Effective Praying

Prayer is one of the greatest opportunities, one of the greatest privileges and one of the greatest ministries available to all Christians. Jesus did not teach His disciples how to preach but He did teach them how to pray. I believe everyone who seeks to be a disciple of Christ should seek to learn how to pray effectively.

God's attitude toward our prayers

The first thing we need to do is to understand God's attitude toward our prayers. The Scripture teaches the willingness of God to answer our prayer, both in the Old Testament and in the New New Testament:

In the Old Testament

1. Solomon said, "The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord, but the prayer of the upright is His delight" (Prov. 15:8, NKJV, emphasis added).

The word "delight" means "strong pleasure".

"The Lord is far from the wicked, but He hears the prayer of the righteous" (Prov. 15:29).

If you are upright, sincere and you come to God with prayer He delights in your prayer and He loves to hear you.

2. The Song of Solomon depicts the love relationship between Christ the Bridegroom, and the Church as His bride. Christ said to the Church:

"O my dove, in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the cliff, let me see your face, let me hear your voice; for your voice is sweet, and your face is lovely" (Songs of Solomon 2:14, emphasis added).

God desires to hear our (the Church) voice lifted up to Him in believing prayer.

In the New Testament

The New Testament emphasizes the fact that God wants us to pray and He wants us to receive what we prayed for. The revealed will of God for all believers in Christ is that they should pray and that they should receive that which they prayed for:


1. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus said in three diffrent ways, that God wnats you to get what you prayed for:


Jesus said, "Ask, and it will be given to you, seek; and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened" (Matt. 7:7, 8, emphasis added).

Notice, not one negative suggestion in all these words.


2. Jesus said, "And whatever things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive" (Matt. 21:22, emphasis added).


How can any promise wider that that?


3. Jesus made similar statement according to Mark, "Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believing that you receive them, and you will have them" (Mark 11:24).


4. Jesus said, "And whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in My name, I will do it" (John 14:13, 14).


What could be more emphatic or more embracing than this statement?


5. Jesus said, "If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done to you" (John 15:7).


If you want to know how wonderful the above promise is, read my ealier message, "The Power of Prayer".


6. Jesus said, "Until now you have asked nothing in My name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full" (John 16:24).


In my opinion, there is nothing more joyful than having our prayers answered. What could be more wonderful to know that the creator of the universe, the all powerful almighty God, is attentive to the voice of our prayer and delights to do that which we asked?


Basic principles and conditions


It is very unfortunate that there are Pastors, Bible teachers and evangelists, carelessly and conveniently built a ministry out of some of the statements made by Jesus, without realizing that conditions which must be applied before we expect God to hear and answer our prayers. Therefore in this message I attempt to list out some of the important, yet basic, conditions and principles for receiving regularly, answers to our prayer.


1. We pray in the Name of Jesus (John 14:13, 14)


When we pray in the Name of Jesus it means this - We acknowledge that we have no right of access to the almighty God at all apart from our Lord Jesus Christ. If Jesus had not come and had not become our sacrifice, our substitute on the cross, had not risen from the dead and then to became our mediator, and our High Priest at God's right hand, we would have no right of access, whatever to the almighty God. But in Jesus we have absolute right of assess with complete liberty and boldness to God, so that when we pray in the Name of Jesus we are reminding ourselves that the only basis of our assess to God is what Jesus had done for us on the cross.


On the above condition God opens all treasures in heaven and makes them available to us in the Name of Jesus:


Paul said, "He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things" (Romans 8:32, NKJV, emphasis added).


Notice the condition for receiving all things is - with Him. Apart from Jesus there is nothing; in and through Jesus there is everything! That is exactly what we are declaring when we come in prayer in Jesus' Name.


Paul said, "For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us" (2 Cor. 1:20).


All God's promises are made available to us, but only in Him - Jesus Christ.


2. We come with praise and thanksgiving (Psalm 100:4)


The psalmist said, "Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise. Be thankful to Him, and bless His name. For the Lord is good; His mercy is everlasting, and His truth endures to all generations" (Psalm 100:4, 5).


We do not praise because of feelings. We praise God because of the fact that God is good and His mercy and truth endure forever. His gate of access is thanksgiving and His court of access is praise. God wants us to get into this kind of relationship with him so that He can answer our prayers and so that we can receive what He has for us. But if we don't come with praise and thankgiving we don't have access to the almighty God. Then we will feel lonely, shutoff and for removed from Him.


God spoke through Isaiah, "... but you shall call your walls salvation, and your gates Praise" (Isaiah 60:18).


Every gate of assess to the presence of the almighty God has the same name - Praise. Our salvation is called walls because walls speak of security and protection.


Paul said, "Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; ..." (Phil. 4:6, emphasis added).


Paul did not leave out the thanksgiving. Why? Because as you begin to thank God for who He is and for what He had already done, faith rises in you heart for the next thing that you are going to pray for.


3. We approach God without condemnation


The psalmist said, "If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear. But certainly God has heard me; He has attended to the voice of my prayer" (Ps. 66:18, 19).


"To regard iniquity in my heart" means "I come to God but I am conscious, in my heart, something that condemns me" or "Every time I try to approach God with faith, Satan reminds me of the thing that is not right, that has not been dealt with, or that has not been confessed and I have not received God's forgiveness". Or put it simply, "I am conscious of this sin in my heart all the time". Because self-condemnation hinders my prayer and therefore, I must remove the consciousness of sin from within my heart. The way to do it is to confess, repent and trust God for the forgiveness and the cleansing as He had promised.


John said, "If we confess our sin, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all runrighteousness" (1 John 1:9).


The psalmist went on to say that God had "attended to the voice of my prayer" (V. 19). In other words, he understood Satan's attempt to condemn him and tried to make him feel guilty.


John went on to say, "For if your heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence toward God" (1 John 3:20, 21).


We don't have to keep anything from God and when we have confessed our sins we have the confidence that God will never remember it and will never hold it against us any more. When we are set free from condemnation we can come to God boldly because He had dismissed the whole question of guilt.


The writer of Hebrews said, "Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need" (Heb. 4:16, emphasis added).


Notice that grace is enthrone with God in His throne. It is not justice we are coming for; it is grace. We do not come on the basis of our merit or our own righteousness; we come boldly without condemnation. We come boldly because it is the throne of grace.


4. We come with the right motive


God searches our motive when we come to Him in prayer; He is very conscious of the reason for which we pray.


James said, "You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures" (James 4:3).


In other words, your prayers are self-centered and you are aiming to get something for your own personal satisfaction and indulgence, which is of the wrong motive. What is the right motive? The answer is found in John 14 where Jesus said:


"And whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son" (John 14:13, emphasis added).


The right motive is a prayer that is prayed sincerely so that God may be glorified through Jesus Christ in answering that prayer.


5. We come with the right relationship


In the model prayer which Jesus taught His disciples, commonly known as the Lord's Prayer, Jesus emphasized the importance of having the right relationships between us and our God, and between us and our fellowmen.


"And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors" (Matt. 6:12).


Jesus here tied us down to asking God for forgiveness only in the proportion we forgive others. In the same proportion that we forgive others God will forgive us. One of the reasons why Christians fail to receive the answer to their prayers is because they fail to forgive others.


Jesus said, "And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him, that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses. But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses" (Mark 11:25, 26).


6. Prayer directed by the Holy Spirit


Paul said, "For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God" (Romans 8:14).


In the original Greek, the above is of continuing present tense. In other words, the only way to live daily as a child of God in the world, you have to be regularly, continuingly led by the Holy Spirit. Only those who are regularly led by the Spirit of God are living as sons of God.


Paul said, "Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know that we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God" (Romans 8:26, 27, emphasis added).


Our weaknesses are - sometimes we do not know what to pray for, and do not know how to pray even if we know what to pray. You might know your wife needs prayer, or your son needs prayer but you still don't know how to pray. God's solution is - the Spirit of God comes to your help by taking over and He makes intercession through you and He prays according to the Mind and Will of God (Please refer to my earlier message - The Power of Prayer). This is one of the glorious blessings of being truly baptized in the Holy Spirit. When you cannot pray, He prays through you in an unknown tongue that you can be sure you are praying according to His will.


7. Prayer in accordance to the Word of God


The central issue of effective praying is praying according to the revealed will of God which is the Word of God. And the Word of God is packed, from Genesis to Revelation, with divine promises. The apostle Peter called these promises as "exceedingly great and precious promises" (2 Peter 1:4).


When you find the promise, given in the Word of God, that relates to your situation and meets your need, that promise is God's will for you. God never pomises anything that is not His will because that would be inconsistent for Him to do so. Let me illustrate this principle with two examples, one from the Old Testament and the other from the New Testament:


1. God's covenant with David (1 Chron. 17)


God promised David through the prophet Nathan that "the Lord will build him a house". The word "house" in the context means "A Royal Dynasty", or "A Roya line of Household" which would endure for ever (Vs. 10, 11).


David's reply was, "And now, O Lord, the word which You have spoken concerning Your servant and concerning his house, let it be established forever, and do as You have said" (V. 23, emphasis added).


I believe the five short words of one syllable each - "and do as You have said", contain the essence of effective praying. If God had said He would do it and you asked Him to do it, you can be absolutely certain that He is going to do it!


2. God's promise to Mary (Luke 1)


In my opinion the greatest single miracle that ever took place in the life of anordinary human being was the virgin Mary, who became the mother of the Son of God. Mary received the Word of God, through the angel Gabriel, which brought fulfillment by His (the Word) own Power.


Mary's response was, "Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word" (Luke 1:38, emphasis added). With this, ushered in the greatest miracle in human experience!


When you pray on the level of the Word, you pray on the level that is far above your human ability to wish, to ask or to think (read Eph. 3:20). Notice the above two prayers were intimately connected with the coming of the Lord Jesus. God promised David the Son and the promise was fulfilled through the birth of Jesus Christ, conceived in the womb of the virgin Mary. And in each case the key to the prayer is the same - "God You said, You do it".


You will never pray a higher prayer or pray a more effective prayer than when you go to God, guided by the Holy Spirit, go to the Word and find the promise of God that relates to you and your situation. This I believer is the secret of effective praying!