We often assume our prayers go unheard or that there is no point in praying for certain situations because past prayers have been ignored. We fall into the trap set by the Enemy that causes us to think that since our prayers were not answered they way we wanted, they weren’t answered at all.
We are promised that no prayers go unanswered. Sometimes the answer is “yes” and sometimes it is “no,” but there is never a time when God doesn’t answer at all. Sometimes, though, it is not the answer that should be our concern, rather how we make the request. Are our prayers in accordance with God’s will? When we go to Him in prayer, are our hearts aligned with His?
Say you are having car troubles and out of the kindness of his heart your friend allowed you to borrow his. He trusts you and you know nothing will happen…until you cut it too close in the parking deck and clip the cement post, scraping half the paint off the bumper. You didn’t do it on purpose, and you’re not even sure how it happened. But you return the keys, thank him for letting you borrow the car and send his calls to voicemail for the next three days because you know by this time he’s certainly seen the damage. At this point, you wouldn’t shoot him a text asking for a ride to the bar, would you? (Note: The correct answer is no.)
Then why is it we have no trouble asking God for His blessing on our life without first making right our sins against Him?
Sin often creeps into our lives this way. We start out with good intentions, we’re confident we’re on the right track and then BOOM – it happens. Whatever your ‘it’ is, it happens. And you go through all the excuses and explanations and justifications of why it shouldn’t have happened to you and you didn’t mean for things to go down this way, all the while failing to simply confess, apologize and ask for forgiveness. Whether we try to avoid it or we are simply naïve, we skip this part of our conversation with God. We move right into the “please God, bless me in this way” part of prayer. And then we are put off when His answer is a firm, yet still loving, “NO.”
Luckily for us, God does not keep score. He is not concerned with how the paint got scratched, or how many times we've made countless other mistakes. He is a loving Father who just wants to have a conversation with us so that he can fix it.
1 John 5:14-15 tells us “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us – whatever we ask – we know that we have what we asked of him.” Such comfort can be found in those words: “…and if we know that he hears us – whatever we ask – we know that we have what we asked of him.” We know that we are granted our prayer. We know that it is coming.
Well, what if you don’t know what to pray? How can you align your heart with God’s will? Romans 8:26 shares how the Holy Spirit handles that: “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.”
How exciting is that?
We are promised that no prayers go unanswered. Sometimes the answer is “yes” and sometimes it is “no,” but there is never a time when God doesn’t answer at all. Sometimes, though, it is not the answer that should be our concern, rather how we make the request. Are our prayers in accordance with God’s will? When we go to Him in prayer, are our hearts aligned with His?
Say you are having car troubles and out of the kindness of his heart your friend allowed you to borrow his. He trusts you and you know nothing will happen…until you cut it too close in the parking deck and clip the cement post, scraping half the paint off the bumper. You didn’t do it on purpose, and you’re not even sure how it happened. But you return the keys, thank him for letting you borrow the car and send his calls to voicemail for the next three days because you know by this time he’s certainly seen the damage. At this point, you wouldn’t shoot him a text asking for a ride to the bar, would you? (Note: The correct answer is no.)
Then why is it we have no trouble asking God for His blessing on our life without first making right our sins against Him?
Sin often creeps into our lives this way. We start out with good intentions, we’re confident we’re on the right track and then BOOM – it happens. Whatever your ‘it’ is, it happens. And you go through all the excuses and explanations and justifications of why it shouldn’t have happened to you and you didn’t mean for things to go down this way, all the while failing to simply confess, apologize and ask for forgiveness. Whether we try to avoid it or we are simply naïve, we skip this part of our conversation with God. We move right into the “please God, bless me in this way” part of prayer. And then we are put off when His answer is a firm, yet still loving, “NO.”
Luckily for us, God does not keep score. He is not concerned with how the paint got scratched, or how many times we've made countless other mistakes. He is a loving Father who just wants to have a conversation with us so that he can fix it.
1 John 5:14-15 tells us “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us – whatever we ask – we know that we have what we asked of him.” Such comfort can be found in those words: “…and if we know that he hears us – whatever we ask – we know that we have what we asked of him.” We know that we are granted our prayer. We know that it is coming.
Well, what if you don’t know what to pray? How can you align your heart with God’s will? Romans 8:26 shares how the Holy Spirit handles that: “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.”
How exciting is that?
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