Mothers, do your children ever ask you
a question and then not listen for your response? Sometimes they are just talking to themselves but begin their
question with the word, “Mom….” For
example, “Mom, do you think I should wear the skirt or the shorts today?” They might be interested in what you have to
say, but more than likely they are just “thinking out loud.” That kind of behavior is not the unusual.
What would be
unusual would be if they asked you for something and then did not stick around
to find out if you were going to give it to them!
When we do not
expect an answer to our prayers, we send a message to the Lord about what we
believe about the effectiveness of prayer, the faithfulness of God, the
fervency of our desires, the confidence we have in our own ability, the trust
we have in the truth of His promises, and the relationship of the eternal and
the temporal.
THESIS: Praying without waiting and watching for the answer
from the Lord demonstrates a lack of trust in Him, but praying and expecting
will grow our faith to new heights.
In a variety of
ways, our approach to prayer reveals more about our hearts and our faith than
the activity level of our church work and even our verbal affirmations and
doctrinal confessions. Somehow in the
realm of our prayer lives, the truth comes out—usually in a way that no one but
the Lord sees. We live to rely on the
Lord, or we live to rely on ourselves and we live desperately as if there were
no one to rely on.
I. PRAYER DOES NOT ALWAYS MAKE REQUESTS, BUT DOES ALWAYS SPEAK WORDS
OF ADORATION AND THANKSGIVING
--If we understand the nature of prayer, we realize
that prayer does not consist of a mere recitation of our requests as if God was
nothing more than the warehouse manager who handles our requisitions and
orders.
--Prayer offers that most amazing privilege of engaging in a
personal conversation and enjoying a personal relationship with the Lord God
our Creator!
--In fact, prayer reaches its most sublime moments
when we find ourselves caught up into His presence in such a way that we care
very little for anything but meditating on and adoring His glorious and
beautiful being.
Adoration –Some of our best praying comes when we find ourselves overwhelmed
with the wonders of who He is –His radiant splendor shines brightest upon our
souls and His powerful love reaches deepest into our hearts.
Thanksgiving –All the great and mighty things God has done for us can
escape our notice if we take Him for granted and fail to acknowledge that every
good and perfect gift we have comes to us from His hand.
--Many times we can pray effectively without making a single
request of the Lord, but we can never pray effectively without focusing time
and attention on expressions of Adoration and Thanksgiving to the God who is
worthy of our worship—even if He never
answered our prayers!
--However, the more we worship Him, the more aware
we are of our desperate need for Him and the prospects of life filled with the
blessings of His unlimited bounty and inexpressible joy!
--That will result in two responses on our part:
--The closer we draw to Him,
the more visible our own frailty and the more unacceptable our own sin becomes.
Prayers of
Request (Intercessions, Supplications) —Once we comprehend both the
strength of God and the goodness of God, our reticence to pray will disappear.
Psalm 62:11-12
One thing God has spoken, two things have I heard: that you, O God, are strong, and that you, O
Lord, are loving.
--When those dual truths compute in my heart, my
approach to prayers of request changes in direction proportion to how much I
believe those things to be true.
II. PRAYER often DOES MAKE REQUESTS, BUT DOES NOT ALWAYS WATCH AND
WAIT FOR ANSWERS
--Since God is loving enough to care about what
concerns me, and strong enough to act on my behalf, why would I ever hesitate
to bring my requests to Him?
Philippians 4:6-7
6Be
anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with
thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7And the peace of God, which surpasses all
comprehension, shall guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
A. BASIC ASSUMPTIONS AND AFFIRMATIONS about BIBLICAL prayING
--Once in a while it is helpful to be reminded of what we
already know…what we affirm to be true…assume to be the foundations of our
thinking.
1. God Hears
the Prayers of His People
--Throughout the Bible, we are told again and again that God
hears His people when they pray, listens to the cry of their hearts, attends to
their voices when they call upon Him.
Jeremiah 29:12
‘Then you will call upon Me and come and pray
to Me, and I will listen to you.
2. God
Answers the Prayers of His People
--But the great news is that God not only hears but that He
answers those who call upon Him with a clean heart, pure motives and in the
righteousness of His name.
John 15:7
“If you abide in Me, and My words abide in
you, ask whatever you wish, and it shall be done for you.
--Answering prayer for the Lord flows out of His love for us
as His children as He Himself stirs our hearts to pray as we ought to pray.
--Even though we are weak and do not even understand how to
pray, God committed to show us, to lead us and to enable us to pray as we
should so that He can answer what He has led us to ask.
Romans 8:26
And in the same way the Spirit also helps our
weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself
intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words;
--Therefore, He is already inclined to answer what He has
prompted us to pray by His Spirit—He answers…
a. Because
He Is Good
--If we miss the mark and ask foolishly, He is good and will
not say yes to that which would do us harm, even if we ask persistently!
--When He answers no, He still answers and we would do well
to note when He says no because in that response is an indication of His
goodness toward us in some way.
Have you not asked for something only to look back
with thanksgiving that God told you no?
Out of His goodness, He said no to one thing so that He might open up
the right thing! When He does, we
cannot wait to see what He has in mind instead! We know it will be good!
b. Because
He Is Faithful
--When our praying is related to His promises and anchored
in His Word, we know that He will answer because He will always be faithful to
His Word—He cannot lie or mislead!
--He answers prayer because He keeps His Word and always
does what He promises!
c. Because
He Is Able
--Even those with the best intentions sometimes fail to keep
their word because of circumstances out
of their control, things beyond their power.
--However, that is never the case with the Lord because He
is always able to do whatever He wants, always powerful enough to accomplish
anything that pleases Him.
2 Corinthians 9:8
And God is able to make all grace abound to
you, that always having all sufficiency in everything, you may have an
abundance for every good deed;
3. God
Delights in the Prayers of His People
--God loves to hear us cry out to Him, whether from the
pains of our distress, or from times of simple needs, for He wants us to know
that in Him we have One who hears and cares.
Psalm 18:6, 19 6In my distress I called upon the LORD, And cried to my God
for help; He heard my voice out of His temple, And my cry for help before Him
came into His ears…19He brought me forth also into a broad place; He
rescued me, because He delighted in me.
--Perhaps it does not occur to us as often as it should, but
we must understand that God wants to hear and to answer our prayers!
B. SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES AND CONSIDERATIONS ABOUT CARELESS PRAYING
--Our problem comes when we see prayer as just a ritual,
just a series of words recited by rote which we do not expect to produce any
results, do not believe will make any difference.
--How great an offense must that be to the Great God of
heaven and earth, our Maker and Redeemer!
Thomas Goodwin, Puritan preacher, wrote a treatise called The Return of Prayers, on the problem of praying carelessly and
without any interest in seeing God answer.
--He listed seven
problems we face when we pray without watching and waiting for the Lord to
answer.
If we do not actually watch for and expect God to answer our
prayers…
1. We Doubt
God’s Word
--If we choose to employ the means God has provided and do
not actually expect it to work, what good is that?
Job 21:15 15 What
is the Almighty, that we should serve him? and what profit should we have, if
we pray unto him?
--Any prayer offered in the name of Jesus Christ will meet
with the approval of the Father and His commitment is to give us what we ask.
1 John 5:14-15 14
And this is the confidence which we have
before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. 15 And if we know that He hears
us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked
from Him.
2. We Treat
Him As If He Were Not Truly God
When we watch people from around the world offering
their prayers at small altars to idols, placing flowers and sacrifices before
that false deities, we feel sorry for them.
They are praying to carvings and man-made gods, hoping they will find
favor but never really expecting them to work.
But how are Christians any
different when we pray without really expecting our God to be capable of doing
anything either.
--How insulting and demeaning to slight our Lord God by treating
Him as if He were no more willing or able to answer our prayers than mute
statues and ugly carvings!
Psalm 135:15-18 15The idols of the nations are but silver and gold, The work
of man’s hands. 16They have
mouths, but they do not speak; They have eyes, but they do not see; 17They have ears, but they do not
hear; Nor is there any breath at all in their mouths. 18Those who make them will be like them, Yes, everyone
who trusts in them.
--If we come to Him with no more expectation that He will
respond than if He were like the idols of the nations, we make Him just like
them in our hearts—what an offense not to expect our God to answer!
3. We Pay No
Attention to What He Says and Does
--Even after we pray and He responds, if we are not
listening for what He says and watching for what He does, we will not even
notice.
--Asking, then walking away with our backs to Him, with our
ears and eyes closed, we never know whether He answered or not.
--Praying without a conscious watch for His response suggests
that we probably are missing a significant part of the privilege of knowing we
have a God who answers prayer.
4. We
Provoke Him to Stop Answering
--If we are not listening anyway, why should He continue to
answer?
--Praying is not finished when we finish asking, but
continues on as we expect Him to respond and wait patiently until He does.
When we try to talk to someone who refuses to
listen, who ignores us when we do something good for them, how long will we
continue?
God has connected faith in His Word
with the way He responds to our prayers.
If we do not believe, if we will not wait in expectancy, if we pay no
attention to Him beyond the initial words we speak in prayer…God does not
promise to continue to answering.
5. We Do Not Recognize His Work and Become
Ungrateful
--Ingratitude is epidemic in the body of Christ these days,
in large part because so many do not recognize what God does in response to
prayer.
--Because we are not expecting anything to happen, when it
does, we do not recognize the hand of God at work and give Him no credit, no
thanks and no glory!
Colossians 4:2 Devote
yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving;
Moms, do you not get tired of being taken for
granted sometimes? A little gratitude
and recognition for what you do goes a long way! God deserves to be recognized and thanked.
6. We Miss
the Display of His Character in His Works
--If you do not recognize the displays of the power of God
in response to your prayers, you will be likely to overlook His sovereign
character at work in other areas of your life.
--In essence, you stop looking for God, stop expecting Him
to be involved in your life…and eventually you lose sight of the wonder of
living for and with the Lord God Almighty.
Psalm 40:5
Many, O Lord my God, are the wonders you have done. The things you planned for us no one can
recount to you; were I to speak of them, they would be too many to declare.
(NIV)
7. We Lose Out on the Comforts and Joys of
Watching Him Work
--When you become used to seeing God work, watching Him
answer prayer, you understand the joy and the comfort of knowing that He will
be there when you need Him.
--If you have lost the sense of expectation when you pray,
you lose the sweet assurance that He is always with you ready to act on your
behalf.
--God wants us to pray—no question about that! But He wants our praying to be flooded with
expectancy by the living water of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
C. MATURE ATTITUDES AND ADVANTAGES IN EXPECTANT PRAYING
--How can we learn to pray with a watchful eye to recognize
the hand of God in the answer?
Habakkuk 2:1-3 I will
stand on my guard post And station myself on the rampart; And I will keep watch
to see what He will speak to me, And how I may reply when I am reproved. 2 Then the LORD answered me and
said, “Record the vision And inscribe
it on tablets, That the one who reads it may run. 3 “For the
vision is yet for the appointed time; It hastens toward the goal, and it will
not fail. Though it tarries, wait for it; For it will certainly come, it will
not delay.
--God wants us to develop that kind of persistence, that
kind of watchfulness, that kind of patience to wait expectantly for the answers
to prayer to come.
--Three ways to develop this aspect of our prayer lives:
1. Watch for
Evidence of His Handiwork on Display
--Look for the ways God is working, count your
blessings, remember His goodness in your life.
--He is already at work—we just need to watch
out for it more carefully so that when we pray we will be in the habit of
looking for the hand of the Lord.
2. Wait for
a Vision of His Plan at Work
--When there is a delay in the answer, perhaps
it is because the Lord has other things to work out before the timing is right.
--If you have confidence in His long-term
vision, short-term delays and even denials, will not discourage you.
--Once you grasp His vision for your life, you
can relax and wait on Him to bring the
answer best suited to the circumstances.
Vision, one
of the prayers says, “May I not instruct Thee in my troubles, but glorify Thee
in my trials.”
We want to ask God for relief from
the trouble and want to tell how we want out.
His vision may indeed include the struggle as a means of teaching us
about the perfecting of power through weakness (2 Cor. 12:9).
3. Work with the Assumption that His Answer’s
on the Way
--If after searching to see that our prayers
are in line with what He has revealed in His word, that nothing appears
contrary to His will, assume that the answer is on the way!
--He has promised that He will answer our
prayers when we present them in the name and for the sake of Jesus Christ.
--To Habakkuk, He promised “For the vision is yet for the appointed time;
It hastens toward the goal, and it will not fail. Though it tarries, wait for
it; For it will certainly come, it will not delay.
--God knows best and can be trusted—once we
have prayed, we must keep watching and waiting and expecting the answer
What will make our praying more meaningful, more
effective? Believing that praying makes
a difference! Acting on the basis of
that belief by waiting and watching for the Lord’s response to our requests!
I am challenged by the notion that much
of my praying is not of the expectant kind.
I am embarrassed that I can so easily forget what I have said to the
Lord in prayer and cannot even remember what I asked Him to do…that clearly
indicates that either I did not care whether He answered, OR did not actually
believe that He would answer.
The time has come for us to ask and believe! Jesus told us to “Ask, seek, and
knock.” Clearly He expected us to stick
around and wait for Him to answer!
Be patient in your praying and wait for
the Lord! Take note of what you ask
for…and then rejoice and give thanks when you see the answer! May God give us attentive and grateful
hearts as we become men and women of expectant prayer!
Providence
Baptist Church
© David
Horner 2003
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