Prayer Promises and the Prayer of Faith

You may ask anything in my name, and I will do it.  John 14:14

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.  Matthew 7:7-8

Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know. Jeremiah 33:3

Is claiming a promise the same as praying in faith?  Possibly, but usually not.  I fear that some people try to use the wonderful promises in the Bible to obligate God to do what they want.  They are like litigants that go to court to enforce the terms of a contract.  While it is true that great men of the Bible found grounds for their praying in God's covenant or prophecies (e.g., Acts 4:25-26; Daniel 9:2; 2 Samuel 23:5), that approach is not the same as hearing (in our spirit) God respond to our plea with a word of assurance.  Besides, no mortal could ever force the Almighty to do anything.  Such an approach goes beyond confidence to arrogance.

So why did God give us promises if we are not to use them to remind Him to act?  The promises are reminders to us that our heavenly Father delights to hear from us and to help us.  They are clues to His character, evidence of His generosity.  He encourages us to come to Him with our needs that He may display His glory by His provision.  We should not be like the fisherman caught in a storm who though he had neglected his relationship with God nevertheless prayed, "God, you know I've never bothered you before, and if You'll help me just this once, I'll never bother You again."  No, God promises to answer prayer so that we will come to Him repeatedly.

There are times when a prayer promise may become a word from the Lord that enables to pray the prayer of faith.  I have heard Tom Elliff teach about prayer and getting a word from the Lord.  He has many wonderful testimonies of times that he has prayed about matters and the Spirit led him to a verse of Scripture as confirmation that his prayer had been heard and would be answered.  The Spirit would "quicken" a phrase or verse from the Bible, make it come alive in a way that made him aware that God was speaking specifically to him at that moment.  On a few occasions, I have had the same experience. But there is a great difference in the Lord's using His word to assure us of an answer and our using His word to obligate Him to answer.

Prayer and Scripture go together to build our faith.  We should allow the promises of answered prayer to do what they were intended to do--get us to pray more often and more confidently because they assure us of God's willingness to hear and to answer.  We may even find that the words of Scripture help us articulate what our heart longs for.  The more steeped in Scripture we are, the more we will find ourselves praying God's word back to Him.  After all, His thoughts are higher than our thoughts.

Let us pray.  We should never allow thoughts of inadequacy to hinder us.  Teaching on prayer may lead to the concern that we don't really know how to pray or that we are not doing it right.  The promises should encourage us.  Let's just do it.

PUSH

The title of this post is a well known acrostic that stands for "Pray Until Something Happens."  Our grandfathers called it "praying through."  One writer on prayer (whose name I long ago forgot) compared much of our praying to the action of children at play, ringing someone's doorbell and then running away before anyone opens the door.  How often do we make requests of the Lord but fail to keep asking, seeking, and knocking (Matthew 7:7-8) until we know we have received an answer?

Jesus emphasized persistence in His teaching about prayer.  In one parable a widow pesters a judge until he grants her request just to get rid of her.  The lesson is not that God has to be persuaded or cajoled to answer us but that we "should always pray and not give up" (Luke 18:1 NIV).  Jesus insisted that we persist in the parable of the importunate neighbor who wouldn't let his friend rest until he loaned him bread (Luke 11:3-13).  This parable is directly connected to His teaching of the Model Prayer.

Perseverance is demonstrated by the great men of prayer.  Abraham haggled with God over the number of righteous that would spare Sodom and Gomorrah.  The cities were not spared but Lot was, which I assume was his main concern (Genesis 18:16-33).  Note that Abraham prayed until "the Lord had finished speaking" (verse 33 NIV).  Daniel prayed and fasted for three weeks until the angel came with the answer he was seeking (Daniel 10).  Paul prayed three times (perhaps a number symbolic of repeated prayer) for the thorn in the flesh to be removed, ceasing to plead only when the Lord answered with His assurance of grace (2 Corinthians 12:7-10).  Most importantly, we see Jesus praying three times for the cup to pass from Him (Mark 14:32-42), praying until He knew His hour had come.  If Jesus persevered in prayer, so should we.

There are three steps in prayer.  Most people think of only two: asking and receiving.  But there is a third step, one that comes between the asking and the receiving: knowing.  We clearly see this step in the teaching of 1 John 5:14-15:  This is the assurance we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.  And if we KNOW that He hears us--whatever we ask--we KNOW that we have what we asked of Him (emphasis added).  Ask--know--receive: those are the key steps in prayer.

Let us persevere in prayer until the Holy Spirit assures our spirit that we have been heard.  We may know that God has granted our request, or we may know that He has something better to give us.  And what if we never know?  We keep praying until we receive.

Our prayer for the nations is so big that we may never fully know we have been heard.  But as He leads us to pray for specific things, like which people group to embrace, we can keep on praying until He answers.  Let's not give up.