Make your prayers count! - Chapter 4
Matthew 21:22
You can pray for anything, and if you have faith, you will receive it.”
So in addition to simply asking, we must believe. There is a definite and close relationship between the degree of one’s sincerity and surrender to God and the degree to which one is able to believe and pray in faith.
If you are, for example, lusting for something when you know better, if your mind is entertaining thoughts you know you should not have, you automatically cannot at the same time be asking God in unswerving faith to grant you a request. It just doesn’t work that way.
Here’s how the apostle John expressed it:
1 John 3:21-22
Dear friends, if we don’t feel guilty, we can come to God with bold confidence. And we will receive from him whatever we ask because we obey him and do the things that please him.
And our hearts won’t condemn us if we are doing what is right.
What does it mean to be always in an attitude of prayer? It doesn’t mean you are talking to God every second. Even Jesus didn’t do that. But He was always in the right attitude — His conscience was undefiled before God — so He could talk directly to His heavenly Father on the spur of the moment. His thoughts were on those things that are above.
Being able to pray at any moment and total surrender to God go hand in hand. On one occasion when Jesus suddenly began to pray, He said:
John 11:41-42
“Father, thank you for hearing me. You
always hear me, but I said it out loud for the sake of all these people
standing here, so that they will believe you sent me.”
How did Jesus know that? Why did God always hear Him? For the simple reason that Jesus always did those things that pleased His Father.
John 8:29
And the one who sent me is with me — he has not deserted me. For I always do what pleases him.”
Wanting to pray or be in an attitude of prayer in “all things” is actually a valuable incentive to be obedient in all things.
