Our Scripture text for today is found in LUKE 1. While you are turning to it, let me tell you about a young girl who once wrote a missionary, to let him know that she was keeping him in her prayers. She had been told not to request a response to her letter because the missionary was very busy, so she began her letter with these words; “Dear Mr. Missionary, I am praying for you, but don’t worry, I am not expecting an answer.”
I think that summarizes how too many Christians pray. We bring issues before the throne of God, but we don’t really expect any answers. We pray for help, and then immediately look for some way that we can fix the problem we are praying about. We ask God to help us, and at the same time we are asking for His help, we are also planning on what "we" are going to do to solve the problem.
I don’t think God answer prayers like that, because those prayers do not show our full reliance on Him. They tend to show that we do not fully trust that He will, or can, answer prayers, don’t they?
Follow me as I read this morning’s text. Starting in LUKE 1:5-23.
We are going to talk about prayer today, but first – LET’S PRAY.
If we are going to be talking about prayer today, I think we might start by simply defining what prayer actually is. I think this is one of those words that has been used so much we have all but forgotten what it really is.
Prayer is a very private conversation. That conversation is between you and God. Specifically, it is between your heart and God’s heart. And, in order for us to be able to pray properly, we must know a few of the attitudes of prayer.
1. ALWAYS START WITH A HUMBLE HEART.
2 CHRONICLES 7:14 starts by saying,
‘If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves and pray ….’
Who is He talking about when He says, “My people?” He is talking about Christians. The first thing He tells us to do is to humble ourselves. See, we are full of pride, and God cannot hear us when we are prideful, so we must get rid of that pride so we can go into prayer with a heart that has been humbled.
That means we must become submissive to God in our hearts. This is one of the hardest things we can do as a human, but this is also the most important thing about praying – having a submissive heart for God Almighty. You have heard me say that if you actually get on your knees and bow your head, you are putting your body in a submissive position, and whenever you put your body in a submissive stance, your mind and your heart will automatically follow.
2. LET GOD ANSWER PRAYERS IN HIS TIME.
Today’s society is a ‘right now’ society. We want instant everything, don’t we? All too often, when we pray for God’s help, we have the attitude of ‘hurry it up, God!’ We seem to forget that God knows the perfect time and the perfect way in which He should answer our prayers, and we don’t.
We need to let God do His perfect work in His perfect time and stop trying to rush Him to fit into our imperfect schedules.
Sometimes God will answer a prayer immediately; sometimes He will just say ‘NO’, which will turn out to be the perfect answer in the long run; and sometimes, He will say, ‘NOT YET.’
In today’s Bible reading, we read about the story of a man named Zechariah. He was the father of John the Baptist. He was a priest who was quite elderly. He and his wife, Elizabeth, were righteous and Godly people.
One time, Zechariah was sweeping the temple and burning incense and the angel Gabriel appeared to him. The angel told him that his prayers had been heard and they would be answered. He said that Elizabeth would give birth to a boy.
Now, instead of having the faith to believe his prayer had been answered, Zechariah expressed doubt. The angel said that because of his disbelief, Zechariah would lose his voice until the day the baby was born.
I can understand why Zechariah had doubt, can’t you? Sometimes when I pray, I do not have that solid foreknowledge that God will answer my prayers either. So, I can see why Zechariah expressed some doubt. The problem with having any doubt, though, is that when we have any doubt at all, we actually hinder the work God can do for us, and we can even hinder the blessings we could have received by having full faith.
Zechariah doubted because he was a very old man, and his wife was a very old woman. In the Scripture, it says he told the angel, ‘I am an old man, and my wife is well along in years.’ Now, that man had diplomacy! You see, a man should never think of his wife as ‘old’.
As I said a moment ago, we need to let God work in His time. In verse 13, it says that the angel told Zechariah that his prayer ‘has been heard’. That is a past-tense word. God had already heard the prayers Zechariah prayed. But, it wasn’t until now that God had everything in place for the baby to be born. See, in His time, we find the perfect time.
Someone once said that they had tried prayer. They said they prayed regularly for two weeks and having received no answer at all, they said they then lost their faith in prayer. I say they did not lose their faith in prayer, but rather they lost their patience for prayer!
My son used to ask me if he could drive the car. I would tell him ‘not yet’, because he was only 7 years old. He had to grow and be prepared before he could properly handle a car. We need to grow and get prepared sometimes before we can handle the answer to the prayers we have already prayed.
Many times, we pray for something and then get aggravated at God, wanting Him to hurry up and do what we want. We have to understand that God wants very much to give us what we need and what we want, but because we are the sinners, He sometimes has to change us first, and that takes time. God is more interested in making you a solid Christian than He is making your life comfy and cozy.
For instance, if you are having financial difficulty, God may be telling you that He wants you to learn the right attitude about money before he makes more money available to you.
Okay, now what happens when you pray and pray and pray again, and you still see no answer in sight? What do you do then? You have faith that God is preparing the answer for you, and you just keep on praying. Pray with the knowledge that God will answer your prayers, and He will answer them in the best way for you.
In MARK 11, we are told to pray with the belief that we have already received the answer. It is all a matter of how solid your faith in God is. And remember that when God says, ‘Not yet’, that doesn’t necessarily mean ‘No’.
3. LET GOD ANSWER PRAYERS IN HIS WAY.
We talked about letting God answer your prayers in His time, not yours, but we must also realize that we must let Him answer them in His way, not your way.
In ISAIAH 55:8, God says,
‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways.’
Sometimes, God wants to answer your prayer in a much bigger way than you prayed for. Go back to Zechariah for a moment. What would have happened if God had answered their requests for a baby immediately? They would have had a little Jewish and they would have loved that baby dearly, but that would have been it. We see in this case that God had something else in mind.
He waited until the time came for Jesus Christ to be born, and then he let Zechariah and Elizabeth give birth to Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptist. That fulfilled Old Testament prophecy saying one would come before the Messiah, exalting His name. This is what I mean by letting God do things in His way. His ways are so much better than our ways.
To be truthful, I think we have two problems when praying. We ask for too little, and what little we ask for, we ask for it to fast.
EPHESIANS 3:20 says,
‘… to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine according to His power that is at work within us.’
No matter what great things you have in your imagination, and no matter how grand you think the answer to your prayer will be, it is nothing compared to how much God can and wants to give you. So we need to pray in patience, having absolute faith of the outcome.
I will admit something to you right now. If God had answered all my prayers the in the way and the time I wanted; I’d probably have long since been buried in the dust.
I have learned to let God choose the time and the way He answers me. After all, who am I to give direction to my Heavenly Father?
4. REALIZE GOD DOES NOT NEED YOUR HELP
Don’t ask God for things and then immediately go to work trying to get them by yourself. God does not need your help. One of the biggest problems we have is that we encounter some kind of a problem, then we go to God in prayer and ask for His help, and as soon as we say, ‘Amen’, we start trying to figure out how to solve the problems without His help. If you ask God for help – stand back and let Him help you!
Let me refer back again to Zechariah. Did you notice how long God waited to answer their prayers? He waited until they were too old to have children, didn’t He? Why do you think God waited that long?
Have you ever had times when you needed a specific type of help, and that help only came at the very last minute? Why does God wait? I think He waits so that when He gives the answer to a prayer, we will realize that it came from nobody but Him. He does not want you to get confused and think that you came up with the perfect solution to your problem.
While we are talking about praying for answers to problems, let me give you a warning to always remember. When you pray for God to give you the fix for a problem, do not be surprised, in fact – be prepared, for things to get worse before they get better.
Why is that? I think that any time we show full and absolute faith in God’s ability and desire to help us, the devil will try his best to thwart it by making us start having doubts. And, I think that God allows that to a point, so that when the answer is given, it gives Him the most glory. Sometimes, it seems that God will let a situation get out of hand so that when the answer is finally received, it is an opportunity for us to see a miracle, which again, would help grow our faith in Him.
A perfect example of this is found in JOHN 11. It is a story of two sisters, Mary and Martha. They had a brother named Lazarus and he got sick. The sisters sent for Jesus to come quickly and heal Lazarus. I can just see the urgency and panic in their message for Jesus to waste no time in coming to them.
Now, Jesus was only a few miles from their home, but He intentionally delayed going there for several days. By this time, their brother had died and was buried in a tomb. You can imagine how upset the sisters were, claiming that if Jesus had been there earlier, their brother would still be alive. In short, they were mad and rebuking God, weren’t they? Don’t we sometimes do the same thing when things don’t seem to go our way and He doesn’t answer in the time we want Him to answer?
When Jesus was taken to the tomb, He called Lazarus out and Lazarus awoke from the dead and came forth. If Jesus had come when He was first called, many people would have thought that Lazarus just got well, and would have doubted that Jesus had anything to do with it.
This way, there was no doubt in anybody’s mind that Jesus was the supreme healer and that the answer to the prayer only came from Him. Sometimes, God will make us wait, too, so that everyone around us will know without a doubt where the answer came from.
So, when you are waiting for a prayer that’s been delayed, keep your eyes open to watch God at work in other people’s lives and it will build your faith. And, be willing to let God use His power to answer our prayers. He really doesn’t need our limited help.
5. LET GOD ANSWER PRAYERS FOR HIS REASONS
God will answer prayers when He knows it is best. He will answer prayers in the way He knows is best, and God will answer prayers for the reason He knows is best.
Do you remember the story of Joseph in the Bible? God said to Joseph in a dream, "You’re going to be the ruler of a great country someday." Then what happened? Joseph was promptly sold by his brothers into slavery.
A very important man, named Potipher, buys Joseph and ends up putting him in charge of his entire household. Soon, his master’s wife tries to seduce him, he would not give in, and so the wife had him put in jail. That’s not exactly the way to build a political career. Sold into slavery and then maligned and put in jail. His whole career is on a downhill slide. But God ended up making Joseph the second in command in all of Egypt. It was all because of God’s reasoning, not Josephs.
I think the greatest example of what I’m trying to say is found in the life of Paul. Paul was willing to let God answer his prayers in His way. When Paul prayed, He immediately gave it over to God to handle from there. In reading the book of ROMANS, we find that Paul’s major desire was to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ in Rome.
Rome was the most significant city in the world at the time, and it was almost like Paul wanted to preach to the ‘movers and shakers’ of his day. He probably had visions of renting the Coliseum, installing a good PA system so he could reach more people, and maybe even handing out flyers for a few days before the big night.
In ROMANS 15:20, he says,
‘It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on someone else’s foundation.’
Paul had prayed for many years for the chance to go to Rome. Did God answer his prayers? Yes he did, but notice how he answered them.
In ACTS 28:16, we find out what happened to Paul when he finally did get to Rome.
‘When we got to Rome, Paul was allowed to live by himself with a soldier to guard him.’
House arrest. I don’t think that is how Paul saw his visit to Rome. Paul had prayed to go to Rome, and God answered those prayers. Paul had been arrested and gone through the Roman court system and was sent to Rome – as a prisoner, to be kept chained under house arrest.
Paul wanted to have a pleasant journey, I am sure. What did he get? He didn’t get your typical Love Boat cruise, did he? He was in chains, in a shipwreck, bitten by a poisonous snake and finally ended up under house arrest in Rome.
Let’s take a closer look at this whole scenario. I feel it will answer many questions for us today, as we strive to grow our prayer lives.
Going to Rome was in Paul’s blood. He thought about it constantly. He prayed about it daily. No telling how many times Paul had packed his bags and tried to get ready to go to Rome, just to hear God say “Not Yet – We will do this in My time.” Paul was never in a huge hurry like we seem to be in today, was he?
Then, one day, God answered Paul’s prayers. Why did God now want Paul in Rome? Not to be the big preacher in the Coliseum, but to write letters.
While Paul was under house arrest, he had plenty of time on his hands, so what did he do with that time? He spent most of it writing letters to different Christians all over the Mediterranean area, encouraging them in Christ, teaching them biblical principles, and getting them organized into one united body for Jesus.
Those were very important letters. When they were put together, they became much of the New Testament in our Bibles today. We got that because Paul prayed to God to be sent to Rome, but he allowed everything to be worked out by God, not by himself. And God answered in such a glorious way that the Christian church flourished, grew stronger and in a way that totally glorified God the Father.
Paul is the most widely read author in the history of the world. Paul was so much of an activist for Jesus that the only way God could get him to slow down was to put him in jail. If we could all be like Paul. He was so dedicated to the Lord’s work that you put him in jail and what does he do? He starts writing the Bible!
Paul’s great desire was to go preach in Rome, but it wasn’t because he wanted to be known as a great preacher, or that he wanted any glory. No, Paul’s entire focus in life was to make as big an impact for Jesus as he could.
God saw to it that Paul made a huge and lasting impact for Jesus, didn’t He? But He did it no in the way Paul had wanted, but in the perfect way that God knew was best.
IN CLOSING
· When we pray a prayer that is not right, God will say “NO!”
· When we pray and we are not right, God will say, “GROW.”
· When we pray and the timing is not right, God will say “SLOW.”
· But, when we pray a prayer and all is right, God will say, “GO.”
If I had a dull pocketknife, I would take it to a knife-sharpener and tell him to sharpen it. If he told me it would be done some time this week, and that he would call me when it was done, what would I do?
I would agree with him and then go about my business knowing that when the job was done, I would get a call. I would not get mad at him, or keep calling him to tell him I was getting impatient, and I would not end up believing he could not sharpen my knife.
Likewise, when I give a request to my Father, I must be willing to go about my business and let Him do the work that He is best at – taking care of me in the best possible way.
One last thought on praying to our Father. What is your motive? If you are praying for health, what do you plan on doing with that health when you get it? If you are praying for a financial blessing, what are you going to do with it when you get it? Are you planning on using it for your good, or for God’s good for you? In other words, when you get the answer to your prayer, whom is it going to glorify?
God hears prayers from His children. In His Word, He has told us that His children are those who have made a decision to give their lives over to Jesus. Have you made the most important decision of your eternal life yet? To receive Jesus as your Savior? Are you sure that you are one of His children this morning?
I am going to give you the chance right now to be included in the family of God. To be one of His children so He can hear your prayers.
INVITATION
