This turned into a sort of review of the past three messages.
The first point I was trying to make in this series is that our picture of prayer is wrong. We think that God is the one withholding the answer and that we somehow have to get Him to release the answer. But the Bible teaches that God wants our prayers answered, He desires to answer our prayers. The Bible talks about prayer like results are gauranteed. Jesus talked like answered prayer was a certainty, a sure thing. So God is not the problem, He’s not the hangup, He’s not the one witholding the answer. He says, "Ask and ye shall receive." God says "Everyone that asketh receiveth." God says "Whatever you ask in prayer believing you shall recieve." That’s God’s attitude toward prayer.
The second point was that in order to think about prayer correctly we should think about it like growing a garden. You could say that it’s God’s will for everyone to have a beautiful garden. But everyone doesn’t have a beautiful garden. Why? Because it’s not God’s will? No, because they haven’t done what is necessary to have a beautiful garden. Prayer works the same way.
The third point was that when our prayers aren’t answered instead of putting the responsiblity for prayer failure on the will of God we should ask instead where we have missed it. There are conditions to our prayers being answered.
Audio: MP3 Large File 42mb (If you want to burn a CD) Small file 13mb (If you just want to listen.)