What I am saying is that I am not a fan of unspoken, unvoiced prayer as the go-to style for prayers that need to effect change. "Unspoken" is better saved for receiving guidance prayer, because it keeps you quiet enough to hear, and for times and places where spoken prayer would be disruptive, impractical, or sorely advised. And by "sorely advised" I mean something of a nature that results in the proverbial casting pearls before swine— Use unspoken prayer for things dear to your heart when those around you cannot help and will only trample on what you'd say.
But with a few exceptions noted, prayer that moves mountains and changes things is best when spoken aloud. Whispering does not make a request more pious, but over time the enemy has worked that delusion into much doctrine. Our adversary has had two millennia to drain Power from the Church by sneaking in all sorts of faith-draining ideas.
In my nice, emphasis-on-polite, Midwestern protestant upbringing, the churches that I attended had been infiltrated with Timidity. Verses like Hebrews 4:16 made people nervous. "Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace..." The spirit of timidity is one of the fear spirits; God does not give us spirits of fear. Do the logic.
Here is a similar precept in Hebrews 10:19 — And so, dear brothers and sisters, we can boldly enter heaven’s Most Holy Place because of the blood of Jesus.
If you had stumbled upon this verse at my church youth group, you probably would have come away with the idea that you can trust God. The blood of Jesus would not be presented as our power source, but as a euphemism for His death. You would not have gotten the notion that Jesus wants you to boldly enter heaven's Most Holy Place. That would have been arrogant and prideful, right? The insidious thing though, is that such a conclusion devalues the blood of Jesus.
If His blood makes a bold approach possible, and yet you're being told that a bold approach is egotistical and offensive to God... something does not compute.
(At the risk of opening a rabbit trail, let me interject that I grew up in churches that believed when Jesus cast out devils, he was curing mental illness or epilepsy. Some probably thought the devil existed only as an allegory. There was little understanding of blood sacrifice.)
But back to why I am not a fan of Unspoken Prayers— Realize what Jesus did by speaking! By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. Hebrews 11:3 That was an out loud utterance. It is also how Jesus got here in bodily form: Mary answered. "May it happen to me according to your word." Luke 1:38. The importance of the spoken word was reiterated when the devil challenged Jesus in the wilderness. Jesus answered, "It is written, 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.'" Matthew 4:4. And we know from Romans 10:9-10 and 1 John 4:15 that out-loud confession has a role in salvation.
There are many other examples. A spoken word has frequency, literally setting waves in motion.
Job's friends did not always give him the best advice, but because we see Eliphaz's exhortation playing out later on when Job prays for his friends, we can trust this one: You will also decree a thing, and it will be established for you; And light will shine on your ways, Job 22:28. There are incidents in scripture where deliverance or healing would not come unless a declaration was made. Prophets were raised up to make out loud declarations. Mark 11:23 instructs us to speak to mountains that we desire to move; we are not instructed to use mental telepathy.
Truth be told, we need to hear ourselves!
So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ. Romans 10:17 NASB. Faith is more easily come by when we hear ourselves speak it out. Prayer that quotes scripture, the word of the Lord, is full of power. It is much easier to believe that we are in agreement with the will of God, and harder to pray amiss when praying scripture aloud.
Hold That Thought — because I am going to come back to it for my final point about Spoken Prayer Activating Angels. But first, because (a) a new corona virus has spread worldwide, and (b) the majority of prayer requests at my church are for healing/health issues, I want to take a sidebar and focus on Speaking Healing for a bit.
All prayer for healing is a form of spiritual warfare because disease entered as part of the curse for disobedience, (and Moses added some details during his Mountains of Blessing and Cursing Sermon). I have already quoted a passage from Hebrews 11:3 that shows a spoken word can be a bridge between the spirit realm and this physical world. All the "And God said..." incidents of Genesis 1's Creation Week show this. Spoken words contain power. We see this in the dark realm as people perform curses. We who are in the light should be speaking blessings and the breaking of curses.
A partial answer for why so many are sick in the church today is found in 1 Corinthians 11:30, a failure to discern the body. I wrote earlier that the church I attended as a teenager had incomplete teaching on the blood of Christ. They, like many other churches, also downplayed the body of Christ. Think of the Passover covenant; the blood on the doorpost was addressed in my Sunday school; the the eating of the Lamb wasn't. I am still trying to find all the missing pieces, but the eating of the Lamb was what caused the Israelites to go out with not one sick or feeble among them. The blood on the doorposts caused the angel of death to pass the house, and my church somewhat taught about blood for salvation. But it was the body of the lamb, also represented by communion bread, that was for healing.
Salvation (blood) and healing (body) ought to be twin mercies, but my childhood church taught the first one just a little and the second one barely at all. Unsurprisingly then, because of the spoken words there, we received a modest level of salvations and very few healings, in proportion to the spoken word that was sown.
Prayer connects this us in this physical realm to our Father, who is Spirit, by using words. Our need to tap Supernatural power is another reason I am not a fan of unspoken prayers. Spoken prayer activates angels. A quick look at three scriptures will give us a bearing here:
1. He will command His angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. Psalm 91:11 command, give charge, issue an order; these are out-loud speech concepts.
2. Are not the angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation? Hebrews 1:14 If angels are assigned* to guard us and serve us, wouldn't they be used in answering prayers? These two verses show/tell us about the God side of it, that He commands and sends. The third verse is about the angels' response.
3. Bless the LORD, ye his angels, that excel in strength, that do his commandments, hearkening unto the voice of his word. Psalm 103:20 Mighty supernatural beings hearken to, carry out, heed, and obey the voice of His word.
Most who read my blog will have heard this before, but I will say it again anyway: A Bible on the bookshelf is not a Living Word. It has to be activated. It needs to be voiced.
For the word of God is living and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating even as far as the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrows, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Hebrews 4:12 "word" in this verse is λόγος , the logos form meaning spoken word. Speaking forth is a power boost.
For a variety of reasons, I am not a fan of unspoken prayer. Plus, speaking is the God-way of getting stuff done:
For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast. Psalm 33:9
ADDING THIS:
May 14 - I came back to add a bit about the relationship between Faith and Confession.
Therefore, holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the Apostle and High Priest of our confession.Jesus is the High Priest of our confession.
Hebrews 3:1
Confession is made with the mouth. Belief resides in the heart, but confession is voiced. The two—confession and belief—work in tandem.
"The word is near you, in your mouth, and in your heart." That is, the word of faith which we proclaim, that if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised Him out from the dead, you will be saved.You're probably familiar with the King James Bible's Book of James statement that faith without works is dead. Contemporary translations may say that faith without works is worthless or useless, and at least one uses barren. James is making the point that faith needs to be complemented with action. Confession, voiced speech out loud, is one way that faith can be activated. Scripture does not call Jesus the High Priest of our quiet thoughts, but of our confession.
Romans 10:8-9
One more thing today—
The War in Heaven; Revelation 12:10-11
…And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying: “Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of His Christ. For the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down—he who accuses them day and night before our God. They have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony...
Who is the "they" that conquers the accuser? "They" are not Jesus, although they used His blood. They are people who used a spoken expression.
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* assigned to guard us and serve us - the "guardian" aspect is not only protection of life and safety, but also as sentinels of our destiny. In Isaiah 43:19 we read, "Do you not see it? Indeed, I will make a way in the wilderness and streams in the desert." Angelic assignments are instrumental in this.
