Today we continue our series entitled “Living the Grace Life,” where we will learn to embrace and walk in God’s unmerited, unearned, and often undeserved favor throughout 2025.
As part of this series, I am teaching you how to pray from a position of God’s grace.
Key scriptures for this year:
2 Corinthians? ?9?:?8? ?TPT??
“Yes, God is more than ready to overwhelm you with every form of grace, so that you will have more than enough of everything—every moment and in every way. He will make you overflow with abundance in every good thing you do.”
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??Galatians? ?5?:?4? ?TPT??
“If you want to be made right with God by fulfilling the obligations of the law, you have cut off more than your flesh—you have cut yourselves off from Christ and have fallen away from the revelation of grace!”
Romans? ?6?:?14? ?ERV??
“Sin will not be your master, because you are not under law. You now live under God’s grace.”
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1 Corinthians? ?15?:?10? ?NIV??
“But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.”
Additional scriptures for today:
Matthew 6:10 NIV
“Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
Matthew 18:18 AMP
“Truly I tell you, whatever you forbid and declare to be improper and unlawful on earth must be what is already forbidden in heaven, and whatever you permit and declare proper and lawful on earth must be what is already permitted in heaven.”
Ecclesiastes 3:15 AMP
“That which is has already been, and that which will be has already been, for God seeks what has passed by [so that history repeats itself].”
Setting the Stage:
In our previous messages, we’ve established the foundation of praying from a position of grace. I. explained the difference between praying this way and praying from need/lack, and we explored how Jesus’ finished work transforms our prayer life. Today, we will discuss what it means to pray in alignment with heaven.
When Jesus taught His disciples to pray, He included these powerful words: “Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” This wasn’t just a nice religious phrase—it was revolutionary! Jesus was teaching us that our prayers should bring heaven’s reality into earth’s experience. He was showing us that effective prayer is about aligning Earth with Heaven, not trying to convince heaven to align with earth. Many Christians want to bring God down to the level of what they are dealing with. Jesus basically taught us that instead of God coming down, God wants to bring us up to the level of heaven’s reality.
So, what does this mean to you today? A few things.
1. Heaven’s Perspective is the Starting Point for Effective Prayer.
When you pray from a position of grace, you’re not starting with earth’s problems and asking God to fix them. Instead, you’re starting with heaven’s solutions and releasing them into earth’s circumstances. This is a fundamental shift in how we approach prayer.
How this applies to you:
— Prayer is not about you trying to get God to put a “YES” on your plans. Prayer is about God trying to get you to put a “YES” on His plans. Too many believers approach prayer with their own agenda, asking God to bless what they’ve already decided to do. Grace-based prayer begins by asking, “Father, what are Your plans for this situation?” Remember, your life is ALL ABOUT HIM!
— In Ecclesiastes 3:15, Solomon tells us that everything that “is” today and everything that “will be” in our future has already been in God’s mind. When God looks at your life, He is looking for His story (history) to repeat itself in your life. Your prayers should align with that divine history.
— Jesus said, “I only say what I hear my Father say,” and “I only do what I see my Father doing” (John 5:19,30). This should be our model for prayer—seeing what God is doing in heaven and praying for that reality to manifest on earth.
— Heaven’s perspective on your situation is always higher than the earth’s perspective. Isaiah 55:9 reminds us that God’s ways and thoughts are higher than ours. When you pray from heaven’s perspective, you’re elevating your prayers above natural thinking.
— Your prayers should reflect heaven’s already-established victories, not earth’s current defeats. In heaven, the victory is already complete. Your prayer brings that victory into the earth domain.
— Part of the Holy Spirit’s role in prayer is to reveal heaven’s perspective to you. Romans 8:26 tells us that the Spirit helps us in our weakness, because we don’t know what to pray for as we ought. The Spirit connects us to heaven’s will so we can pray effectively.
— Starting with heaven’s perspective means your prayers will often contradict what your natural eyes can see. This is the essence of faith—calling things that are not as though they were (Romans 4:17).
2. You Are Authorized to Bring Heaven to the Earth Through Prayer.
As a believer, you have been given divine authority to bring heaven’s reality into earth’s experience. This authority isn’t based on your performance; it’s based on your position in Christ.
How this applies to you:
— Matthew 18:18 in the Amplified translation makes it clear: what you bind or loose on earth must be what is already bound or loosed in heaven. You’re not putting pressure on heaven to respond to earth; you’re bringing earth into alignment with what heaven has already established.
— When Jesus taught on prayer, He told His disciples, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 16:19). Keys represent authority and access. Through prayer, you have been given authority to unlock heaven’s realities on earth.
— Your authority in prayer is not based on your performance but on your position. Ephesians 2:6 tells us that God has “raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” From this seated position, you pray with the authority of heaven.
— This authority is delegated, not earned. Just as a police officer’s authority comes from the government that commissioned them, your authority in prayer comes from Christ who commissioned you.
— When you understand this authority, your prayers shift from begging to declaring. You’re not begging God to do something as if He’s reluctant; you’re declaring what you believe He has already done. In this way, you are operating in divine authority, commanding the earth to align with heaven’s reality.
— This authority means you can speak to mountains, not just talk about mountains (Mark 11:23). You can command circumstances to change in alignment with heaven’s will.
— Your authority in prayer is not diminished by your mistakes or weaknesses. It’s based on Christ’s perfect work, not your imperfect performance. When you approach God from the position of grace, you can pray with the same authority that Jesus had—because you are in Him, and He is in you.
3. The Pattern: See in Heaven, Speak on Earth.
Effective, grace-based prayer follows a clear pattern: see what God is saying to you about heaven’s will, open your heart to receive heaven’s reality for any given situation, and then you must set your lips and your legs in agreement with it. This pattern is seen throughout Scripture and in the ministry of Jesus.
How this applies to you:
— This pattern is demonstrated in Genesis 1, where God spoke what He already saw. Before God said, “Let there be light,” He already saw the light in His mind. When you pray, you’re following this divine pattern—speaking what God has already shown you.
— Jesus modeled this perfectly when He said, “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself. He does only what he sees the Father doing” (John 5:19 NLT). Your prayers should reflect what you “see” the Father doing in the spiritual realm.
— By faith and through the power of the Holy Spirit, you are able to peer into heaven from the earth and peer into eternity from time, so the Holy Spirit can reveal to you what God has already done. Once you see that, you come back from that revelation and pray for it to come to pass, regardless of what is happening in the moment (calling those things that be not as though they were). Not only that, but after you align your lips with what you saw, the Holy Spirit will tell you when to align your legs as well, so you can DO what God is leading you to DO when He is leading you to DO it. This is how heaven is manifested on the earth.
— Prayer is the bridge between the unseen and the seen, between the spiritual and the natural. Through prayer, what is real in the spirit realm becomes real in the natural realm.
— This is why spending time in God’s presence is so crucial before praying. You need to “see” in the Spirit what God has already done before you can effectively pray for it to manifest.
— The power is in praying what you’ve seen in the spirit, not what you are dealing with in the present or what you want in selfish desires. Many prayers go unanswered because they’re based on human desire rather than divine revelation (James 4:3).
— When you see what God has already done in heaven, you can pray with absolute confidence. Your faith isn’t in your ability to convince God; faith is what happens when God convinces you!
4. Yielding to Heaven’s Purpose, Not Imposing Your Will.
Grace-based prayer requires a fundamental surrender—yielding to heaven’s purpose rather than imposing your will on God. This surrender isn’t weakness; it’s wisdom.
How this applies to you:
— Jesus demonstrated this in the Garden of Gethsemane when He prayed, “Not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:42). This wasn’t Jesus being weak; it was Jesus aligning with heaven’s higher purpose.
— Prayer from a position of grace acknowledges that God’s plans are better than yours. Jeremiah 29:11 reminds us that God’s plans for us are for good, to give us a future and a hope. So, when we pray, we must remember that God already has a plan. Our job is to discover what that is and pray in alignment with it.
— Yielding to heaven’s purpose doesn’t mean you never ask for what you want. Jesus taught us to ask (Matthew 7:7). But it does mean that your asking is surrendered to God’s higher wisdom. Our desire should be to desire what God desires for us.
— When your prayers come from a yielded heart, you can trust that even unanswered prayers (from your perspective) are actually God protecting you from what would harm you or Him redirecting you to something better.
— Surrendering to heaven’s purpose in prayer eliminates frustration. You’re not trying to bend God’s will to yours; you’re allowing His will to shape yours.
— Alignment with heaven means praying for God’s will to be done daily. The priorities of heaven should be the priorities of your prayers. You’re actively choosing to trust God’s perspective over your own, His timing over yours, and His methods over yours.
That’s enough for today.
Declaration of Faith:
Father, I thank You for giving me the right and responsibility to pray. My prayers agree with You to bring heaven’s reality into my earthly circumstances.
I declare that I pray from heaven’s perspective, not from the perspective of earth’s problems.
I exercise the divine authority You’ve given me to bind and loose according to what is already bound and loosed in heaven.
My prayers follow Your pattern—seeing in the Spirit what You’ve already done and then aligning my lips and legs with Your reality.
I surrender my will to Yours, acknowledging that Your plans for me are better than anything I could devise for myself.
I position myself to hear from You before I pray, so that my prayers align perfectly with what You’ve already decided.
I am seated with Christ in heavenly places, and from that position of authority, I declare heaven’s realities into my circumstances.
Your Kingdom has come. Your will shall be done. It will happen on earth, as it is in heaven, through me, for Your glory!
I am living THE GRACE LIFE in 2025, and GREATER IS COMING FOR ME!
I declare this by faith, in Jesus’ name. Amen!
This is Today’s Word! Apply it and prosper!
