How to Ask in Prayer!

Quite often, I have come across regular Church going people say, that religion is nothing but what society has developed, so that people would listen to what is good. Now there is a negligible fraction of truth to that statement but for a regular church goer to say that, is nothing but hypocrisy. Hypocrites are precisely what people are naturally from Adam because they believe religion should do nothing more than appeal to their good nature but when religion does that they rarely take notice. However, if you speak the truth about them to their face, they will take notice but hate you for it and so it is that people are naturally hypocrites from Adam because nothing is more bitter to these fools than the truth about themselves.

Proverbs 9
8 Do not reprove a scoffer, or he will hate you, Reprove a wise man and he will love you.
9 Give instruction to a wise man and he will be still wiser, Teach a righteous man and he will increase his learning.
10 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.

It is for this reason people at their best can only believe in humanity because under such a belief system they can do as they please from their unbelief and make victims of those who cannot fight back. Take Abortion for instance, those liberals fools feel secure in ascertaining that those unborn babies cannot fight back but do you think God is going to sit quiet as millions of helpless babies are murdered? This is the very nature of unbelief among those who claim to believe in humanity as over the truth about God and Christ.

Prov 15
28 The heart of the righteous ponders how to answer, But the mouth of the wicked pours out evil things. 29The LORD is far from the wicked, But He hears the prayer of the righteous.

Today people think that the wicked are those who are rotting in prison for murder, rape, robbery and fraud. Then there are those who think that you can continue doing what you are doing until you get caught and then when society brands you as wicked, then you are wicked. However, this is far from the truth because the spirit of the anti-Christ has worked in men ever since the fall of Adam (Gen 3:1-6). These demonic spirits work in the hearts of all people because of Original Sin. So a wicked person is not necessarily a person who is on the police records but any and every man whose life is not in communion with God through Jesus Christ.

Romans 3
22 This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25 God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— 26 he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.

27 Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. Because of what law? The law that requires works? No, because of the law that requires faith.

You see the reason people feel they are praying but their prayers are not heard is because their hearts aren’t set straight with God and they are implicitly asking God to serve their own rebellious nature. The Bible teaches God looks at our motives when we pray and though we may claim our prayer to be most philanthropic, our motives might be really messed up but no hypocrite will admit that. You see being hypocrites by nature, people are generally given to pray from a motive, which is not genuine but detestable in God’s sight (Mat7:3-5) and God will not listen such prayer because He cannot be mocked without damning repercussions. So, if you are really looking for your prayers to be answered, you’ve got to know God and His purpose.

Prov 8
34 “Blessed is the man who listens to me, Watching daily at my gates, Waiting at my doorposts.
35 “For he who finds me finds life And obtains favour from the LORD.
36 “But he who sins against me injures himself; All those who hate me love death.”

James 4
3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.

Against much of what the world’s heretics would like you to believe, God hasn’t left this world orphaned and neither does He play a non-interfering role with humanity. The issue is, when people see things in the world not going as they please, they think God is up to no good because they believe that God exists to serve humanity. You see, this stems from the very same lies these hypocrites fool themselves with, because from the very reason they have fooled themselves to believe that society created God so people may listen to what is good, from that very same reason they undoubtedly feel God exists to serve humanity. Such is the blasphemy they breed about God in their minds and then wonder why God does not answer their prayer. Why should God answer their prayer when these fools believe that God is an invention of society? Should God answer their prayer because He exists to serve Humanity? I hope you are able to see the damning unbelief we are dealing with here because this by itself defines wickedness.

John 6
43 Jesus answered and said to them, “Do not grumble among yourselves.
44 “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day.
45 “It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught of God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father, comes to Me.
46 “Not that anyone has seen the Father, except the One who is from God; He has seen the Father.
47 “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life.

You see, in order for you to pray, it requires you to know God, which is only possible through Jesus Christ because Jesus is the Son of God who came some 2000 years ago (Lk1:28-35), taking upon Himself the complete nature of man by being born of a virgin and thus having no part in inheriting the sin of Adam. This Jesus was the sacrifice God offered on behalf of us men who had no capacity for God’s righteousness and as the Bible teaches that life is in the blood, so it is with the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ that we have forgiveness of sins and reconciliation with God. It is for this reason that the Bible refers to Jesus as the Lamb of God!

1 John3
21 Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God;
22 and whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight.

John 1
17 For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ.
18 No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.

I may not know where you stand in your relationship with God but this I can say for sure that intimacy with God grows richer only with brushing shoulders with the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ. His Might rubs-off on you as you learn the righteousness God requires of you as a person. It is a high unlike any other and one which only keeps you asking for more of Jesus because when you know Jesus, you want nothing more than what God wants and that greatly pleases God. It’s like a child asking for or doing something that makes his father proud.

Psalms 37
4 Delight yourself in the LORD; And He will give you the desires of your heart.
5 Commit your way to the LORD, Trust also in Him, and He will do it.
6 He will bring forth your righteousness as the light And your judgment as the noonday.

Unlike the Christianity, our famous TV evangelist and the popular Charismatic movement is bearing witness to, asking in prayer is not about asking God as you please so as to satisfy your own appetite but it is asking from the knowledge of knowing God’s will because the true Christian’s strength is in exercising the joy of the Lord and not in satisfying his or her own appetite. I have come across and admonished many so called Bible believing Charismatics whose reason for praising God in the midst of their congregation was: I was praying for an iPhone and God answered my prayer or I was praying for a car and God blessed me with one.

Mat 6
24 “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.

I pity the senseless direction of the Charismatic school of thought because when these people testify in the midst of their congregation about God satisfying their appetite for material things (as though it was the crux of their religion), their congregation replies by quoting scripture like Ps2:8 saying you must ask for big things, without knowing that the big things we need to ask for are concerning that which please God and not in serving our own appetite. Such is the plight of the Charismatic movement that their religion is not to stand on Jesus’ righteousness and ask for that which pleases God but to ask in prayer for that which satisfies their own appetite since they subconsciously perceive that it pleases God to serve them. This then is no different from unbelief and so it is that these Charismatics are only fooling themselves in saying they are living for God when their religion is more about satisfying themselves.

Mat 6
31 “Do not worry then, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear for clothing?’
32 “For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.
33 “But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Though I shall admit that there are many Charismatics who love God, the real problem is that only a small fraction of these have read their Bibles from cover to cover (Hosea4:6). With such an appalling rate of Biblical illiteracy and sloth, their congregations are left with nothing, but to do only what their pastors/leaders say. The average Charismatic therefore is very much unlike the Bereans of Acts 17:11 and though these may be given to say that they are Bible believing Christians, that is far from the truth. The reason I am citing the Charismatics in this post, as I have done in many others, is because asking in prayer is the punchline of the Prosperity Gospel, which is something I need to caution you against because money was never and shall never be the motive for true faith in God.

John 15
5 “I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.
6 “If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned.
7 “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.

To conclude, we understand from Romans 5:17 that we are reconciled to God in the Lord Jesus Christ. In this manner our stewardship which was lost in Adam is restored to us in the Lord Jesus Christ because the image of God in which we were made (Gen 1:26) sought to reflect the God’s nature and will, in living out our Christian/Godly stewardship over the earth. So it is in prayer that we who are made in His image can only truly ask with proper purpose, when we ask for not what we want for ourselves but what we want according to God’s own righteousness.