Is God answering your prayers? All of us have wondered this at times. Maybe you know God hears you, but you aren’t seeing real results. Maybe you don’t know if God hears you at all.
Let’s look in the Bible to find the most often overlooked “key” to answered prayer!
The Bible is filled with awesome examples of God answering prayers! Read Exodus 32:7-14 and see how Moses’s prayers actually changed God’s mind and saved the nation of Israel from being wiped out!
Moses and every other individual in the Bible were imperfect. They had desires, passions, strengths, weaknesses, discouragements and limitations, just like those you and I have (James 5:16-18).
Yet the prayers of these mere mortals changed how the Creator of the universe fulfilled His plan! They changed the course of history! They got real results.
The Bible teaches that to pray “effectual” prayers that “avail much,” we must be bold; we must be energetic; we must remember history; we must study the promises God makes in the Bible; we must know He desires to bless us; we must hold Him to His promises; we must pray according to His will; we must be diligent; we must put in hard work; we must make prayer the most important part of each day!
But you can do all these things and not receive real results! None of these is the most often-overlooked key to answered prayer.
There is not one thing I have had to rely on God for and ask Him for in prayer, for myself and family or the wonderful work of His, which He has committed to me, that has not been answered. You can get the same results, if you are willing to learn what I have had to learn, and to do what God has shown me I have to do.
What did God show me I had to do? What did God show Abraham, Moses, David, Elijah, James, Paul and other men of effective prayer that they had to do?
“We must obey!” This is the key that so many overlook! We must not only pray, and with all those other attributes, but we must also want to obey God, and actually obey God! God tells us in…
1 John 3:7 “Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. The one who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous.”
Verse 18 “Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.”
Verse 21 “Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God.”
verse 22 “and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him.”
“This is the key!” This means an obedient person, not self-reliant and self-righteous, but humble and repentant. God answers the prayers of the “obedient.”
James 5:16 says “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.”
So if your prayers are not getting real results, don’t question God. Look at yourself. Are you obeying God? It is not enough to know God’s will. You must do God’s will.
Did you know that loving God means not just saying you love Him but being “obedient” to Him? Most Christian churches do not teach this!
1 John 5:3: “In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome.”
1 John 2:3-6: “We know that we have come to know him if we keep his commands. Whoever says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person. But if anyone obeys his word, love for God is truly made complete in them. This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did.”
1 John 3:23-24: “And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.”
Additionally study Psalm 66:18-20; Proverbs 15:8; Proverbs 28:9; Ezekiel 33:30-32; Luke 13:24-28; John 9:31; John 15:10; Isaiah 55:8, 1 John 5:14, John 5:30, Luke 22:42 and many other verses show that obeying God means giving up your will and doing His will instead.
Most Christians don’t realize or admit this, but our will is contrary to God’s will. This doesn’t just apply to “bad people” but to all people (Jeremiah 17:9; Romans 8:7).
“Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.” (Isaiah 59:1-2)
Many people, when they pray, have “requests” of God. But they don’t think about what God “expects” of them.
The formula is to search the Bible for God’s will and His promises, stop sinning, strive to obey His laws, and then faithfully believe! Not only can you get real results, but you can know as you’re praying that God will answer (1 John 5:15; Matthew 21:22).
You don’t know how or when, but you know He will answer! There will not be one thing that God does not answer!
This is life changing prayer!
China - in His image 