There is a journey in prayer that every believer is invited into, yet many never fully experience.
It is the movement from begging…
to asking…
to declaring.
So many of us learn one way of prayer, while God is longing to teach us an entirely different way.
We know what it is like to beg God.
To come to Him with desperation, asking Him to move, pleading for breakthrough, hoping He might respond. There is often fear underneath it. Anxiety mixed into it. Even when there is belief, it is often fragile and inconsistent.
We ask, but we do not expect.
We hope, but we are not confident.
At many times, if we are honest, we as believers who believe in God, have more unbelief than we have belief.
We wish for something to happen, but the deep assurance that it will come simply because we asked Him is missing.
Prayer was never meant to be approached from the posture of a beggar.
It was always meant to flow from the identity of a son or daughter.
Jesus makes this clear in John 16:24:
“Until now you have not asked for anything in My name. Ask and receive, and your joy will be complete.”
There is an invitation here into confidence.
Not arrogance.
Not entitlement.
But relational confidence.
The kind of confidence that comes from knowing who your Father is and knowing who you are to Him.
When we begin to grow in the Spirit, we transition from pleading with God in fear to approaching Him with confidence. We begin to trust His heart. We begin to believe His words. We begin to expect that when we ask according to His nature, He responds.
As E. M. Bounds said,
“Prayer is not overcoming God’s reluctance, but laying hold of His willingness.”
This is a beautiful place of prayer.
And it is a necessary one.
But it is not the pinnacle.
There is something even deeper than asking with faith.
God is not only inviting us to ask.
He is inviting us to know.
Romans 12:2 tells us that as our minds are transformed, we gain the ability to discern and test what God’s will is His good, pleasing, and perfect will.
This changes everything.
Because now prayer is no longer just bringing requests to God.
It becomes discovering what is already on His heart.
We begin to see what He desires to do.
We begin to hear what He is speaking.
We begin to align with His will instead of trying to convince Him of ours.
At this stage, prayer becomes less about religious striving and more about confident agreement.
Jesus speaks of a potential harvest we can all have in our lives in Matthew 13:
some thirty-fold, some sixty, and some a hundred.
This is not dependent on charisma.
It is not dependent on talent.
In many ways, it is directly connected to what we are talking about.
So many people move from zero to thirty-fold.
The reason we often see a peak of a thirty-fold harvest is because we remain in a mindset where we primarily identify ourselves as sinners saved by grace.
This phrase is one of the most commonly repeated in the church, yet many never move beyond it.
Yes, you were a sinner.
Yes, you were saved by grace.
But the moment you stepped into grace, your old nature was crucified, and Christ became your life.
It does not honor God to continually identify with something He paid to remove.
A thirty-fold life often flows from a prayer life shaped by distance, hesitation, and unworthiness.
It sounds like begging.
The sixty-fold harvest emerges when a person transitions from identifying as a sinner to living as a son or daughter.
This is the beauty of adoption.
You are no longer trying to earn a place.
You have been brought into a family.
You are not tolerated.
You are wanted.
As Jack Frost said,
“Orphans see God as a master. Sons see God as a loving Father.”
This does not give license for arrogance or entitlement.
But neither does it please God for you to live in false humility, thinking less of yourself than He does.
A son.
A daughter.
Brought near.
At this stage, prayer shifts.
It no longer sounds like an orphan asking a distant provider.
It sounds like a child speaking to a Father.
Sinners saved by grace tend to open gifts like orphans surprised, hesitant, unsure if they are truly allowed to receive.
But sons and daughters open gifts differently.
They receive with expectation.
Not because they are entitled, but because they know the good and generous nature of their Father.
But there is still more.
The hundred-fold harvest belongs to those who go beyond even this.
They recognize that they are not only sons and daughters.
They are co-heirs.
They are being formed into saints who reign and rule with Christ.
At first, we related to God like orphans—opening gifts with hesitation, unsure if we were truly allowed to receive.
Then we grew into sons and daughters—receiving with confidence, knowing the goodness of our Father.
But now, something shifts again.
We are no longer simply receiving gifts.
We are learning to steward the estate.
Everything that belongs to the Father… He desires to release through us.
This is the life of a co-heir.
Romans 8:32 says,
“He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all—how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things?”
When this becomes revelation in our hearts, Psalm 23:1 is no longer poetic language—it becomes reality:
“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.”
The reason I do not have to want…
is because I do not lack.
The reason I do not lack is not because of what I have built, earned, or achieved.
It is because everything has been given to me in Christ Jesus.
How could I live begging…
when everything has already been given?
Not waiting for occasional moments of blessing, but living with the awareness that the resources of heaven have been entrusted to us to carry, release, and multiply on the earth.
As John G. Lake said,
“God has not called us to be beggars, but to be distributors of His life.”
Prayer at this stage is no longer occasional asking.
It becomes continual partnership.
We are no longer simply recipients of what God gives.
We become stewards of what He owns.
This is where authority begins to emerge.
The Holy Spirit is not only forming sons and daughters who ask with confidence.
He is forming saints who walk in authority.
There is a dimension of prayer where we do not merely ask God to move.
We begin to declare what He has already willed.
This is where heaven touches earth through agreement.
Jesus modeled this kind of authority. He did not live begging the Father to act. He lived in perfect union with the Father, speaking and acting from that place of alignment.
“Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
At this stage, prayer becomes proclamation.
Not independent of God but the fruit flowing naturally from being fully surrendered to God.
Not self-driven. . . but Spirit-led.
We begin to declare healing because we know His heart is to heal.
We declare freedom because we know His desire is to deliver.
We speak life because we are aligned with the Author of life.
This is not striving to make something happen.
This is partnering with what is already happening in heaven.
This is the journey.
From begging, to asking, to declaring.
From sinner, to son, to saint.
From thirty, to sixty, to a hundred-fold.
This is what it means to go from glory to glory.
And none of us have arrived.
There is always more.
Deeper places of intimacy. Greater levels of trust. Clearer discernment. Stronger authority.
The Holy Spirit is continually inviting us forward.
Where do you currently find yourself in prayer?
Are you approaching God as a beggar
as a son or daughter
or a steward of His kingdom?
What might shift if you truly believed that you are not just forgiven
but adopted
entrusted
and invited to reign with Him?
Carry the Fire provides tools for cultivating an inner life of knowing God intimately, while walking in the power of God courageously.
Hillsboro, KS
