Does God Respond to Prayer?
Everyone who prays desires God to answer their prayers.
Did God hear me? Why doesn’t He answer my prayers? I prayed for this and God didn’t do what I asked Him to do.
Scripture assures us, and I believe, that God desires us to pray to Him and He desires to answer prayers. We have a God who always desires to reveal Himself and one of the wonderful ways He does that is through answered prayer. God also reveals Himself and answers prayer when and how He chooses to.
That being said, prayer is an expression of a relationship between us and God and if we are going to expect God to answer our prayer there are some things we must do as we engage in prayer.
In the narrative in Acts 12 we see God’s people engaging in prayer and we also see God answer their prayer in a way that reveals Himself. In it we also can learn much about how we are to pray.
Peter was placed in prison and it says in v5 ... “but the church was earnestly praying to God for him.”
- 1. Pray to God
Jer 29:12 Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.
Well that’s a given; Wouldnt we say “all prayer is unto God” – but no, not all prayer, public or private is “unto God”
Sometimes we say spiritual words so that others can hear...
Matt 6:7 And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words
Some ways we DON’T pray to God...
Sometimes we can take the ‘radio frequency’ approach to prayer. We just throw our spiritual words out on the airwaves and expect God’s antenna to pick them up wherever He might be. Those who prayer louder, harder, longer are like the better radio stations that have a stronger signal strength, so if we can get them to pray for us maybe God will actually ‘pick-up’ our request. Or the more people we get praying the stronger the signal.
And that for some reason because we took the time to throw our words up on the spiritual airwaves, we assume we prayed to God.
There is no sense of relationship in this kind of prayer and so we seldom see an answer to these kinds of prayers.
Or a husband or wife or parent who prays to manipulate their loved one to do what they want... like the mother who prays for her son “Please God help Billy not to take any more cookies out of the cookie jar tomorrow so I don’t have to spank him.”
Or we pray what we think we should pray to appease another person... we pray “please God help my friend find another job” instead of “please God help my friend repent of the sinful patterns in his life that keep him from being a good employee”
When we do these things we are not praying to God but merely saying spiritual words, not the cries of our hearts to our God who hears.
When we pray, Approach God with a definite and conscious choice. When we come into God’s presence we should have a vivid realization of God bending over to hear us as we pray As David prayed...
Ps 17:6
I have called upon You, for You will hear me, O God;
Incline Your ear to me, and hear my speech. NKJV
It is the picture of us standing before God – who made us, and holds the universe together – and he is turning His ear towards us, and bending over to hear us clearly.
When the church was praying for the release of Peter from prison, they knew they had no one to turn to but God Himself and they were praying very specifically to God.
Praying to God can be hard work and Unfortunately, when we pray, we are not always as attentive as God is, like a child who is talking to their parent but quickly gets distracted, our minds are not always engaged when we pray.
We do not think of us ‘seeing’ God whom we are coming to as we pray. Too often we do not really think about our need or concern as we pray, but instead our minds often wonder all over the world of our existence – there is no power in this kind of prayer.
In our narrative, the church was praying “unto God” they knew there was no hope apart from God, they were focused and clear in their prayers.
R. A. Torrey, in his book “How To Pray” says we must have a “definite and vivid consciousness that we are talking to God” and we must believe He is there hearing us.
Praying to God is possible only by praying through the power of the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who leads us into the presence of God, and we must not be hasty with words until He has brought us there. Often we pray in our own minds and soon our minds wander but when we learn to pray from our spirit to God through the Holy Spirit we develop a strength in our prayer life that was not previously there.
Jude 20
But you, dear friends, build yourselves up in your most holy faith and pray in the Holy Spirit.
We are able to bring our prayers before God because we are in a relationship with Him. Be sure that when you pray and while you pray, to set your mind on God and leave it there. This may take some developing of spiritual muscle strength, the harnessing of our wills and focusing on God. “Build yourselves up”.
God responds to prayer as we...
- “...earnestly praying to God...”
Acts 12:5
...prayer was made without ceasing of the church unto God for him. KJV
...prayer for him was being made fervently by the church to God. NASB
The word in the original language this meaning of this word also carries a beautiful word picture of exposed or “stretched-outedly”
The picture of a soul exposed and stretched out, an intense and earnest desire before God. When the KJ says “without ceasing” it not so much a sense of time as in ‘without ending’ but ‘uncompleted’ with no desire to end prayer time.
When we come to God we must seek Him earnestly
Jer 29:13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.
We see this in Jesus’ prayer life as well...
Luke 22:44 And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.
Heb 5:7 During the days of Jesus' life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.
It means we Pray with Passion - When we pray we put our soul into it.
When I worked for my dad on the end of a shovel, he would always press me to “put your back into it”
Like when your cleaning the bathtub you put ‘elbow grease” into it.
When we pray we put our whole soul into it.
The challenge is we are not used to harnessing and focusing our souls. Jesus and the Christian saints would stretch out their soul towards God with intense and agonizing desire.
Much prayer has no power because there is no passion of the heart in it.
We rush in – pray up – rush out and then we can’t remember what we prayed 2 hours later.
When there is so little heart in our prayers we cant expect God to put much effort or heart into answering, but the ‘fight of faith’ is the agonizing, passion in prayer.
We come to God with intensity of prayer that “rings the soul”
How do we enter into earnest, passionate prayer?
Not by our own strength, we do not “work into it”, again, it is by the Holy Spirit we are able to earnestly pray, but our passion is not for the concern but for the relationship with God, that He might reveal Himself in the situation.
Rom 8:26
In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.
Our earnestness that is the work of the flesh is a repulsive thing,
How often in our prayers are are hearts moved to tears for God to reveal himself in answering our concern. As we pray for our lost friends and loved ones, do we weep over their souls.
I remember praying for a friend to come to know Christ, and over time, my heart was moved to tears for his salvation... He and his family now all belong to Christ and are involved in His ministry to the world.
Rom 8:27
And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will.
Our earnestness is from the Holy Spirit, a deep desire to please God in all things, this is pleasing to God. To pray rightly we must look to the spirit of God to teach us to pray.
When we pray in the Spirit, we allow God’s Spirit to change our hearts and minds in regards to the concern we are bring to the Father.
A way to increase our passion in prayer is through Fasting -
Often spiritual breakthroughs in direction and circumstances occur through prayer and fasting...
Dan 9:3
So I turned to the Lord God and pleaded with him in prayer and petition, in fasting, and in sackcloth and ashes.
Acts 13:2-3
2 While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, "Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them." 3 So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off.
We do not need to fast everytime we pray, but there is emphasis in our prayers when we have withdrawn from appetites to give ourselves wholly to prayer. There is peculiar power in this kind of prayer
Nothing honors God when we fast in a pharasiacal or legalistic or manipulative way but when we give all other desires to give ourselves to God from our hearts and allow him to reorient our values and minds then we see God move.
There is power in prayer when we earnestly seek from Him whant we need and are willing to put everything into seeking him
We also see God respond to prayer through...
- PRAYING TOGETHER. - “the church was earnestly praying to God for him”
There is increased power in united prayer. God delights in when His people are in prayer and pronounces a blessing on it.
Matt 18:19-20
"Again, I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. 20 For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them."
Unity must be real – doesn’t say when 2 agree in asking but “agree” & “come together”
This is talking about a special type of agreement. We can agree and not be together. We can agree and accept, agree and tolerate, agree to disagree and just get along, but these are not the unity of agreement in this passage. When Jesus says “come together” he is using a word that would indicate “touching”. To be “of one heart and mind on the matter” , “to be willing to go together on”, “to be seen as the same by everyone”
One person can ask out of a passionate desire and the other ask to please his friend
God looks for real agreement, and where he sees this kind of unity of heart and mind He sees the kind of relationship that exists between Himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The kind of oneness that Jesus spoke of in John 17, and God moved heaven and earth to bring His Son back to life out of this kind of relationship.
God’s spirit brings 2 or more believers in perfect harmony regarding the thing they are asking ofr God – God blesses.
Does God respond to prayer...
When we come to God
Seek Him earnestly
And Pray together
This morning, do you need to Come to God with a clear & vivid consciousness of standing before God Himself. Maybe you have been relying on the ‘radio frequency’ approach to prayer, but now you are ready to come and stand before God Himself
Maybe you have been relying on your own strength when you come to God and now are ready to come to God with passion and through the Holy Spirit
Maybe you need your church to pray for you or with you in a concern and you need to know we are ready to stand with you before God.
This morning as we pray, if you want others to pray with you, you can come to me & I will gather some people to pray with you or ask some who are standing around you to pray with you about some matter that is on your heart.
Memory Verse
Heb 11:6
And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.