Now this is the confidence we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him.
I John 5:14,15
I was in a prayer group for missions years ago, and the pastor who was leading it said, “Lord, show us what we are to pray for.” I heard that and my first thought was that it was rather silly, redundant and unessential. But now I see how wrong I was. Yes, we can come to God with all our annoyances, our complaints, our needs, our hopes and dreams but if we want real answers to our prayers we have to look at the protocol that He has given us.
I used to have a pastor who said, “When you pray God’s will, you always get your prayer answered. I thought that was cool, so I began praying, “God, I pray Your Will for this situation.” However I didn’t really have confidence in that prayer because I could never really tell when it was answered or tell what the answer was.
So here’s where I am now. And it is both of the above combined. When we pray, we first have to know what it is that God wants. Well, how do we know that? Well, the Bible tells us a lot of what God wants! If we don’t know what’s in the Bible, then there’s a lot about God and what He wants that we don’t know. The Bible has stories of peoples’ lives and what they did and what God thought about what they did and how He felt about that–things they prayed for, and His answers. That helps us a lot toward knowing what God wants–His will. If He did it for someone else there’s a protocol and we can say, “Lord, You did it for ____ and so I am asking You to do that for me.” So copying prayers in the Bible that other people prayed is a great way to get answered prayer.
Some of you may say to me, “God doesn’t have the same plan for every life–He has individual plans for each life and what one person gets in life may not be what He wants for another person.” Yes. You are right. So even though you can ask for things He has done for others, you’re right, it may not be best for you or me, and not His will. Good word. So we have to find things in the Bible that He promised everyone and then we can be sure that it is His will and we will get that. Bible promises are God giving His Word that He will do that. So Bible promises are a wonderful way to get answers to our prayers.
A person may retort, “But even though Bible promises are true, they aren’t for everyone because there are often qualifications to those promises.” And that person would be speaking the truth. Sometimes in the verse or the previous verse we can read specific “if” statements for Bible promises and before we could be one hundred percent sure we could pray that promise as God’s will for our life, we’d have to be diligent to fulfill the prerequisite to that promise. Then we could be sure He heard us, we would get our petitions and it was God’s will.
Another way to pray God’s will is the prophetic words that Holy Spirit gives us. He gives life scripture verses that are burned on our hearts. He gives words in dreams or visions. He gives words of knowledge or words of wisdom to us or from others to us. (These have to be judged. I Cor. 14:29) These are rhema (spoken) words from Holy Spirit that we can pray and petition for and know that God wants this for us.
Maybe you are discerning the pattern here? The pattern is that if we want our prayers answered and to have real power in prayer, we follow the Initiator. We listen to what He is telling us to pray for and we pray that. Well, some of you may say, “Doesn’t that take away our free will?” No, I don’t believe it does. You are totally free to pray anything you like. You can ask God for anything you want to ask Him for. However I’m just saying that if we want to have confidence that we are going to get what we ask for, and if we want to know that God hears us and loves us and will give us what we are asking for, we have to let Him be the Source, The Instigator, and we the followers. We have to let Him be the Leader in prayer.
There’s a lot of JOY in answered prayers. (John 16:24) I like joy and I want it! So what I do is have a journal. If I find a cool Bible promise that speaks what I long for or solves a problem of mine, I write it down and make sure I fulfill the prerequisites for it. I pray it and pray it (Matt.7:7) and thank God He’s going to give it to me because He promised. Then when the answer comes I’m so happy and I draw an orange star beside it and say many thank you’s to Him. I also write out the prayers of some of the Bible characters. Our church is teaching Revelation right now and I wrote out Rev. 16:15; 22:7,14 as prayers for our family. All my interpreted dreams, pictures or prophetic words from Holy Spirit are written in my journal. I pray those things that were given. When a correcting word is given twice or more, I double up the prayer because God is showing me the path, His will for my life. When I pray His will for my life, according to the verse at the top, John 5:14,15, I know that God has heard me. I know that He loves me and is watching over me. I know that I will have that petition that I’ve asked for. Complete confidence. Real joy in relationship!
The Protocol of Prayer is that our Heavenly Father is the Leader.
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