Mark 11:24 “Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.”
We can only believe that God will perform that which He has promised in His word or by His Spirit, for as we have already established God watches over “His” word to perform it. And so for saints to attempt to exercise faith for something that God has not promised, is presumption and foolishness. The faith of God that we have received is reliant on the word of God, for the scripture declares that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God (Romans 10:17). And so without the word of God, or more specifically the promises of God, we have no foundation for our faith. When our Lord Jesus taught us regarding the prayer of faith as quoted in the above passage of scripture, it seems as if the only condition required to receive from God is faith and nothing else. The scripture teaches us however that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall be established (Matthew 18:16). And so when we examine other scriptures that teach on this same subject we see that there is a further condition that must be met other than just faith alone.
John 15:7 “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.”
In the passage of scripture quoted above we see that when our Lord taught on the same subject of prayer, He taught us that in order for us to receive from God there is another condition that must be met other than faith alone. The condition is that we are to abide in Jesus and His words are to abide in us, for in this passage Jesus directly linked that condition to receiving the answer to our prayers. So why would Jesus put this condition in place? The answer is because when we abide in His word and have His word abiding in us then our desires that we ask for will be in accordance to His word.
1 John 5:14-15 “Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. (15) And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him.”
The Holy Spirit in the above quoted passage of scripture confirms the same truth to us that Jesus taught, for in this passage He clearly teaches us that God hears the requests that are made to Him in accordance to His word (His will and His word are the same) and it is those requests that He answers. And so we can see that the converse of this passage is also true, i.e. if we ask anything that is not according to His will, He will not hear us and we will therefore not receive the petitions that we ask of Him. Many Christians fall into this error because they do not first establish what God has said on the subject before they petition Him in prayer, and as a result, very often their petitions fall outside of His will. Those prayers therefore go unanswered, which results in many saints becoming disillusioned and questioning their faith in God.
James 4:1-3 “Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? (2) You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. (3) You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures.”
In the passage of scripture quoted above the Holy Spirit teaches us that many Christians do not have, simply because they do not ask. You will recall at the beginning of this series that we saw that the very first thing that God requires of us is to ask Him. But the Holy Spirit does not stop there, because He goes on to tell us the reason why some of our prayers go unanswered, for He says that we ask and do not receive because our motivation is wrong. Prayer requests made to God for the gratifying of our fleshly desires will not be answered. The word of God teaches us to make no provision for the flesh to fulfil its desires (Romans 13:14). And so if God instructs us to make no provision for the desires of the flesh, then He is certainly not going to answer any prayer requests made to Him for the gratifying of our fleshly desires. Any natural parent will not give their children something that they have asked for; if they know that what they have asked for will harm them. And so even if their children cry when they don’t get what they want, the parents stand firm in their decision, because they know what is best for their children. God is a good Father, and as such He will not give us anything that will harm our relationship with Him. Gratifying the desires of the flesh has the effect of drawing believers away from having a close relationship with the Lord, and God will therefore not grant those requests. And so this is another example of lack of results in prayer because of people praying contrary to the word of God.
Daniel 9:2-3 “in the first year of his reign I, Daniel, understood by the books the number of the years specified by the word of the Lord through Jeremiah the prophet, that He would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem. (3) Then I set my face toward the Lord God to make request by prayer and supplications, with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes.”
Another example that we can look at in the Old Testament regarding the principle of praying according to the promises of God, is the prophet Daniel. In the passage of scripture quoted above we see that Daniel had seen in scripture that God had stated that after seventy years in exile that Israel was to petition Him to bring them back from captivity. And so based on God’s revealed word on the subject, Daniel began to petition the Lord in prayer to fulfil His promise to Israel. Daniel had the sure foundation of God’s word in his prayer request, and if you read the full account you will see that God answered his prayer. Scripture reveals to us that in the intervening seventy-year period from the time Israel was taken into captivity until the day that Daniel prayed, that many Jews had been praying daily to God to restore Israel back to their homeland (Zechariah 7:4-6), but none of those prayer requests were heard by God. So why is that? The reason their prayers went unheard is simple, because they were praying outside of God’s will, for God had given Israel His word that they would be in exile for seventy years. And so under the New Covenant the principle remains the same, i.e. if we pray according to God’s will we know that He hears us. To pray in line with the written word of God is to have the full assurance that our prayers will be heard by God. And if we know that our prayers are heard we also know that our prayers will be answered by God our Father.
Michael E.B. Maher
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