Great Bible Truths Podcast Episode 133

The Promises of God Talk 14

Promises of Answered Prayer

In the New Testament there are many passages where Jesus promises that God will answer prayer and, if like me you’ve been a Christian for some time you will probably have seen many wonderful answers to prayer. But, if we’re honest, we have to admit that there have also been many prayers that have not been answered – at least in the way we would like them to be. Someone once said that God always answers prayer. Sometimes he says Yes. Sometimes he says No. And sometimes he says, Wait. And although that’s undoubtedly true, we often find it difficult to understand why he appears to be saying No or why he is making us wait. There are no easy answers, but in this talk I’m going to look at some of the promises Jesus made with regard to prayer.

As we shall see, there are three keys that will unlock them:

Relationship with God
Faith in God
Authority from God

1. Relationship with God

Let’s start in Matthew 7 where Jesus says:

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.
For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.
Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? 10. Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent?
If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him! (Matthew 7:7-11, Cf. Luke 11:9-10)

Notice who this promise is made to. Those who are sons (v9). Those who know God as their Father (v11). In other words, those who have been born again (See Talk 7). Our confidence that God will answer prayer springs from the fact that we are his children. It springs from our relationship with him. And that relationship must develop into an ongoing intimacy. Notice what Jesus says in John 15:

If you abide (remain) in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.

No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.
You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.
These things I command you, so that you will love one another.

I suggest you take time to read the whole passage, starting at verse1. The guarantee of answered prayer springs from an ongoing relationship with Christ in which we know his commands and understand what the Father is doing. It doesn’t mean that we can ask for whatever we want and God will give it to us. It means that if we’re really in close relationship with him, because we love him we will only want what he wants! We will only ask for what we know to be his will. And that’s why we know that he will answer our prayers. As John tells us in his first epistle:

And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him (1 John 5:14-15).

So the first key to answered prayer is relationship with God. The next two keys both spring from it.

2. Faith in God

There are several New Testament passages where faith is rewarded with answered prayer, especially with regard to healing – the centurion’s servant, blind Bartimaeus, the paralysed man lowered through the roof, the grateful leper, the woman with a haemorrhage, to mention just a few. But there are also some specific promises. Consider the passage in Matthew 21:19-22.

And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, he went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves. And he said to it, “May no fruit ever come from you again!” And the fig tree withered at once.
When the disciples saw it, they marveled, saying, “How did the fig tree wither at once?”
And Jesus answered them, “Truly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ it will happen.
And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.

And in line with this, in John 14:12-14 Jesus says:

Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father
Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.

The same truth is reiterated in the epistles:

James 1:5-8

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.
But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.
For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord;
he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

1 John 3:21-23

Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us.

Taking all these passages together we see that:

Mountains can be moved by prayer if we have faith when we pray!
We can even do greater works than Jesus did!
However, if we doubt, we will receive nothing.
We will have faith, confidence before God, if our heart does not condemn us.

By mountains Jesus is probably not referring to literal mountains, but is speaking metaphorically about major obstacles in our lives and the life of the church. There have been many suggestions as to what Jesus meant by greater works, but in my view he is simply telling us that there is absolutely no limit to what can be accomplished by faith through the power of the Holy Spirit whom Jesus was going to send when he returned to the Father. And finally, it seems clear that if our heart condemns us – if we have a guilty conscience – we are not likely to have faith that God will answer our prayers. As we saw in the first part of this talk, our confidence that God will answer prayer springs from our relationship with him.

3. Authority from God

There are several verses in the New Testament which speak about praying in the name of Jesus. For example:

John 14:13-14

13…Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.

If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.

John 16:23-24

In that day you will ask nothing of me. Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you.
Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.

But the name of Jesus isn’t a magic formula. In New Testament times to do something in someone’s name meant to do it with their authority. It certainly doesn’t mean that to get our prayers answered all we have to do is say in Jesus’ name at the end of them! So to pray in Jesus’ name means to pray with his authority. Now at first sight the passages we’ve just quoted may seem to indicate that Jesus has already given us that authority. Some have even suggested that God has given Christians a blank cheque, signed by Jesus, and all we have to do is fill in whatever amount we like. But in the light of verses we’ve already looked at, can this possibly be right? We’re told to pray according to his will, not ours.

So what does it mean to pray with Jesus’ authority? This takes us back to the first point in this talk – our relationship with God. If there’s an ongoing intimacy with Jesus, if we’re abiding in him, we will know what he wants, we will want what he wants, and so when we pray we will be praying in his will and we’ll be praying in faith.

To help us understand this better, let’s consider the secret of Jesus’ authority while he was here on earth. He lived in constant intimacy with his Father. He was always submitted to his Father’s will. Consider the following verses from John’s gospel:

John 5:19

I tell you the truth. The Son can do nothing by himself; he can only do what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does, the Son also does

John 7:16

My teaching is not my own. It comes from him who sent me

John 12:49

For I did not speak of my own accord, but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say.

The secret of Jesus’ authority was that he was always submitted to his Father’s authority. The Roman centurion understood this when he said:

…“Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only say the word, and my servant will be healed.
For I too am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. And I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” (Matthew 8:8-9).

The centurion only had authority because he was under authority. And he seems to have understood that this was true of Jesus too. Authority results from submission. If we truly submit ourselves to God we’ll be able to resist the devil and he will flee from us (James 4:7) and if we’ll see our prayers answered because they’ll be in line with his will.

So the keys to answered prayer are:

relationship with God
faith in God
authority from God.

When we’re living in intimate fellowship with God we will have faith and confidence to pray with Jesus’ authority. It’s then that we shall receive whatever we ask him for, because what we pray for will be directly in line with his will.