Reading Time: 6 minutesSince we imagine that God’s “Yes,” is the only obstacle to our prayer being answered, our entire prayer effort is focused on getting God’s Yes. We dream up all manner of schemes for getting God to Yes. We try begging, or crying, or bargaining, or asking a million people to pray with us. We try asking over and over and over and over and over again, in hopes of getting God to Yes…
Reading Time: 5 minutesSometime after I saw that Jesus really meant what he was saying in Matthew 7:7-8, I was again meditating on it, trying to figure it out, trying to understand it, trying to understand how it worked:
“Ask and it will be given to you… For everyone who asks receives…”
Just going over it again, and again, repeating it to myself, thinking about it. As I was doing this, I think I might have been upset by an unanswered prayer, I thought, ‘But this, obviously, isn’t true.’ I talked to Jesus about it, “Jesus what you’re saying here is obviously not true. Lots of people ask and as far as they can tell it’s not given to them. Most people ask and don’t receive…
Reading Time: 2 minutesHere’s how I like to think about it. I imagine myself going before the throne of God to make a request, to submit my prayer. I’m in an antechamber outside the throne room, and there’s a doorway leading in to God’s throne room. As I look
Reading Time: 4 minutesI love this quote from George Müller:
“How precious to have learned in any measure to stand with God alone in the world, and yet to be happy, and to know that surely no good thing shall be withheld from us whilst we walk uprightly!”
Müller is known for his book, Answers To Prayer, which details how God provided for the needs of the orphanages he started in 1800s England, through answered prayer without resort to natural means, i.e. without resorting to the typical fundraising techniques of his day appeals to the rich, fundraising letters, conferences, chicken dinners or, as Pastor Price used to say, “Katydid candy sales.”
What I didn’t know was that Müller started these orphanages specifically for the purpose of demonstrating to the Christian world that God would provide for his children without Christians having to resort to natural means. In other words that a Christian could learn to stand with God alone in the world, with no one else to back them up or take their side or help them but God, and still have their every good thing supplied. Here’s Müller:
Reading Time: 7 minutesHere’s another way to think about it. I like to say, “Getting your prayers answered is as easy as losing weight.” It takes a lot of effort to lose weight, but it can be done. Doing what it takes to get our prayers answered may require a great deal of effort as well, but it can be done.
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