Gentle Ministries > > GETTING THE ANSWERS TO OUR PRAYERS

GETTING THE ANSWERS TO OUR PRAYERS
Sunday, October 24, 2004 (05:45:00)

Posted by amcit

Today I want to talk to you about how God answers our prayers, and the four attitudes I believe we need in order to receive those answers.

A young girl wrote a missionary once, and the letter was tell him that she was keeping him in her prayers. She had been told not to request a response to her letter because the missionary was very busy, so she began her letter with these words; “Dear Mr. Missionary, I am praying for you., but don’t worry, I am not expecting an answer.”

I think that summarizes how many Christians pray. We bring issues before the throne of God, but we don’t really expect any answers. We pray for help, them immediately look for some way that either we, or the world, can fix the problem we are praying about.

God won’t answer prayers like that, because those prayers do not show our full reliance on God. Let’s talk more about that. I said we need four attitudes in order for God to answer our prayers.

1. LET GOD ANSWER PRAYERS IN HIS TIME, NOT YOURS.

Today’s society is a ‘right now’ society. We want instant everything, don’t we? All too often, when we pray for God’s help, we have the attitude of ‘hurry it up, God!’ God knows the perfect time and the perfect way in which He should answer our prayers, we don’t. We need to let God do His perfect work in His perfect time and stop trying to rush Him to fit into our schedule

Sometimes God will answer a prayer immediately; sometimes He will just say ‘NO’, which will turn out to be the perfect answer in the long run; and sometimes, He will say, ‘NOT YET.’

In the first chapter of LUKE, we find the story of a man named Zechariah. He was the father of John the Baptist. He was a priest who was quite elderly. He and his wife, Elizabeth, both were righteous and Godly people. One time, Zechariah was sweeping the temple and burning incense and the angel Gabriel appeared to him. The angel told him that his prayers had been heard and will be answered. He said that his wife would give birth to a boy.

Instead of having the faith to believe his prayer had been answered, Zechariah expressed doubt and wanted to know how he could believe this. The angel said that because of his disbelief, Zechariah would lose his voice until the day the baby was born.

I can understand why Zechariah had doubt, can’t you? Sometimes when I pray, I do not have that solid foreknowledge that God will answer my prayers. So, I can see why Zechariah expressed some doubt. The problem with having any doubt, though, is that when we have any doubt at all, we actually hinder the work God can do for us, and we can even hinder the blessings we could have received by having full faith.

Zechariah doubted because he was a very old man, and his wife was a very old woman. In the Scripture, it says he told the angel, ‘I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.’ Now, that man had diplomacy! You see, a man should never think of his wife as old.

As I said a moment ago, we need to let God work in His time. In verse 13, it says that the angel told Zechariah that his prayer ‘has been heard’. That is a past-tense word. God had already heard the prayers Zechariah had prayed for a baby. But, it wasn’t until now that God had everything in place for the baby to be born. See, in His time, we find the perfect time.

Someone once said that they had tried prayer. They said they prayed regularly for two weeks and having received no answer at all, they said they then lost their faith in prayer. I say they did not lose their faith, but rather lost their patience! Another word for ‘faith’ is ‘patience’.

I said that God sometimes will say ‘NOT YET’. That is because He has to prepare us first. I remember years ago when I was single. I wanted a wife. I wanted that ‘married and settled down lifestyle’, but I didn’t even have a girlfriend at the time. So, when I would realize that, I would get very down and feel like there was no hope at all for me to ever realize true love.

There was a Christian lady who I worked with, and one day when I was in the cafeteria sitting by myself over a cup of coffee, this woman came by and said she had a letter for me. She said it was from God and that I should read it right away. She handed me the letter and then walked off.

I opened it and it was a one page letter telling me to stop being disheartened. It said that God had a very special person for me, but He was not only working on her to prepare her for me, He was working on me to prepare me for her. In short, the letter explained that having patience once I had prayed for something was truly showing solid faith in the Lord’s ability and desire to give me what I asked for. It worked, and I ended up meeting Diana not long afterward.

That is like when my son used to ask me if he could drive the car. I would tell him ‘not yet’, because he was only 7 years old. He had to grow and be prepared before he could properly handle a car. We need to grow and get prepared sometimes before we can handle the answer to the prayers we have already prayed.

Many times, we pray for something and then get aggravated at God, wanting Him to hurry up and do what we want. We have to understand that God wants very much to give us what we need and what we want, but because we are the sinners, He sometimes has to change us first, and that takes time. God is more interested in making you a solid Christian than He is making your life comfy and cozy.

For instance, if you are having financial difficulty at this time, God may be telling you that He wants you to learn the right attitude about money before he makes money available to you. If your problem is related to a relationship, maybe He is telling you to change your attitude to a more loving and open one and then He will heal that relationship.

Okay, now what happens when you pray and pray and pray again, and you still see no answer in sight? What do you do then? You have faith that God is preparing the answer for you, and you just keep on praying. Pray with the knowledge that God will answer your prayers, and He will answer them in the best way for you.

In the 11th chapter of MARK, we are told to pray with the belief that we have already received the answer and we will get it. It is all a matter of how solid your faith in God is. And remember that when God says, ‘Not yet’, that doesn’t necessarily mean ‘No’.

2. LET GOD ANSWER YOUR PRAYERS HIS WAY, NOT YOURS.

We talked about letting God answer your prayers in His time, not yours, but we must also realize that we must let Him answer them in His way, not our way.

In ISAIAH 55:8, God says,

‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways.’

Sometimes, God wants to answer your prayer in a much bigger way than you wanted. Go back to Zechariah for a moment. What would have happened if God had answered their requests for a baby immediately? They would have had a little Jewish baby boy or girl, and they would have loved that baby dearly, but God had something else in mind.

He waited until the time came for Jesus Christ to be born, and then he let Zechariah and Elizabeth give birth to Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptist. That fulfilled Old Testament prophecy saying one would come before the Messiah, exalting His name. This is what I mean by letting God do things in His way. His ways are so much better than our ways.

To be truthful, I think we have two problems when praying. We ask for too little, and we ask for it too fast.

In EPHESIANS 3:20, it says,

‘… to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine according to His power that is at work within us.’

No matter what great things you have in your imagination, and no matter how grand you think the answer to your prayer will be, it is nothing compared to how much God can and wants to give you. So we need to pray in patience, having absolute faith of the outcome.

I will admit something to you right now. If God had answered all my prayers the way I wanted Him to, and in the timing I wanted, I would never have been blessed the way He has blessed me over the years. I have learned to let God choose the time and the way He answers me. After all, who am I to dictate to my Heavenly Father?

3. REALIZE GOD DOES NOT NEED YOUR HELP

Don’t ask God for things and then immediately go to work trying to get them by yourself. God does not need your help. One of the biggest problems we have is that we encounter some kind of a problem, then we go to God in prayer and ask for His help, and then we get up and start trying to figure out how to solve our problems. If you ask God for help – stand back and let Him help you!

Let me refer back again to Zechariah. Did you notice how long God waited to answer their prayer? He waited until they were too old to have children, didn’t He? Why did God wait that long?

Have you ever noticed times when you needed a specific type of help, and the help only came a the very last minute? Why does God wait? I think He waits so that when He gives the answer to a prayer, you will realize that it came from nobody but Him. He does not want you to get confused and think that you came up with the perfect solution to your problem.

While we are talking about praying for answers to problems, let me give you a warning to always remember. When you pray for God to give you the fix for a problem, do not be surprised, in fact – be prepared, for things to get worse before they get better.

Why is that? I think that any time we show full and absolute faith in God’s ability and desire to help us, the devil will try his best to thwart it and make us start having doubts. And, I think that God allows that to a point, so that when the answer is given, it gives Him the most glory. Sometimes, it seems that God will let a situation get out of hand so that when the answer is finally received, it is an opportunity for us to see a miracle, which again, would help grow our faith in Him.

A perfect example of this is found in JOHN 11. It is a story of two sisters, Mary and Martha. They had a brother named Lazarus and he got sick. The sisters sent for Jesus to come quickly and heal Lazarus. I can just see the urgency and panic in their message for Jesus to waste no time in coming to them.

Now, Jesus was only a few miles from their home, but He intentionally delayed going there for four days. By this time, their brother had died and was buried in a tomb. Jesus came and wanted to see where Lazarus was. You can imagine how upset the sisters were, claiming that if Jesus had been there earlier, their brother would still be alive. In short, they were mad and rebuking God, weren’t they? Don’t we sometimes do the same thing when things don’t seem to go our way and He doesn’t answer in the time we want Him to answer?

When Jesus was taken to the tomb, He called Lazarus out and Lazarus awoke from the dead and came forth. If Jesus had come when He was first called, many people would have thought that Lazarus just got well, and would have doubted that Jesus was the healer.

This way, there was no doubt in anybody’s mind that Jesus was the supreme healer and that the answer to the prayer only came from Him. Sometimes, God will make us wait, too, so that everyone around us will know without a doubt where the answer came from.

So, when you are waiting for a prayer that's been delayed, keep your eyes open to watch God at work in other people's lives and it will build your faith. And, be willing to let God use His power to answer our prayers. He really doesn’t need our limited help.

4. LET GOD ANSWER FOR HIS REASONS NOT YOURS

One time, when I was about 23 years old, I worked for a company in Dayton, Ohio. There was an opportunity for me to get promoted and I went for it. All I could think about was how important I would be if I got that promotion. I busied myself with thoughts of self-grandeur and other self-delusional thoughts. I even prayed for that promotion relentlessly.

And I got the promotion. I was so happy! I finally got to a point where I was one of the “Mr. Bigs” in the office. I soon found out how little I actually was in that new position. See, I had wanted that because I thought it would make me be important. What I found out was that it was a good job, but had absolutely no glamour to it. It was a 100% behind-the-scenes job that nobody would ever know who was doing it.

Now, if I had prayed for that job, wanted it for all the worldly prestige I thought it would give, why did God give it to me anyway, knowing that there was no prestige at all involved? I think He answered my prayer for two reasons.

The first reason being to knock my over-inflated ego down a few notches to where I could actually see right and wrong again, and the second reason was for His reason, the ultimate right reason.

See, with that new promotion, I got about a 20% annual raise in pay. I was barely making ends meet before that, and often had to borrow gas money from my parents just to get to and from work.

Within a month after the promotion, we found out that my wife was pregnant. The increase in pay was given to us so that we could afford to start raising a family. God wanted me to come back down to earth where I belonged, so He gave me a job with absolutely no image to it, and He also wanted me to start raising a family, so He gave me that job for the increase in pay. God answered that prayer for His reasons, not my convoluted reasons.

Not only whenever He wants, however He wants, but also for whatever reason He chooses.

Do you remember the story of Joseph in the Bible? God said to Joseph in a dream, "You're going to be the ruler of a great county someday." Then what happened? Joseph was promptly sold by his brothers into slavery. He goes as a slave into his master's home, his master's wife tries to seduce him, he would not give in, so the wife has him put in jail. That's not exactly the way to build a political career. Sold into slavery and then maligned and put in jail. His whole career is on a downhill slide. But God ended up making Joseph the second in command in all of Egypt. It was all because of God’s reasoning, not Josephs.

I think the greatest example of what I'm trying to say is found in the life of Paul.

Paul was willing to let God answer his prayers in His way. When Paul prayed, He immediately gave it over to God to handle from there. In reading the book of ROMANS, we find that Paul's major calling was to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ in Rome.

Rome was the most significant cities in the world at the time, and it was almost like Paul wanted to preach to the ‘movers and shakers’ of his day. He probably had visions of renting the Coliseum, installing a good PA system so he could reach more people, and maybe even handing out flyers for a few days before the big night.

Paul’s main desire was to preach in Rome. In ROMANS 15:20, he says,

‘It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on someone else’s foundation.’

Paul had prayed for many years for the chance to go to Rome. Did God answer his prayers? Yes he did, but notice how he answered them.

In ACTS 28:16, Luke tells us what happened to Paul when he did get Rome.

‘When we got to Rome, Paul was allowed to live by himself with a soldier to guard him.’

House arrest. I don’t think that is how Paul saw his visit to Rome. Paul had prayed to go to Rome, and God answered those prayers. Paul had been arrested and gone through the Roman court system and was sent to Rome – as a prisoner, to be kept chained under house arrest.

Paul wanted to have a pleasant journey, I am sure. What did he get? He didn’t get your typical Love Boat cruise, did he? He was in chains, in a shipwreck, bitten by a poisonous snake and finally ended up under house arrest in Rome.

Let’s take a closer look at this whole scenario. I feel it will answer many questions for us today, as we strive to grow our prayer lives.

Going to Rome was in Paul’s blood. He thought about it constantly. He prayed about it constantly. How did he finally get there? It was through the Roman leaders of his day, Felix, Agrippa and Caesar. In his wildest nightmares, I doubt if he ever thought these people would be the ones to help him realize his greatest ambition.

No telling how many times Paul had packed his bags and tried to get ready to go to Rome, God said “Not Yet – We will do this in My time.” Paul was never in a huge hurry like we seem to be in today, was he?

Then, one day, for His own purpose and in His own time, God answered Paul’s prayers. Why did God now want Paul in Rome? Not to be the big preacher in the Coliseum, but to write letters. While Paul was under house arrest, he had plenty of time on his hands, so what did he do with that time? He spent most of it writing letters to different Christians all over the Mediterranean area, encouraging them in Christ, teaching them biblical principles and getting them organized into one united body for Jesus.

Those were very important letters. When they were put together, they became much of the New Testament in our Bibles today. We got that because Paul prayed to God to be sent to Rome, but he allowed everything to be worked out by God, not by himself. And God answered in such a glorious way that the Christian church flourished, grew stronger and in a way that totally glorified God the Father.

Paul is the most widely read author in the history of the world. Paul was so much of an activist for Jesus that the only way God could get him to slow down enough to write those letters was to put him in jail.

Paul’s great desire was to go preach in Rome, but it wasn’t because he wanted to be known as a great preacher, or that he wanted any glory. No, Paul’s entire focus in life was to make as big an impact for Jesus as he could. And, he thought the best way for him to do so was to preach in Rome. God saw to it that Paul made a huge and lasting impact for Jesus, didn’t He? But He did it no in the way Paul had wanted, but in the perfect way that God knew was best.

IN CLOSING

When we pray a prayer that is not right, God will say “No!” When we pray a prayer and we are not right, God will say, “GROW.” When we pray and the timing is not right, God will say “SLOW.” But, when we pray a prayer and all is right, God will say, “GO.”

And we find that those prayers that all is right are those prayers that ask God to give us what we need, but then will allow us to comfortably step back and give Him the leeway to do all the work and take as much time as He wants in answering those prayers. That is when we know we have true and resolute faith in Him.

Let me ask you about your prayer life this morning. Are you willing to let God take your prayers and do whatever He wants to with it, and take whatever time He wants to take with them? Or, do you pray with a negative heart, wanting Him to answer your prayers instantly?

If I had a dull pocket knife, I would take it to a knife-sharpener and tell him to sharpen it. If he told me it would be done some time this week, and that he would call me when it was done, what would I do?

I would agree with him and then go about my business – knowing that when the job was done, I would get a call. I would not get mad at him, or keep calling him to tell him I am getting impatient, and I would not end up believing he could not sharpen my knife.

Likewise, when I give a request to my Father, I must be willing to go about my business and let Him do the work that He is best at – taking care of me in the best possible way.

One last thought on praying to our Father. What is your motive? If you are praying for health, what do you plan on doing with that health when you get it? If you are praying for a financial blessing, what are you going to do with it when you get it? Are you planning on using it for your good, or for God’s good for you? In other words, when you get the answer to your prayer, who is it going to glorify?

God hears those prayers from His children. In His Word, He has told us that His children are those who have made a decision to give their lives over to Jesus. Have you made the most important decision of your eternal life yet? To receive Jesus as your Savior?

If you have not, I am going to give you the chance right now to rectify that. To be able to be included in the family of God. To be His children so He can hear your prayers.

LET’S PRAY