Is it a cop-out to tag "if it by your will, Lord?" onto the end of your prayers?
Some prayer warriors would argue that it is. They would say you aren't very confident God will say "Yes" to your prayers. And there isn't much chance that God will answer positively.
Yet, scripture clearly teaches that we can only count on God saying "Yes" if our prayers are according to his will.
The apostle John writes in 1 John 5:14-15:
"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."
Still, I understand why some pray-ers would say that it sounds as if we aren't sure God will like our prayers by throwing the words "if it is your will" in front of them.
So, the key to me is to pray and search the scriptures to discover God's will in matters that really concern us. Then, we can pray boldly.
I need to do this consistently myself.
The great prayer warrior George Muller took this approach in the many years he ran orphanages in England without once begging for funds from other people.
He would take to God the issues he was grappling with. He would ask the Holy Spirit to illuminate his mind as he read the Bible looking for scriptures that applied to his prayer concern.
He would also talk with mature believers whose opinions he respected.
Then, when he discovered scriptures that indicated God's will on a particular problem, he would pray them. Those scriptures, the confirmation of the Spirit, and the agreement of mature believers all combined to give him assurance that God would say "Yes" to his request.
The results were many miraculous answers to prayer. In the early years, the orphanages did not have enough food to feed the children as the day began, but anonymous funds would arrive in the mail to cover the exact amount needed to pay for the day's groceries.
Cleddie Keith, pastor and author of Praying the Lord's Prayer, adds another important point: "Real prayer is something God puts in your heart as a desire first."
He points to the psalmist David's great words in Psalm 37:4: "Delight yourself in the Lord; and he will give you the desires of your heart."
"When I truly delight myself in the Lord, the desires that begin to form in my spirit are a gift from God."
Keith, who was then a youth pastor in Houston, Texas, and his senior pastor prayed together for God's kingdom to come to a poverty-stricken and crime-ridden sector of the city decades ago.
"When I prayed for His kingdom to come, He gave me his desires," Keith writes.
He says we should check whether our prayers are more about our own desires than God's.
After fervent prayer, Keith approached the principal of a local school to ask if he could conduct an assembly with the student body. To his surprise, the principal, a professed agnostic, agreed to a 30-minute assembly.
He brought in a Christian band which happened to be touring at the time and they played and sang Christian songs that the kids understood.
A young girl ran down to the front of the auditorium and pleaded with Keith for help. No invitation had been given.
"God broke through, and for the next forty-five days heaven came down into the hearts of young-people in that inner-city public school in Houston, Texas. We had prayer every morning before class. The students and teachers met in the lunchroom and prayed earnestly for the student body."
Over 30 years later, he returned to Houston for special services and a young woman approached him who became a believer as a student at that time. She was active in her congregation and free of drugs that had afflicted her before her conversion at that school.
God will act when our prayers are in tune with his desires.
Some prayer warriors would argue that it is. They would say you aren't very confident God will say "Yes" to your prayers. And there isn't much chance that God will answer positively.
Yet, scripture clearly teaches that we can only count on God saying "Yes" if our prayers are according to his will.
The apostle John writes in 1 John 5:14-15:
"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."
Still, I understand why some pray-ers would say that it sounds as if we aren't sure God will like our prayers by throwing the words "if it is your will" in front of them.
So, the key to me is to pray and search the scriptures to discover God's will in matters that really concern us. Then, we can pray boldly.
I need to do this consistently myself.
The great prayer warrior George Muller took this approach in the many years he ran orphanages in England without once begging for funds from other people.
He would take to God the issues he was grappling with. He would ask the Holy Spirit to illuminate his mind as he read the Bible looking for scriptures that applied to his prayer concern.
He would also talk with mature believers whose opinions he respected.
Then, when he discovered scriptures that indicated God's will on a particular problem, he would pray them. Those scriptures, the confirmation of the Spirit, and the agreement of mature believers all combined to give him assurance that God would say "Yes" to his request.
The results were many miraculous answers to prayer. In the early years, the orphanages did not have enough food to feed the children as the day began, but anonymous funds would arrive in the mail to cover the exact amount needed to pay for the day's groceries.
Cleddie Keith, pastor and author of Praying the Lord's Prayer, adds another important point: "Real prayer is something God puts in your heart as a desire first."
He points to the psalmist David's great words in Psalm 37:4: "Delight yourself in the Lord; and he will give you the desires of your heart."
"When I truly delight myself in the Lord, the desires that begin to form in my spirit are a gift from God."
Keith, who was then a youth pastor in Houston, Texas, and his senior pastor prayed together for God's kingdom to come to a poverty-stricken and crime-ridden sector of the city decades ago.
"When I prayed for His kingdom to come, He gave me his desires," Keith writes.
He says we should check whether our prayers are more about our own desires than God's.
After fervent prayer, Keith approached the principal of a local school to ask if he could conduct an assembly with the student body. To his surprise, the principal, a professed agnostic, agreed to a 30-minute assembly.
He brought in a Christian band which happened to be touring at the time and they played and sang Christian songs that the kids understood.
A young girl ran down to the front of the auditorium and pleaded with Keith for help. No invitation had been given.
"God broke through, and for the next forty-five days heaven came down into the hearts of young-people in that inner-city public school in Houston, Texas. We had prayer every morning before class. The students and teachers met in the lunchroom and prayed earnestly for the student body."
Over 30 years later, he returned to Houston for special services and a young woman approached him who became a believer as a student at that time. She was active in her congregation and free of drugs that had afflicted her before her conversion at that school.
God will act when our prayers are in tune with his desires.
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