Answered Prayer

Introduction

Anyone who comes to God in prayer wants their prayers to be answered. We have looked at reason’s why God sometimes delays answering our prayers and we have looked at the reason’s why our prayers might be hindered from being answered. Tonight, we are going to look at what the bible says about receiving answers to prayer. All of us want to know how to have our prayers answered. We can easily feel like what is the point of praying if I never see and answers.

Its kinda like when your kids come in from playing outside and they are hungry for a snack. Your son walks into the kitchen and says “Get me a snack mom.” Did that sound quite right? What they need to say is, “Mom, may I have a snack please?” How we ask is often just as important as what we are asking for.

If we want our prayers to be answered, we are told how to ask. The first point is going to be a little bit of review, but we are going to look at it from another perspective.

Confessed sin

Last week we looked at:

Psalm 66:18 “If I regard iniquity in my heart, The Lord will not hear me:”

When we have sin in our lives that has not been dealt with, our prayers will be hindered. But we know in 1 John 1:9 “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” So if we do not want anything to hinder our prayers from being heard, we must confess our sins to God.

How quickly do you deal with sin in your life? Do you ignore it, let it sit there, pretend like it doesn’t matter? If we want to have answered prayers we need to confess our sins to God.

Now some people are good at confessing immediately when they sin, but it seems like they keep going back to the same sin. The word confess means to agree with God or say the same thing as God. When we continue going back to our sin, can we truly say we agree with God that this is evil, or that sin destroys, or that we hate the sin?

Confessing and forsaking are intricately linked together. Proverbs 28:13 “He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: But whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy.”

Believing

Matthew 21:22 “And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.”

Context: This verse actually appears in a surprising place and on first glance might seem to be out of context. This story takes place as Jesus is going into Jerusalem. As he is walking along, he is hungry and he sees a fig tree with leaves on it. Mark actually tells us that this was rare because it was not the fruitful season for figs. The fruit bearing season would be in May/ June but this was April and if the fig tree had leaves it would be expected to have fruit on it as well. When Jesus finds no fruit on the tree, he curses it and it begins to die immediately.

The fig tree is an analogy for Israel who have a form of godliness but deny the power thereof. They have leaves and look good on the outside but they are fruitless. In Luke 13:6 “He spake also this parable; A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came and sought fruit thereon, and found none.” Jesus would tell a parable likening Israel to this exact same situation.

When Jesus curses the tree, the disciples are in awe at the power he displays. Our verses are a response from Jesus to their awe at seeing what he could do. Jesus tells them that if they have faith they can do similar things. If they ask believing, they will receive. I think it is important for us to think about what faith is if we are going to understand what this means. How many people have asked for something believing and yet didn’t receive what they asked for?

Take for example the prayers of one pastor who prayed that their church would be granted a certain piece of land that he had walked over. He believed he would get it and he laid claim to it, but the land sold to someone else. When he got up before his people he had to come up with some explanation so he said one of the members of the board didn’t believe so it didn’t happen. I don’t think his personal prayers are hindered by someone else’s unbelief. A lack of understanding of what faith is is at the root of the name it, claim it crowd. So what is faith?

What is faith?

Faith is not believing in believing

It is not believing in your dreams

It is not believing in your desires

It is not believing in your ambitions

5. Faith is believing in God. Faith is believing that God will do what he said he will do. This is not name it claim it whatever you want you got it. John McArthur commenting on this verse said:

In other words, if I know that something is consistent with God’s mind, if I know it is consistent with His will, if I know it is consistent with His purpose, if I know it is consistent with His desire, then I believe that, and I can see that come to pass.

The foundation of faith is God’s revealed will. Romans 10:17 “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” Faith is based on the promises of God. I can claim what he has promised me in his word, what is consistent with his will and the mind of Christ.

In Jesus Name

John 16:24 “Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.”

Jesus wants us to ask in his name. Praying in the name of Jesus is not some magic tagline that we add to our prayer. It isn’t as if the power is in the words. The power of prayer has always been in God himself. Praying in Jesus name implies atleast two things:

Relationship- Praying in Jesus name assumes you have been saved: that you have a relationship with Jesus Christ. John 9:31 “Now we know that God heareth not sinners: but if any man be a worshipper of God, and doeth his will, him he heareth.”

Authority- It is only because of what Jesus Christ did that we have any authority to make a request of God, but because we are in Christ we can Hebrews 4:16 “Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.”

Glory- Praying in Jesus name is also about the glory of God. God delights to answer our prayers in Jesus name because it brings glory to Jesus. Aren’t you drawn to trust God more when he answers prayer, don’t you love and praise him more when he answers prayer? By answering our prayers in Jesus name we are moved to glorify God more. John 14:13 “And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.”

According to His will

1 John 5:14–15 “And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: And if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him.”

Tied into praying in Jesus name for his glory is praying according to His will. We can pray for a pink ponie, but unless it is part of God’s plan for our lives, it will not happen. There are some things that are just not part of God’s will. This is where we must wrestle with God in our prayers. It isn’t always easy to accept that something might not be God’s will for our lives. Some of our requests are really important like the death of a loved one. But it may just be God’s timing for them to be with him. It hurts, I know, but we have to come to terms with the idea that not everything we want is part of God’s will.

We could preach an entire message if not a series on determining God’s will, but we are going to focus on one aspect of knowing God’s will in our next point. God’s word shows us God’s will. Other pointers to the will of God are:

prayer

counsel

wisdom

circumstances

the leading of the Spirit

Faithful to God’s Word

John 15:7 “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.”

John 15 is about abiding in Christ. The emphasis of abiding in Christ is a continual relationship where you walk with Christ. But the key to abiding in Christ is to experience that relationship with Him through his word. According to vs 7, abiding in Christ means his words are abiding in you. This means you spend time in the word. You are doing your daily devotions because you want to meet with God.

But it means more than that. It means his words live in you. They are not just words on a page, but words in your heart. You meditate on them, you memorize them. They renew your thinking and your affections.

The implication here is that God will answer the prayers of those who consistently spend time with Him. This point will tie in to many of the other points.

1. How is it that we know what the will of God is? The primary way we know the will of God is through his word. God tells us how he thinks about things, he tells us what he wants, he gives us wisdom and principles to make decisions based on his word. So if I want to pray according to His will, I need to know his word.

2. How is it that I am going to pray in faith? I need to know what God has promised to do. Again the primary place I find the promises of God is in his word. I have been doing a prolonged study on the promises of God. I ended up skipping forward to the book of Psalms because so many of the promises in Gen- Deut were made to specific people and don’t necessarily apply to me. But if I am going to know what God has promised I need to look at what he has said.

Conclusion

We all long for God to answer our prayers and I hope this has helped to shed some light on how to pray a prayer that is likely to be answered. So we looked at God’s delaying to answer, we looked at what hinders our prayers from being heard, and tonight, how to have our prayers answered by God.