Praying in Faith

[Scroll Image] The Scriptures

"Have faith in God," Jesus answered. "I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours." (Mark 11:23-24 NIV)

"If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways." (James 1:5-8 NIV)

"And this is the confidence that we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whetever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him." (I John 5:14-15 NASB)

[praying hands] Perhaps nothing causes more difficulty for people in their L.I.F.E. than their prayer life! People have a hard time praying consistently, and even those who do pray regularly, often feel their prayers do not go any further than the ceiling. Many people feel their prayers go unanswered. I believe the problem is that many people do not know HOW to pray. Unfortunately this is often complicated even more by the deadly traditions taught in many churches! Scripture makes it abundantly clear that whatever we ask for in faith, we will receive! So, what is the problem? Why do more Christians not have their prayers answered? Are the promises of Scripture not true, or is there some hidden secret to getting one's prayers answered?

Heaven forbid we should think the Scriptures are unreliable! But, someone might say, the Bible doesn't teach ALL our prayers would be answered -- only those that are in God's will. There are plenty of Scripture passages, however, that tell us we will have what we ask, if we believe. So there IS what has come to be known as "the prayer of faith" taught in the pages of the Bible. But the question still remains.....

Why do so many prayers seem to go unanswered? Why do more people not receive what they ask for? IS there some hidden secret to getting one's prayers answered? What IS God's will in regards to prayer? Can we really receive what we ask for, if we have faith? How do we get our prayers answered? Can we pray for anything, and receive what we ask for? Do we have to pray, "if it be thy will"? And what IS the prayer of faith? So many questions! But they're all answered in the Bible.

I believe with all my heart that people do not receive what they ask for because they do not pray in faith. They don't really believe they'll get what they ask for. Is it because they are faithless? No, for even Jesus refused to say people were faithless, although He often rebuked them for having "little faith." Church traditions has been the culprit in much of this epidemic of "little faith" in the church today. The Church should be a house of prayer, but too many churches do not know what prayer is, or how they should pray. They've become dens of thieves, robbing people of spiritual power and causing havoc in the people's L.I.F.E. by weakening their faith.

Jesus very clearly taught us that whatsoever (that means whatever, all) things we ask for when we pray, if we believ that we have received them, we shall have them! He didn't mention any "qualifiers" here. Some people say that He used a qualifier when He taught the Lord's Prayer, "Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done." However, He was not using the phrase "Thy will be done" as a qualifier, but as the subject of His prayer. It was His prayer that God's eternal will would be accomplished in this earth. Since God is sovereign, is such a prayer necessary? Won't His will be done anyway? Yes, but Jesus' prayer was an example that our wills should be in submission to God's will The Lord's prayer was set forth as an example of how people as individuals should pray.

This was not a national or global intercession. Each and every supplication in the Lord's prayer was individual. He used "us" and "our" as an example. The prayer, then, signified that we each should pray that God's will is done in our lives. It's a submission of our will to His eternal will.

If Jesus thought there needed to be a qualifier, He certainly would have taught such. But He taught that whatever we ask for, if we believe we have received it, we shall have it! If this was not so, then Jesus was teaching a lie!

The passage in James also tells us we must pray in faith, and God will give us what we ask for. Althought he was writing about asking for wisdom, the principle is the same no matter what we ask for.

But, let us return to Jesus' teaching in Mark 11. He not only says we must pray in faith, but He says we must believe we have received what we ask for, and then we shall have it! The word "received" is past tense. We have to believe we already have what we ask for, even if we do not actually yet have it. The promise to one who has such faith is that they will receive it! We have to believe it is already a "done deal"! He didn't teach us to believe that we will receive it, but that we have received it!

How can we do that? Isn't that just lying to ourselves? How can we believe we've received something already, when we don't actually have it? Well, that's precisely what faith is all about! Remember, it's God's spiritual principle, and He calls things that are not as though they are, or as the NASB puts is, "calls into being that which does not exist." (Romans 4:17). This is how He created. He called things into existence. He said, "Light be!" and there was light, etc. But, He's God! He can do that! We're not God, are we?

The phrase quoted above by Jesus as "Have faith in God," is more accurately translated from the original language, "Have the faith of God." We're not only to have faith IN Him, but we're to have His very faith. . . . the very same faith that calls into existence those things that "are not."

Remember the study on Talking In Faith? "Death and life are in the power of the tongue!" We determine much of the outcome in our L.I.F.E. but what and how we speak. This is just as true -- in fact, moreso -- in our prayers.

The very essence of faith is believing the "impossible." So, if we belabor the fact that we do not have something, we're making a negative confession that will bring about the reality of not having it in our lives. However, if we make positive confessions of faith, we bring about the positive reality. We must confess we have the answer to our prayers, even before we actually have it. That is operating in faith, and that will bring about its reality in our L.I.F.E.

It's not MY principle! It's God's! Jesus taught it. As the saying goes, "God said it, I believe it, That settles it!" If you want to argue with Jesus on this, more power to you!

But, doesn't the passage in I John teach that we only receive what we pray for IF we're praying according to God's will? Doesn't a Christian have to pray according to God's will? Didn't Jesus once pray, "Nevertheless, not as I will, but Thy will be done?"

Let us first tackle the last question. Jesus was facing His final hours. He knew He was to be crucified. He prayed so fervently, we're told, He sweated drops of blood. No man wants to die or be executed, especially if they're innocent! Jesus was totally innocent. He was crucified for OUR sins. He knew He was facing God's wrath and separation from God due to sin. Jesus had been eternally in the Father's presence, and the thought of being separated because of detestable sin, was something that bore heavily on His human consciousness. He was fully human here on this earth, and the very idea that His fellowship with God would be broken for even a moment was more than He could bear. In the flesh, He wanted a way out. But, He mastered the flesh. He was ruled by the Spirit (and His spirit), and this enabled Him to submit His human will to God's will. It enabled Him to put His flesh under the submission of the spirit and pray that God's will would be accomplished in His human flesh. Just like the Lord's Prayer, it was not a qialifier, but an individual submission of human will to God's will.

Next, we'll answer the main question: doesn't the passage in I John teach we receive answer to our prayers only as long as we're praying according to God's will?

Yes, to a great extent it does. However, it is not a formula given to us to say, "if it be thy will"! We must pray according to God's will (which answers the other question as well). But, let us look at the passage in I John a little more closely, and we'll see that there is no contadiction with Jesus' words in Mark 11.

First of all, John says, "this is the confidence we have...." Confidence means certainty or trustworthiness. This is something we can be certain of and have trust in. Unanswered prayer hardly gives one confidence or certainty!

John continues: "...if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us." There's the word "anything" we must take note of. Anything means anything...not some things, but ANY thing. He tells us He hears us. This doesn't exactly say we'll have what we pray for, does it? It just says that God hears us. Actually, of course, God hears everything we say. But we have to read the NEXT verse as well!

He goes on to say: "And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked of Him." This seems certainly to be in line with Jesus' words in Mark 11. But what about the phrase, "if we ask anything according to His will"?

First of all, no one should be praying for something that is not His will! No Christian should be seeking for anything that is outside of His will! That's why Jesus' only qualifying statement was when He said, "But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you" (Matthew 6:33). If we are seeking the kingdom of God, we are seeking His will! Remember the pattern of the prayer of personal submission in the Lords' Prayer? "Thy kingdom come, They will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." When we're seeking the kingdom, we're seeking God's will on earth in our lives.

When we are seeking God's will, we certainly are not praying outside of His will! So the question then becomes what is God's will and can we know God's will in everything? We can and should know God's will because He's given it to us in Scripture. Nevertheless, some say we cannot know ALL of God's will, especially in what He has not revealed in Scripture. For example, some say we cannot know if it's God's will to heal someone when we pray for the sick. Really? These skeptics quote James 4:13-15 to justify their "little faith."

[scroll] "Come now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow, we shall go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.' Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears foor a little while and then vanishes away. Instead you should say, 'If the Lord wills, we shall live and also do this or that.' " (James 4:13-15 NASB)

If one reads James 4, one knows that James is writing to carnal (wordly) Christians. He describes, in this chapter, worldliness: its cause (vss 1-2), its consequences (vss 3-6), its cure (vss 7-10), and its characteristics (vss 11-17).In the verses quoted above, James is addressing the folly of forgetting God in business as a manifestation of such wordliness. He was addressing intinerant merchants, who carries out lucrative trade throughout the world and in the process lived worldly lives and forgot God. It is precisely this carnality that makes them unablle to know God's will. These were the kinds of people who were not seeking first the kingdom of God. They were seeking the "almighty dollar."

Scriptural study must be contextual, and a doctrine or teaching must be congruent with the totality of Scripture to be sound. One cannot take an isolated text and build a theology out of it. It even takes more than a few "pet" verses to prove a truth. If not, one could isolate two Scriptures: "And Judas went and hanged himself," (Matt 27:5) and "Go, and do thou likewise," (Luke 10:37) and we'd have a theology of lynching or suicide! No one would deny that this is foolishness. Yet they won't hesitate to do this in other cases!

So, what IS God's will? What can (and should) we be praying for in faith? Remember the list in the teaching on Page 1? [Go there now to review, and then hit your "BACK" button.]

Salvation
Healing
Prosperity
Blessing
All good
Abundant Life
Needs met
Comfort
Everlasting Life
Fuitfulness
Gifts of the Spirit
Protection
Joy
Peace
Liberty
Rest
Eternal Rewards
Victory
Wisdom and....
Answered Prayer

These, then, are what the Bible tells us implicitly are God's will for us. And the list is not all-inclusive. There's much more. Yet the skeptic and the heretic hunters would say I teach false doctrine and New Age theology! But these come from the Bible, not me!

The skeptic will say God promises and wills eternal blessing and rewards, but not temporal blessings here on this earth. Boy, has satan got YOU duped! Remember when Jesus was talking to the rich man and He remarked that it is harder for a rich man to get into the kingdom of God than it is for a camel to go through the eye of a needle? The disciples were shocked and said, "We've left everything to follow you!"(Luke 18:28): Jesus said to them that all who leave everything for the sake of the kingdom will "receive many times as much at this time AND in the age to come, eternal life." (Luke 18:30).

We are returned, by Jesus' words to the central truth: if we are seeking the kingdom of God, ALL these things (and more) are promised us, not only in eternity, but here and now!

What about healing? God doesn't heal all who pray, does He? It's not always His will, is it? Well, I maintain that it is. He came in fulfillment of the prophecies, one of which is that He would heal (Isaiah 61:1-2a, Luke 4:17-21). Furthermore, Isaiah prophesied that by the stripes of the Messiah, we would be healed. By Jesus' stripes we have been healed.(I Peter 2:24).

What about the passage in James 5:14-16? Are we to ignore them? I think not!

[scroll] "Is any among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up, and if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him. Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much."

Yes, healing is God's will and the prayer of faith can bring us healing IF done according to the "prescription":

The elders should pray for him/her.
He/she is to be anointed with oil.
Confession of sin is required.

So....

What's the reason people's prayers do not get answered? They're not praying in faith. They're not praying the pray of faith. They're not believing they've received what they ask for. They're not obeying Jesus' teaching. They're not obeying Scripture. They're obeying traditions of the church. The House of Prayer is a Den of Thieves, robbing Christians of all they could have by the lie that says we cannot believe and receive because we cannot know God's will.

It is imperative that God's people learn to pray in faith. James says there must be no doubt, for a doubting person is unstable in ALL his ways. That's pretty bold! Doubt infects our spirits and our L.I.F.E. One who doubts is one who is not walking in faith, who is not Living In Faith Everyday. One who doubts does not please God, for without faith it is impossible to please Him., "for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who (diligently) seek Him" (Hebrews 11:6).

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