WHY AREN’T PRAYERS SEEMINGLY WORKING FOR MANY AFRICAN BELIEVERS – OVERVIEW
A rant by Rev Walter Mwambazi
Before I begin my series I have entitled “7 Key Factors to Transforming Africa into a First World Continent” (already running in the Zambia Daily Mail every Tuesday) which will outline comprehensive solutions to my previous series “5 Major Reasons Africa is Poor”, I needed to take you as my readers through a necessary interlude.
As you may know, I have dedicated an entire seven articles to tackling religion as the major cause among the five reasons. In fact, in this author’s estimation and OPINION, religion has and is a far more harmful reason for Africa’s poverty than the other four put together. Its effects are far reaching and still reverberate in the hearts and minds of its citizens.
This interlude is going to tackle another seeming oxymoron.
There are a growing number of people who now believe that prayer does not work because of the levels of poverty in Africa. They cite that many countries in Europe that are godless and never pray are more successful than Africa where people are serious prayer warriors. They even go as far as saying that most Christians are very poor and are waiting for a pie in heaven whilst scrounging around in poverty.
Let me state here and now, the above is a lie to discourage fervent prayer! See disclaimer below…
⚠️ LET ME STATE HERE AND NOW, FERVENT PRAYER WORKS! THE EFFECTIVE FERVENT PRAYER OF A RIGHTEOUS MAN AVAILS MUCH – PRAY WITHOUT CEASING! ⚠️
Meantime, some proofs.
I demonstrated in a previous article that we have countries that are fundamentally religious and yet are very successful. Four examples are
👉 the United States of America
👉 United Arab Emirates
👉 Bahrain (one of the richest nations on earth going by Income per Capita) and off course
👉 Israel.
These countries have very religious people and are founded on very strong religious principles which in some are even enforced like UAE and Bahrain.
So, to assert that praying equals poverty and not praying equals success is too simplistic and is an erroneous argument.
Do prayers work then? Off course they do!!
Both within the Bible and in the lives of countless millions of people are testimony after testimony of cases where people prayed and God answered. What must be noted though is that God answers in three key ways…
👉 “yes”
👉 “no” and the one most of us cannot handle
👉 “wait”
So then, the problem we see in Africa has very little to do with effective prayers but more to do with the type of prayers and the nature and motive of those prayers. 🤔
Today, I am going to show you WHY the current state of affairs persists for many African believers who pray. This article will give an overview and then subsequent ones shall delve into each one of the six reasons outlined here.
👉 First – They Pray Soulish Prayers
Their type of prayers go against everything Jesus Christ taught, focusing mostly on curses for enemies, bad luck, back-to-sender, protection, addressing demons and the like. These are “fear motivated” prayers akin to witchcraft which achieve the very words spoken repeatedly! (Read Num 14:28)
👉 Second – They Pray Out of Fear Than Faith
Their prayers focus on standing against what they fear, which reinforces that very thing into their subconscious mind and inevitably manifest what they continuously mention.
👉 Third – They Pray Without Backing with Actions
When one prays, they must proceed with actions in “faith” to back what they asked for. Most times, they would rather sit and wait instead of taking action in faith.
👉 Fourth – They Focus on the Servant of God than God
Considering our cultural background, a lot of people never have a genuine conversion experience or get connected to shaky churches with questionable pastors and so continue to treat the pastor, papa, prophet, apostle, bishop etc. as they would a Sangoma, even bragging “the God of so-and-so” rather than having a personal relationship with God!
👉 Fifth – They Pray Amiss
Perhaps this is the most damning of reasons. Their prayers are amiss because they pray from a religious and cultural background whose stronghold is a warped mindset conformed to their environment rather than the Kingdom of God. No matter how much they pray, the strongholds of their minds are their greatest hindrance to abundance that God has for them.
The above are such massive barriers that the work of Kingdom Envoys today is no longer to teach people how to pray, but to ensure they deprogram the terrible paradigms that have been propagated for decades here in Africa.
👉 Sixth – They Are Proponents of the Heretical Prosperity Gospel
The Heretical Prosperity Gospel has been the final nail in the coffin for many African Christians because they have been falsely taught to “sow” seeds into “the anointing” and “connect” to the “man/woman of God” for their financial breakthrough! This has led to so many giving up even the little they had to build their future and establish their missions with no further backup.
They treat the church and the pastor as a “Bonanza” (slot) machine or a “betting” center where you just a) pray and b) sow your seeds (same way you bet at the lottery). After this you then continue praying and claiming your “harvest” whilst perpetuating all the earlier mentioned five points.
I don’t need to be a prophet or genius to tell you this WILL NEVER WORK! 😲
You need much more than the above!
👉 You need to get the motives, and the mindset right
👉 You need the right actions backed with the right paradigms to see success.
That my readers is what the church and believers in Africa need right now.
One of my favorite quotes by St. Benedict is the famous latin adage “Ora et Labora” or in English “Pray and Work”. Prayer is not some magic mantra you can just evoke as a subterfuge for work and expect things will automatically happen. That is a big lie. There is more to the success of prayer than just mumbling lengthy words for hours. 🥺
In the next article, I shall delve into the first two of the six reasons given to help those of you who are getting frustrated as to why you need to change your entire strategy for prayer.
Do not miss!