Four Secrets to Answered Prayer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Four Secrets to Answered Prayer

"Then [Nehemiah] said, 'O Lord, God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps his covenant of unfailing love with those who love him and obey his commands, listen to my prayer! . . . I confess that we have sinned against you . . . Please remember what you told your servant Moses: If you are unfaithful to me, I will scatter you among the nations. But if you return to me and obey my commands and live by them, then even if you are exiled to the ends of the earth, I will bring you back to the place I have chosen for my name to be honored . . . Please grant me success today by making the king favorable to me. Put it into his heart to be kind to me'" (Nehemiah 1:5-11).

 

 

Here are four secrets to answered prayer from the life of Nehemiah:

Base your request on God's character--Pray like you know God will answer you: "I'm expecting You to answer this prayer because of Who You are. You are a faithful God. You are a great God. You are a loving God. You are a wonderful God. You can handle this problem, God!"

Confess the sins of which you're aware--After Nehemiah based his prayer on who God is, he confessed his sins. He says, "We've sinned." He says "I confess . . . myself . . . my father's house . . . we have acted wickedly . . . we have not obeyed." It wasn't Nehemiah's fault that Israel went into captivity. He wasn't even born when it happened and he was most likely born in captivity. Yet, he's including himself in the national sins. He says, "I've been a part of the problem."

Claim the promises of God--Nehemiah prays to the Lord, saying, "I want You to remember what You told your servant Moses." Can you imagine saying "remember" to God? Nehemiah reminds God of a promise He made to the nation of Israel. In effect, he prays, "God, you warned through Moses that if we were unfaithful, we would lose the land of Israel. But you also promised that if we repent, You'd give it back to us."

Does God have to be reminded? No. Does He forget what He's promised? No. Then why do we do this? Because it helps us remember what God has promised.

Be very specific in what you ask for--If you want specific answers to prayer, then make specific requests. If your prayers consist of general requests, how will you know if they're answered?

Nehemiah is not hesitant to pray for success. He's very bold in his praying. Have you ever prayed, "Lord, make me successful?" If you haven't, why haven't you? What is the alternative? A failure?

Is it OK to ask God to make you successful? It all depends on your definition of success! I believe a good definition of success is--"Fulfilling God’s purpose for my life in faith, love, and the power of the Holy Spirit, and expecting the results from God." That is a worthy life objective that you should be able to pray for with confidence.

Consider this--If you can't ask God to make you a success at what you're doing, you should be doing something else. God doesn't want you to waste your life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Waiting Is the Hardest Part, Part 1

by Jon Walker

 

"Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children . . . so she said to Abram, 'The LORD has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family through her.' Abram agreed to what Sarai said" (Genesis 16:1–2).

 

(This guest devotional is by Jon Walker, author of 'Growing with Purpose,' and editor of the Purpose Driven Life on-line Devotionals)

 

And so Sarai took it upon herself to solve God's problem. After all, God told Sarai's husband, Abram, that he'd have a huge family, more descendants than there are stars in the sky (Genesis 15).

Sarai waited and waited for God to provide their first descendant, to answer her prayers, to make good on his promise--but the baby didn't come. Every day, the tension and the frustration mounted. As that great theologian and musician, Tom Petty, sings: "The waiting is the hardest part."

Like me--perhaps like you--Sarai began to wonder if God would ever answer her prayers or if he had forgotten about her. Perhaps--like you, like me--Sarai questioned whether God really knew what he was doing.

It appears Sarai's thoughts walked as far as her faith would carry her until she stood looking at the mountains of her fear. Did God understand how important this was to her? How could God deny her the greatest desire of her heart? Was God even on her side?

Even as Sarai acknowledged God's ability to fulfill the promise--"The LORD has kept me from having any children . . . "--she denied God's sovereignty to decide when the promise would be fulfilled.

If we could ask Sarai, "Can God?" she most likely would answer "Yes." If we then asked Sarai, "Will God?" her honest answer may have been "No."

When faced with a delayed answer, do you break with God? What does manipulating an answer to our prayers say about our belief in God's character?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Waiting Is the Hardest Part, Part 2

 

 

"Now the serpent . . . said to the woman, 'Did God really say, You must not eat from any tree in the garden?'" (Genesis 3:1).

 

And so Sarai took it upon herself to fulfill the promise, no longer trusting God to do his job. The waiting is the hardest part, and Sarai was tired of the wait.

Sitting in a humid tent, she heard the support poles creak; she heard, through the open flaps, a camel snort; and she heard . . . was that a voice, like the hiss of a serpent, saying, "Did God really say your husband would be the father of a family so vast it would surpass the number of stars in the sky?" (Consider Genesis 3).

Perhaps Sarai said, "God can, but he won't." Or maybe she said, "God can't figure this out, but I can." Looking through the tent's door, she saw her servant Hagar, and in that moment she saw the solution, though she didn't see the Pandora's box she would soon open. Perhaps she even thought, "Of course! This is probably the answer God meant for me to see all along."

Sarai believed her assumptions more than she believed God's promise. She wondered why God was no longer on her side--"Why is the LORD keeping this from me?"--instead of confessing she was no longer one with God's will.

Ask God to help you identify the places in your life where you're saying, "The LORD is keeping this from me!" God's interest is that you master the lessons of faith. He wants you to succeed, able to walk further in faith each day. So failure is not defeat; he will continue to teach you--and stretch you--until walking by faith and not by sight is as natural as breathing. Tell God, "I believe; help my unbelief!"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Waiting Is the Hardest Part, Part 3

"God also said to Abraham, 'As for Sarai your wife, you are no longer to call her Sarai; her name will be Sarah. I will bless her and will surely give you a son by her. I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her.'" (Genesis 17:15–16).

 

Just like you or me, Sarah and Abraham may have thought, "God doesn't understand our circumstances; his commandments are good guidelines, but they simply don't work well in the nitty-gritty of life."

And so Hagar gave birth to Ishmael.

Yet the promise had been that Sarah would be the one to deliver a son for Abraham; so the wait continued, long after reaching the point of desperate frustration--the place where you say, "God, I can't go on any longer!"

You've been there--like the widow knocking on the judge's door, you pray day and night but the shutters stay closed and the door remains shut (Luke 18). Sarah and Abraham knocked on that door for another fourteen years! (Genesis 16:16; Genesis 21:5).

While Abraham and Sarah waited, God made a covenant with Abram, changing his name to Abraham, which means "father of many." And he changed Sarai's name to Sarah, saying she would be the mother of nations and among her off-spring would be kings (Genesis 17).

Then God sent three mysterious visitors to tell Abraham that Sarah would provide him a son within the year. Sarah laughed, not believing God was about to give birth to his promise (Genesis 18).

Yet, they were totally and wholly dependent upon God to fulfill his promise. Not dependent because they'd obediently submitted everything to God, but totally dependent because they'd exhausted every other possibility.

And that's often why God delays. He's waiting on us to be ready for him.

Finally, God opened Sarah's womb so she could bear Abraham a son in his old age, at the time appointed by God (Genesis 21:2).

Jon Walker can be found on Facebook at GraceCreates with Jon Walker.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PurposeDriven.com by Rick Warren