Prayer:  what it is and who the participants are

In discussing “prayer” it enables you to pursue fulfillment of Scripture’s promises and prophesies in your life.  Prayer is revelation of our knowing God’s will along with His desire to see all accomplished in our lives.  Philippians 2:13 says “For it is God who works in you both to will and to do for his good pleasure.”  God first helps us want to do his will, we’re motivated; and prayer is that place where we’ve often first learned his will.  Forthright is this lovely example given to us of Daniel, God’s man, who just 600 years before Christ wrote “In the first year of his reign I, Daniel, understood by the books the number of the years specified by the word of the Lord through Jeremiah the prophet, that He would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem.  Then I set my face toward the Lord God to make request by prayer and supplications, with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes.”  Now Daniel as an accomplished overseer had both the captor king’s interests and his ear, and his life of prayer resulted in both knowing and doing the wishes of God.  Similarly, we can experience the same accomplishment through Christ in our lives spent in prayer.

Prayer is effective in knowing God’s will, and prayer is propelled by God’s Word. Why some people worry about issues or why some pray but stop their praying long before answers come is because they are not propelled by the Word; it isn’t really part of them, or “internalized.”  They do not experience or live in the Word of His power—Hebrews 1:3.  It is Philippians 4:6-7 that tells us “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”

Think of reading or hearing God’s Word as the initial part of breathing, as the inhale.  During this time we understand Scripture by the Holy Spirit’s help.  When inhaling ends, there are brief instants where with movement ceased, our body has desire to “do something with” this air (the Scripture we’ve understood).  Then the exhale:  spiritually, our putting into practice the Word of the Lord as a faith expression (prayer) and then standing in the firm belief in God’s promise as the proverbial “house built on a rock” coming from Jesus’ teaching—Luke 6:48.  Notice that it is here that God’s promise goes hand-in-hand with prayer—they are on the same level.

The Bible is filled with God’s promises that are stupendous, and our meditation of them dispels stress of worry, doubt and fear.  A few examples are:

2 Peter 1:2-4  “Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, as his divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.”

Matthew 11:25, 28-30  “I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and have revealed them to babes.”  “Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

In our learning from Christ his gentleness and lowliness of heart, we discover this source of the rest for our souls.  And though we don’t understand how this comes from him, we experience it as the result of exercising our prayer power—Philippians 4:7.

In short, prayer is a dynamic force by a true believer who by use of the Word of God and the name of Jesus moves God to do the impossible.  The most important step for getting answers to our prayer is finding Scripture that gives certain promise of those things we pray for.

When people say that they’re praying for something, I like to ask, “What Scripture are you standing on in order to get that what you’re asking for?”  Often people answer, “Well, nothing in particular.”  Well, that’s what they shall get:  nothing in particular.

Jesus has said, “If you abide in Me, and my words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you”—John 15:7.  The word here “if” is little but it has consequence.  “If” means that this promise for answered prayer is conditional upon something.  What is it?  Jesus says that you can ask whatever you wish so long as his words take a place in you. 

We must have God’s word abiding in us if we expect answer to prayer.  Often Christians pray for something such as healing and yet they don’t have any promise from God that abides in them, which is guarantee of God’s answer.

God has made promises aplenty that he’ll heal us.  What we need to do is to find these promises and meditate on them until they are totally real in us.  Doing so, we can fight doubts when the healing doesn’t manifest in us immediately.

Faith, here, moves things from the spiritual world into our physical world

There is also need to understand that God is spirit and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth—John 4:23.  God operates in the spiritual realm to answer our prayer, but it takes faith on our part to manifest.  Faith is what takes things from the spiritual world and moves them into the physical world.  This basically is what Hebrews 11:1 says, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”  It does not say faith is the evidence of things that don’t exist.  They do exist; but in this unseen spiritual realm, faith reaches over and draws things into the physical world.  Christ created by His word; we appropriate—get—by our faith.

Take a radio signal.  Radio and television stations are broadcasting constantly; we can be in a room where we see or hear nothing of that signal, yet that does not mean they aren’t there.  You have to turn a radio on and tune it to the frequency you desire to hear.  Then the radio pulls those signals out of a realm you can’t perceive and rebroadcasts them in a realm where you can hear them with the human ear.  God answers our prayers similarly.  He gives things in the spiritual realm, and by faith we have to reach out and bring them into the physical world.

The struggle with unanswered prayers

One of the greatest struggles in prayer that many Christians are likely to have is the secret disappointments with the Lord.  There are times when we have “prayed our hearts out,” times when we have really sought to trust God for somebody’s healing or for a financial situation or whatever it can be—large or small.  We have earnestly sought the Lord.  Yet it seems he didn’t “come through.”

The question needed to be asked is:  What is our greatest struggle in prayer?  Above all, it is a struggle virtually every day to hold fast to the hope of God, to abound in hope in the situations that have no answers, that are confusing, that make no sense, when it feels like the Lord is far away, that he’s silent, when we are discouraged because we feel like in certain things we have failed to give God our best, when we are angry or bitter or upset with the way people have treated us—all those things that can impact our joy in the promises of God, and deeply hinder our prayer life.  In the midst of all these it is a great struggle, too, to get back to the magnitude of hope we have in the supremacy of God’s Son.

Primarily the failure to “pray through” is lack of persistence in prayer and often this has result in “unanswered” prayer.  What is perceived as negative response from God results in our own loss of fervency in faith and lowered expectation.  But it should also be asked, How do we accept “‘No” as the answer to prayer?  God has wisdom, and besides his general purposes shown in directing our lives, he decides what answered prayers will serve in guiding us to the places or levels in life where we are in commitment to him and being made useful for producing souls for his kingdom’s harvest.  Glory is the result of all this effort.  Take for example a child who wants a bicycle.  He or she would do well to ask God first for it and then the parents second.  Is it only the condition of the parents’ family finances that determines the “Yes” or “No” answer from God through the parents?  In effect, in a Christian household, approval comes first from God and is manifested through believing parents in their “Yes.”  Their good parenting does evaluate the past show of responsibility by the child with possessions.  Would that bike bought with family money have the similar care—good or bad—and if neglectful, would it be stolen in a short time?  They must consider also this new, wider range of child mobility.  If a boy, are they to allow him wider travel to visit girlfriends living at a distance away, for surely he will get the idea to do that.  Doesn’t he already get enough of interaction with them by just attending school?  And other associations can develop with those who do not live nor try to live in any accord with God’s Word.  If he presently walks a younger sibling to school, will the having of a bicycle disrupt this help he’s provided in the past?  Will the child be off the safer sidewalks and out into the moving stream of traffic with dangers stronger than he?  Does all this become more worry for caring, attentive parents who already have enough of this in their lives?  God’s view considers:  Will it give the child independence that much outruns the maturity level the child thus far has gained?  Don’t forget, we pray:  “Father, lead us not into temptation.” 

How to pray: congregationally—Lord’s Prayer; individually—parable “A friend comes at midnight”

Remember when the disciple came to the Lord Jesus to ask “Teach us to pray”?  My reaction at that point probably would have been to set up a seminar on prayer and tell them what they need to know about prayer!  But Luke, chapter eleven, says that when the disciple requested instruction on the “how to” of prayer, Jesus gave them greater vision:  what they were to pray for.

Then He gives a parable (in Luke 11:5-8) about a man who knows his next-door neighbor has bread that can feed visitors who have come in the middle of the night and who are hungry.  This man goes to the one place he knows he has hope for resolving his problem.  He is so convinced that this is the answer to his problem, that he will not stop knocking on the neighbor’s door, even when the man inside says, “Leave me alone!”  Yet, Jesus tells, the man keeps knocking.  The Master seems to say: I commend anyone who comes to God in prayer in that same way because they are not looking at the act of praying (self-awareness); they are looking at what they are praying towards the magnificent hope waiting for those who seek the Lord.

In the same chapter Jesus continues by talking about “asking” and “seeking” and “knocking” (pounding).  Jesus here is saying that we need to not give up our praying, we must keep on asking until we receive what we want from God.

To pray and get an answer

There is no greater secret to success than to learn to pray and to get an answer. It’s God’s will for us to come to him with absolute confidence that whatever we need or desire, we can ask him for it in simple faith in prayer and it shall be done for us.

He made many marvelous promises and they are for us.  “Call to me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know”—Jeremiah 33:3.

This is God’s invitation to pray and his promise to answer:  “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you”—Matthew 7:7.  This is Christ’s encouragement to pray and his assurance that our prayers will be answered.  And between those very knocks, are you listening?  A good “rule of thumb” in prayer is to provide the time you listen to be a good-third of the time you have spent asking.

When people do not pray, it’s because they have no hope of an answer; unanswered prayers stand between people and their faith.  Many people blame God for unfaithfulness when they should blame themselves for not praying according to the Word of God.

Usually people do not accuse God of failing to do his part, but they harbor an inner confusion—a bewildered attitude toward prayer that has developed from repeatedly failing to get the answer. They have inwardly abandoned the hope of receiving what they ask for, so they abandon prayer altogether. This amounts to surrender of faith.

People who do not pray are frustrated in their faith. Their hopes for an answer have been shattered too often. They give up and continue on in the formalities of their religion.  Faith’s light has gone out and life becomes a weary road.

Now the Bible says, “Pray without ceasing”—I Thessalonians 5:17.  Prayer is our communication with God, our open and constant communication with him.  This keeps us within calling distance.  When we neglect our prayer life, we experience a major breakdown in communication that’s from headquarters.  When this is the case, we can’t receive orders from our Commander-in-chief.

When that line of communication is down, our spirit cannot receive direction from God.  We become vulnerable to the enemy and are subsequently motivated by our flesh instead of our spirit.  Our ears become deafened to the still, small voice of the Holy Spirit.  And it is then that the whispered lies from the enemy begin to sound believable to us.

Finally, let us consider some of the things that God has commanded us to do.  We know that God has loved the world so much that he gave his own son that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life.  We know that he is not willing that any perish but that all should come to repentance.  He has promised that if we ask anything according to his will, he will hear us; and if he hears us, he has said he will answer us.

We have satisfaction and assurance when we can relate the commands of God to the promises of God and know that we are praying according to his will.

Devotional Prayer:   “Whatever you ask!”  (Please pray it along with us)

Lord, we know that you are the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  We know that you are the God who said concerning yourself: “I change not!”  We would not dare to ask you to spare us because we “are deserving;” we acknowledge to you without reservation that we, indeed, are wretched sinners deserving the wrath of God—yet at the same time we know that we are recipients of the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ.  We know deep in our hearts that it has permeated our entire being, this realization that Jesus Christ died in our place, that we have no righteousness of ourselves but that he is our righteousness.

Father God, as we come to you today in Jesus’ name… who said (John16:23-24) “And in that day you will ask me nothing.  Most assuredly, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in my name he will give you.  Until now you have asked nothing in my name.  Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.”

We ask you to watch over our country Kenya.  Unless the Lord guards the city (Psalm 127), the watchman stays awake in vain.  Make us realize that we all belong to you and we must love one another and help the needy with what you have given us.

Father because you said, “Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers” (3John 2), we now boldly ask you to prosper Kenya, heal the sick and brokenhearted, in Jesus’ name.

Thank you, for you said “and it shall come to pass that before they call, I will answer; and while they are still speaking, I will hear” (Isaiah 65:24).  We boldly say:  The Lord is answering our prayer even now!  In Jesus’ name I pray.   Amen

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