CONFIDENT PRAYING

“And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us.  And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him” (1 John 5:14-15, ESV).

You may ask, “Does God actually hear me when I pray? Is He even aware that I am praying, that I have a need that’s desperate for an answer?”

And then there is the question that has sparked endless debate: “How do we know when we are praying according to the will of God?” The narrow-minded say, “There are only certain things that we should be praying about and asking for. So it is very important that you understand exactly what the will of God is.”

Wrong!

The plain fact is that God has instructed us to pray about everything and has opened Himself to us so that we can make our requests known to Him.

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (Philippians 4:6, ESV).

“Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace . . . in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16, NKJV).

It is God’s will that we come to Him and make our requests known. This does not mean that we are going to immediately receive everything we ask for. God is in charge of the timing and not us

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Some would say, “But the Word says, ‘God will supply every need . . . according to His riches . . . in Christ Jesus’ (Philippians 4:19) so He is obligated to answer.” That is partially right because what the Word says is that He will supply your need — but not your greed. If you are in debt and the underlying reason is a lack of common sense on your part, when you ask the Lord to take care of the debt, His supply to your need may be different from what you think it should be. If God answered each of our narcissistic prayers and ignored the underlying problem, He would not be a loving Father, He would simply be an ATM machine — and thankfully He is not that. Before God takes care of the debt, He will deal with the lack of common sense; otherwise, the cycle of the problem will continue ad infinitum.

Some of us do not get answers to our prayers because we do not like the idea that God is not merely a heavenly money machine. Others of us don’t get answers because we have never learned to “stand fast or persevere” in prayer.

George Mueller was an evangelist in England during the 1800s. Along with his evangelistic work, Mueller was the director of an orphanage near the city of Bristol. There was no such thing as mass communication in Mueller’s day and he did not have an automated mailing program or e-mail. He was a man of prayer and he “prayed in” what was necessary for his orphans to be well clothed, housed and fed. It is said that Mueller prayed in about $7 million during his lifetime. In today’s currency that would be about $203 million. I call that serious praying!

But Mueller’s prayer life was not limited just to the support for the orphans. He also had a list of five people that he wanted to see become followers of Jesus and he prayed for each on the list regularly. The first person was converted after five years of praying. The second and third were converted after about ten years, and the fourth at the end of 25 years of believing prayer. The final man on Mueller’s list gave his life to Christ after Mueller had prayed for him for 52 years. This man actually came to Christ several months after Mueller died.

That’s confident, prevailing prayer. Prevailing prayer does not give up because something else comes along. Prevailing prayer does not quit because the answer is not yet in sight. Prevailing prayer does not get discouraged (for very long) and even though it’s tired, it keeps going.

We have more than enough people in the church today who think that if they pray once, God is obligated to do what they want Him to do. These good folks obviously have never read what Jesus said: “Keep on asking and it will be given you; keep on seeking and you will find; keep on knocking [reverently] and [the door] will be opened to you. For everyone who keeps on asking receives; and he who keeps on seeking finds; and to him who keeps on knocking [the door] will be opened” (Matthew 7:7-8, Amplified Bible).

The writer of Hebrews encouraged the church to be patient in their faith and prayer even when the circumstances were difficult, when the answers being sought were long in coming. They were to pray with a hopeful fortitude that actively resists weariness and defeat, not with a passive complacent attitude. “For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised” (Hebrews 10:36, ESV).