Sunday, October 23, 2011

How do we know God answers our prayers?




Dr Charles Stanley, Intouch Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia, states on his website about his weekly Christian TV broadcast, “Faith often begins to wane when adversity strikes or when prayers seem to go unanswered. But the thrilling thing about knowing the Lord Jesus Christ is that our heavenly Father hears us when we pray. Trusting God means looking beyond what we can see to what God sees.”

During the message he asked, “Why do you believe that God answers prayer?” and then Dr Stanley answers that we should believe God answers prayer because He (God) is faithful.  Then Dr. Stanley reads several Scriptures of how faithful God is and how great God’s promises are!  These Scriptures would be good to try to encourage  someone to start praying and seeking God, but anyone who has been a Christian for even a week should know that God answers prayer.  Becoming a Christian is the result of an answer to prayer.  When we see ourselves in our hearts as sinners and cry out or pray to God for forgiveness, when He forgives us, cleanses our hearts and adopts us into His family, whatever the hurt, sin or filth that was in our heart that we asked him to forgive and remove, we should recognize that it has been removed because He then puts His Spirit of love in our hearts in its place as an answer to our prayer. 


Knowing God’s faithfulness and His great promises are not the reasons to believe that God answers prayers, you should know God answers prayer because He is answering your prayers!  If you are not getting personal answers to prayer and just have to quote some Bible verses that say that God answers prayers, you really do not have a very personal or good relationship with God. As a Christian you should be seeing family and friends being healed, people being “saved”, finances being supplied.  This is not just an intellectual game of finding the right answers to test questions in the Scriptures. 


Jesus says that we all can get personal answers to prayer in John 15:7, “If ye abide in me, and my Words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.” And 1 John 3:22 states similarly, “And whatsoever we ask, we receive of Him, because we keep His commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in His sight.”


Isaiah 59:1-2 tells why we do not get answers to our prayers, “Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither His ear heavy, that it cannot hear: (2) But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid His face from you, that He will not hear.”  None of us are perfect, but we must seek to keep the sins of jealousy, greed, unforgiveness, respect of persons, anger from our hearts.  In fact, 1 Peter 3:7 states that the way men treat their wives may be blocking their prayers, “Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them (wives) according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered.”


So if the only reason you can say that God answers prayers is because the Bible says He does, then start seeking God and reading His Word to find out what we must do to get answers.  He requires us to respond to Him in certain ways and none of us get a free pass, we must each come to Him on His terms, not ours. 


To get an idea of some of the different ways God speaks to us, watch my videos, “Hearing God Speak,” “Prayer Changes Things (1 and 2),” and “Deliverance Prayer,” in the list on the right of this page.
This message or subject reminds me of the song some of us were taught as children which goes like this, “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so…” If the only reason you, me or anyone else believes Jesus loves us is because the Bible says so, we better work on our personal relationship with Him.  After walking with and seeking Him for 30+ years, I know He loves me and answers my prayers because He makes His presence known to me every day.  When we become a Christian He forgives us, adopts us into His family as joint-heirs with Jesus to all of His promises and fellowships with us daily.

God Bless You and have a good day! 

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Andrew Wommack's Faith and Grace


Andrew Wommack, from Colorado Springs, made the following comments on his worldwide Daystar TV program which is on at 7:30 AM CST in Oklahoma City.  On Sep 9, 2011, “You have all the faith in you – you don’t need any more.”  And on Oct 4, 2011, “Faith is your positive response to what God has already done by grace, which is unmerited, undeserved and unearned.”  God has not already done anything by grace because grace is the work of the Spirit of God in our hearts and that only happens when we by faith receive God’s Words into our hearts. 

First, In 2 Thessalonians 1:3 the Apostle Paul thanks God for their growing faith, “We are bound to thank God always for you, brethren, as it is meet, because that your faith growth exceedingly, and the charity of every one of you all toward each other aboundeth.”  Also, faith comes through us hearing God’s Word, if, or when we receive His Word into our hearts.  Therefore, we must be studying and praying to receive more of God’s Word into our hearts to grow in faith.  Romans 10:17 states, “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.”

Hearing has the root of “heeding” as stated in Psalms 119:9, “Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking “heed” thereto according to thy Word.” When we hear God’s Word, we must take heed to God’s Word by choosing to receive His Word into our hearts, not just knowing it intellectually in our heads.  Jesus says in John 6:63, “…the Words that I speak unto you, they are Spirit, and they are life.”  Therefore, when we choose to receive God’s Words into our hearts, we are receiving Jesus’ Spirit, the Spirit of Christ who is the Living Word creator of the Universe, into our hearts to faith.  We grow in faith by receiving more of the Spirit of God’s Words into our hearts, and to receive more we must make the choice to perform whatever action required on our part to study, seek, hear and receive more of His Words into our hearts to receive more faith which comes from His Words.



Once we have chosen to receive God’s Words into our hearts, when the Words enter our hearts and begin to work in us, we call that action a work of Grace.  Grace is the work of the Spirit of Christ, the Living Word of God, in our hearts to first create in us the new heart at salvation when we first receive Him in our hearts, and then grace, the work of the Spirit in our hearts, helps us grow as we receive more of God’s Word by faith into our hearts as we walk with the Lord.



Grace may be undeserved and unmerited, but there is something we must do to receive grace: We must choose to receive God’s Words into our hearts by faith.  Faith describes the positive receiving of God’s Word into our heart.  When the Spirit of God’s Word, Christ, enters our hearts, the work of the Spirit in our hearts is called grace.  Ephesians 2:8 states, “For by grace are we saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.”  When we hear God’s Words of the gospel and then choose to receive the Words of salvation into our hearts, we have received the Spirit of the Words by faith into our hearts to perform the work of grace in us for salvation: our forgiveness, new heart and adoption into the family as a child of God.  Hebrews 4:2 states, “For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them: but the Word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it.”  When a person hears any of God’s Word, there is an automatic required response to either accept it or reject it.  There is no in between or partial acceptance.  If it is not accepted exactly as God has stated, then instead of faith from God’s Word, the person will be in unbelief, which is an evil heart of rejecting God’s Word like the Children of Israel in Hebrews 3:12-19.   Faith only comes when we respond positively to His pure Word with no changes.  Then when the Word comes into our hearts “it”, Christ the Living Word, performs the work of grace in our hearts to help us fulfill the requirements of the Word that God spoke to us.



We must seek to grow in faith by receiving more of God’s Word into our hearts by study and fellowship with God in our daily lives. 



Grace is always the automatic work of the Spirit of the Words of God that we receive into our hearts by our choice to faith.  We choose to accept His Words to faith in our hearts and then the Words in our hearts produce the work of grace in us.



When we choose to accept in our hearts to faith that we are a sinner, that Christ is the answer for our sin, and we humble ourselves and call our to Jesus for forgiveness, then Jesus will send His Living Word, Christ, into our hearts to produce the work of grace in our hearts for salvation.  We are saved by the work of grace in our hearts as a result of us accepting and receiving the Words of the gospel by faith.



For more information watch a couple of my videos about faith and grace.



Have a blessed day,  Richard Hardin