Encouragement for faithful prayer

This writing is for those Brothers and Sisters who pray for our Father to help them, but do not have faith that He will listen to their prayers.

Let’s start with the understanding that you are saved and a true child of our Father. It does not matter what you have done, God is faithful to forgive even the most grisly crimes. Do you doubt me? Let’s turn back to the Old Testament and read about a young man who loved God. He loved God with his whole being and was loved in return. Yet, he like us was human. He was so human that he stole a friend’s wife. First, he lusted after her, then he took her, and got her pregnant. Afterward, this Godly man tried to cover his sin and when his plans for covering up what he had done failed, he decided the only way out was to kill his friend. So he had him murdered. Now, I do not know about you but that covers a lot of the sins we still talk about today. Lust, desire, adultery, coveting, and murder, and yet this same man is known throughout the Bible as a man who loved God. He was called a man after God’s own Heart…King David had everything his heart could desire and more. Yet, he was human just as you and I are human. God punished David for what he had done to Uriah, but our Lord also forgave him when David repented and prayed for mercy and forgiveness. Please read again the whole story in 2 Samuel 11. It helped me to understand just how far we can fall and still return to our Father once he accepts us as children.

We are children of a mighty God who loves us as His children. He has adopted us and we are heirs in His house. So, why do we now doubt that our Father will answer us? Jesus told us in Mathew 21: 22, “You can pray for anything and if you have faith, you will receive it.” I submit that we have allowed Satan to insinuate into our religious beliefs that, “God does not answer prayers anymore because we do not need him to.” I was raised very strict religiously. My first impressions of my Father was that he was like unto Zeus, sitting up in heaven with a lightning bolt ready to strike me down for even the least of sins.  And is that not so, because the writer in Proverbs states,”FEAR of the Lord is the foundation of knowledge.” Prov 1:7 or how about Prov 15:33, “Fear of the Lord teaches wisdom.” I was taught to FEAR our Father. However, I have come to understand that this is not truly FEAR but RESPECT. He is a loving Father who disciplines His children, not abuses them.  For in that same verse Prov 15:33, it goes on to say that, “humility precedes honor.” When we submit and humble ourselves to our Father, we not only honor Him but He will also honor us in return. These teachings also included a healthy dose of 2 Peter 1:3, “Jesus has the power of God, by which he has given us everything we need to live and to serve God.” So Satan turns that into thoughts of, “God has already given us everything we need in this book. Therefore, He does not answer prayers directly anymore.” That is right, if we listen to Satan, our Master has given us everything we need to live correctly and dutifully within this book. So the Master would not have to spend time answering our prayers, or intervening in our lives. For years I actually bought that description of my Father. He did not need to intervene directly because we could read how to be his obedient child just by reading this book and doing what it says. Correct? It is the user’s manual for Christian Living. What else would I need to have? Satan will work to convince you that you need nothing else. Yet, why did Jesus spend so much time in prayer? Why would Jesus tell of the coming of the Holy Spirit?

My wife explained it beautifully when she said, “In the Old Testament, God spoke directly to His people through the prophets and He interacted with them directly. Then Jesus came and we had God with us, but once Jesus left there was a new need if God was not going to be acting directly with us and that is where the Holy Spirit fills in.” The Holy Spirit is how we can communicate with our Father in a more direct manner. Prayer is what we are communicating and the Spirit is our interpreter and petitioner. The Spirit takes our prayer, communication, and translates it into a petition that our Father understands, Romans 8:27.  So why would we need the Holy Spirit if our Father did not intend to talk with and answer our prayers? Surely, not just to guide us down the correct path to heaven.  Yet, there are Christians today, I was one, who believe that our Father does not “talk” with us directly as before. Again, why do we now have the Spirit if not to facilitate this communication? Jesus tells us to, “Ask our Father for anything and if we have faith we will receive it.” Jesus continually prays himself and directs his followers to do the same. If we had no expectation of God answering these prayers, why give us directions to do so? We have become a “People of little faith.” Paul tells the Thessalonians to never stop praying, in 1 Thess 5:17.  Therefore, I believe we need to relook at the purpose of the Spirit. It is to facilitate communications between our Father and his children so that we can gain understanding of what is pleasing to our Father. The Spirit helps us to understand what we read in the Bible. He interprets for us and I believe that He communicates with us directly when we take time to sit quietly and listen.

Yet we ask for intervention in our lives and never truly believe that our Master will respond. Another manipulation by the evil one.  He will tell you that God is too busy and you are not worthy. He will say that the silence you hear means that God is not going to answer you. I know because, I bought all those lies for most of my life. And I wear the name of Christian. For example, I would pray for healing for someone at church, as we are instructed to do in James 5. Yet, I had no expectation that God would truly intervene. Why, because the same ones who taught me that God does not communicate with his children anymore also taught me that there are no longer miracles. We live and we die. The Bible says that there is a time for everything, and when it is your turn, petitioning God would not change that. Those words were never spoken so directly but those are the words that I came to understand.  Yet, Hezekiah prayed for a longer life and was granted 15 more years to his life, Isaiah 38. We are told in James 5 that if someone is sick, gather men together and pray over that brother or sister and they will be healed. I am not sure what others classify as a miracle but to me this would be a miracle. So we of little faith get together and pray, and always tell our Father we have no faith because, we always tell him to comfort the family if the sick person dies. Wait, where is the faith that our God is BIG enough to add more time to someone’s life if He chooses to? I still doubted and so would add the “caveat”. Now comes the most telling of our lack of faith…when someone is healed, we do not give God the credit. It is always the Doctor or some other reason…such as the wrong diagnosis in the first place. What? Recently, we have had members who were sick with cancers, and heart issues that were healed after we prayed for their healing. Yet, we always say, “just human error.” Wait, our Father answers a prayer for healing and we say, it was human error, or some other reason for the healing? Why? Did we not just ask? Were we not answered? Yet, I too often did not acknowledge the healing as our Father’s intervention as we asked. You see if Satan can convince us that it was our own mistake then we will never acknowledge that our Father actually does still take an active role in our lives. That our prayer is meaningless and that we have to do this on our own through struggling with the book that was given to us as a guide. Wow! I bought that whole story for years. Yet, I know that our Father truly does still intercede in our lives when asked. He does answer prayer. It is not “just human error” when a diagnosis is changed after prayer. I know this because, our Father was once petitioned by a group of men who prayed that my migraine would be taken from me. These were men of faith and believed that it would happen. It did, and I did not have another headache of any type for 3 weeks. For me, that was miraculous. I get migraines weekly or every 2 weeks. I live with headaches continually. Yet, a group of men believing that our Father still listens, showed me that we do still have open communications with our Father when we ask and believe. All we need to do is “wait upon the Lord”, in other words sit quietly and listen for the Spirit to answer. It may not happen today or tomorrow, but our Father is faithful.  So, when you pray from now on, ask your Father in heaven with faith that He will answer; then sit quietly and watch for the response. When it comes, as it will, do not be amazed or bewildered. Just give praise to our Father who hears his children’s cries for aid and gives to them in abundance. He promised to do so…and our Father is faithful.