despising the shame and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God’. Jesus endured so much while he was here on earth and he endured it for the promise of joy that was set before him. Jesus is into joy! Beni Johnson says ‘joy is the pulse of heaven. As we align ourselves with the will of the Father, his kingdom will come on earth as it is in heaven and joy will break out! Like the crocus it will burst into bloom; it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy.




• Thank you Lord for your promise ‘Ask and you will receive and your joy will be complete’ As it is the Father’s joy to grant his child’s requests, so teach me how to pray child-like prayers, led by your spirit, in accordance with your will and may joy break our here on earth as in heaven. Lord, teach me how to pray.

Murray, A With Christ in the School of Prayer 48-53

Johnson, B The happy intercessor 80, 84

Isaiah 35:1 The wilderness will rejoice and blossom.

• DAY 2 BIBLE READING

Matthew 9-16


• DAY 2 PRAYER DEVOTIONAL

Isaiah 35:1

THE FATHER WANTS TO ANSWER YOUR PRAYERS

Jesus says that the Father ‘waits to hear every prayer of faith’…. ‘to give us whatsoever we will’, and ‘whatsoever we ask in his name’. Are these promises bearing fruit in your prayer life?

In Matthew 7:7,8 we read ‘Ask and it shall be given you; seek and you shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you; for every one that asks receives, and he that seeks finds and to him that knocks it shall be opened.’ Andrew Murray says, ‘We cannot but feel how in this sixfold repetition he wants to impress deep on our minds this one truth, that we may and must most confidently expect an answer to our prayer…. that the Lord should have thought it needful in so many forms to repeat the truth, is a lesson of deep import. He therefore at the very outset of His instruction to those who would learn to pray, seeks to lodge this truth deep into their hearts; prayer does avail much; ask and you shall receive; every one that asks, receives. This is the fixed eternal law of the kingdom: if you ask and receive not, it must be because there is something amiss or wanting in prayer.

As a child has to prove a sum to be correct, so the proof that we have prayed aright is the answer. If we ask and receive not, it is because we have not learned to pray aright…. Let us seek not only just in our seasons of prayer, but at all times, to hold fast the joyful assurance: man’s prayer on earth and God’s answer in heaven are meant for each other. Let us trust Jesus to teach us to pray that the answer can come.

Andrew Murray says, ‘We have become so accustomed to limit the wonderful love and the large promises of our God, that we cannot read the simplest and clearest statement of our Lord and without the qualifying clauses by which by which we guard and expound them. If there is one thing I think the church needs to learn, it is that God means prayer to have an answer, and that it has not entered into the heart of man to conceive what God will do for His child who gives himself to believe that his prayer will be heard. God hears prayer; this is a truth universally admitted but of which very few understand the meaning or experience the power.’

Many complain they had not the power to pray in faith, to pray the effectual prayer that availeth much. Andrew Murray says ‘the message I bring is that Jesus is waiting, is longing to teach them this. Christ is our life; in heaven He ever lives to pray; His life in us is an ever-praying life, if we will but trust Him for it. Christ teaches us to pray not only by example, by instruction, by command, by promises but by showing us himself the ever-living intercessor as our Life. It is when we believe this and go and abide in Him for our prayer-life too, that our fears of not being able to pray aright will vanish, and we shall joyfully and triumphally trust our Lord to teach us to pray, to be Himself the life and the power of our prayer


• Thank you Lord for your promise to give to me whatsoever I ask in your name. May the truth that you Father intend my prayers to be answered take root in my heart. Teach me to pray, Lord Jesus. You Lord ever-live to pray. You are my life. Give me that joyful assurance that my prayers on earth and your answer in heaven are meant for each other. LET MY WILDERNESS REJOICE AND BLOSSOM AS YOUR LIFE, YOUR EVER-PRAYING LIFE FLOWS THROUGH ME.

Murray, A With Christ in the School of Prayer 10,11