Prayer is the way to obtain blessings; the kind that money can't buy. For example; money can buy land, but not love; bonds, but not brotherhood; gold, but not gladness; silver, but not sincerity; hospitals, but not health; condominiums, but not character; houses, but not homes. What is most important in life, come only from God.
The real reason behind prayerlessness is often proud self-reliance. When I don’t pray, I’m saying I can handle things on my own. But the Bible says we must ask if we expect to receive. The reason so many of us have not is because “WE DON’T ASK GOD FOR IT." Charles Spurgeon said, “We might state it as a virtual spiritual law: that God does not give unless we ask. If we possess little of God, and His Kingdom, almost certainly we have asked little.”
“I'm a good person, why doesn’t God answer my prayer?” God does not answer prayers because someone is good. So many folks shy away from praying because they get the idea that they are not holy enough, or good enough, so they have to get a pastor or a priest to say a prayer for them because they were really good people, but that isn't the case. Nor can we, in and of ourselves, claim to be "good enough" because we let someone ahead of us in the supermarket, or we didn't lie today or curse. None of us, pastor, pope or parishioner will ever be good enough to earn God answering our prayers or blessing us.
We can't earn it, but we can ask for it.
When you study the life of Jesus, you’ll see that He always prayed with purpose. He always received the answer to His prayers, and bore testimony to the power of prayer. And so it should be with every true believer. In Matthew 7:8 Jesus said, “For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.” Sometimes the answer to our prayer may be significantly different than what we asked for. Many times God doesn’t give us what we ask. Would you like to know why? He has something better than we asked. God answers prayer in the best way, not sometimes, but every time. Because He is a good God.
God’s promise of answering our prayers, and giving us what we ask for must be governed by all the Bible’s teachings about prayer. I’m not talking about a “name-it-claim-it” kind of deal, or a “blab-it-grab-it” theology. The Bible itself helps balance our perspective on prayer.
1 John 5:14-15, “And we are confident that he hears us whenever we ask for anything that pleases him… And since we know he hears us when we make our requests, we also know that he will give us what we ask for.” John encourages us to offer up God-pleasing prayer to Him. That means, we must ask for the right thing.
God delights in answering prayers like that. And you will find what is according to God’s will, and what pleases God, in the pages of God’s Holy Word.
To pray with purpose means, WE MUST ASK!
by Corville Peters
