Cain first tried to evade confessing his sin of murdering his brother Abel and then cried out to God against the punishment being too harsh for his sin. God heard his prayer also and provided a way to escape from being killed by others. Lord Jesus has promised to give what is asked in prayers. Yet, most times either we do not receive an answer or it is delayed for very long periods, causing great anguish. What is the key to pray correctly and also receiving answers in time?
How should we pray to be heard by God? God has never abandoned mankind for He loves us and came looking for Adam and Eve even after their sin of disobedience – Hebrews 1:1-2 The entire work of God to reach out to us is summed up in this that ‘God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His So, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom he also made the worlds’. God manifested the glory of His Son in the darkness of the emptiness of the earth to transform that into a productive state (Genesis 1:2-3). The Son of God has thus been always involved in all of the creation process from the beginning. Abraham and before and after him, it was always Lord Jesus, the Creator and Sustainer of all of His creation, who visited them all over the earth to guide and help.
Noah, his three sons and their wives, were the eight people who were involved in making the Ark or the ship for 120 years in a place that was nowhere near the sea not had it ever rained till then. All the people who saw them, heard the reason but ignored the warning since all the earth ‘was indeed corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth’ (Genesis 6:12). Until and unless anyone feels the urge from inside to know God and His ways by realizing that their own ways are sinful and forgiveness is needed, no amount of preaching can bring any change.
God performed various signs in Egypt, through Moses and Aaron, causing great destruction and it was all seen by the Israelites. They crossed the Red Sea on dry land while the Egyptian army, their chariots and horses perished. Miriam, Moses’ sister and other women danced in praise of God, their Redeemer, and all the Israelites sang, ‘The LORD is my strength and song, and He has become my salvation; He is my God, and I will praise Him’ (Exodus 15:2). Moses was raised in the Pharaoh’s house for forty years and had left all that to be with his people. Moses killed an Egyptian for beating a Jewish slave but when he tried to intervene between two Jews fighting with each other, he was confronted with this murder by the people whom he tried to help (Exodus 2:14).
Moses was aware of the fickle nature of mankind and in the last days of his life told his people about God’s plan and His ways, urging them to diligently follow Him. He told them, ‘you shall remember that the LORD your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments. So he humbled you, allowed you to hunger’ (Deuteronomy 8:2). The book of Numbers lists the rebellions of the Israelites and the love of God but in Hebrew it is called Bamidar, which means ‘in the desert’. This is from the first verse of the Book, ‘God spoke to Moses in the desert of Sinai’.
But why was the Book named in relation to desert? How could the desert be the most appropriate place to receive Godly revelation? The two qualities of intense heat and emptiness of the desert are seen by Jewish mystics as positive. God is love and He is filled with a burning caring love for His created beings. Since nothing grows there with little or no rain, all that comes is received as a blessing, the dew, some rain and some greenery. Being empty, it has no cause for self ego, nor any personal identity with nothing specific to relate to. Only when a man reaches such emptiness and an absolute lack of any self worth that he can seek and surrender to another authority. The Israelites had to learn to get close to God before they could enter the Promised Land and neither can we unless we reach that state. This also is the state to be in to conduct our interpersonal relationships. Our relationship with God and with others in fulfillment of the Two Commandments from our Lord (Matthew 22:37-39) has to be based on this. No one cares about how much I know but about how much I care about them, and this is God’s way of love.
After the opening of his spiritual eyes by Lord Jesus, Apostle Paul has said, ‘I did not immediately confer with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me; but I went to Arabia’ (Galatians 1:16-17). He was a scholar of the Old Testament and knew of the importance of emptying oneself before God to be filled by Him. It was only after that, that he could be effective in his knowledge and teaching and become the greatest apostle of God. To be effective in prayer, one must first have a close relationship with God, who is the source of all blessings. To ask in Lord Jesus’ name is to fist be intimate with Him and be filled by Him so that our asking will also glorify God, the Father, through the Son (John 14:13).
Praying to glorify God and receive answers – Actually prayer is the least understood spiritual work in and by mankind, despite the fact that everyone prays for something or the other daily. Many religions have a scripted standard prayer that is recited in a mechanical and unfocussed way. Even many believers recite the Lord’s Prayer in such a manner. Prayer for most people has three parts- first is the idea or need of the sender; second, the words to express that idea; and, thirdly, the destination of the prayer, to whom it is addressed. Prayer is considered not as a conversation but a one way direction to God and then one moves on leaving the recipient to answer and complete the tasks assigned in prayer.
The Hebrew word, ‘teffillah’, for prayer has multiple meanings, each revealing a separate aspect of spiritual importance of prayer. This is the most obvious and effective path to spiritual development. First, prayer means to ‘attach or bind together’ and is thus not a transaction but an act of intimacy. Revealing the great divide between the one seeking and the Provider, prayer is to express love and show spiritual longing towards the One sought. Prayer must help in developing a real attachment to God and comes through a deep sense of nearness with Him, which then removes the gulf of separation between Him and us. Jacob wrestled with God, insisting, ‘I will not let You go unless You bless me’ (Genesis 32:24-26). Prayer is this struggle in humility, persevering in faith, not in self-entitlement but bowing down in soul and spirit. We may be seeking God to fulfill our needs while He may be wanting us to perform His will first. In our self-centered life we demand rather than submit to His ‘still-small voice’.
‘Teffillah’ is connected to ‘pelilah’ meaning judgement with introspection and is connected to finding our real identity and God given role. Jacob was not only given a new name Israel but also physically afflicted to make him humble. Prayer must also help us assess our shortcomings and reschedule our lives in line with the will of God. The ladder that Jacob saw had two way movement of angels, both up and down (Genesis 28:12). We go into His presence but we must come down into the realities of this world, where God has sent us to make a difference in someone’s life. Apostle Paul quotes Lord Jesus to the Believers in Ephesus ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive’ (Acts 20:35). Climbing down from the ladder is about sharing the blessings received from God with others.
Apostle Paul told the believers in Rome, ‘without ceasing I make mention of you in my prayers’ (Romans 1:9). The twenty-four elders before the Lamb of God in heaven sing praises to Him having ‘golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints’ (Revelation 5:8). The Saviour Lord, ‘who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us’ (Romans 8:34 & 26). Further to this, since ‘we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groaning which cannot be uttered’. When we pray, God the Holy Spirit helps by teaching us while praying with and for us on earth, while in heaven we have the saints presenting those prayers as incense to Lord Jesus, who then presents the same before God the Father. Such is the great blessing for a believer that the Holy Trinity is fully involved in our well being to answer our prayers.
Each one of us is body, soul and spirit but almost all prayers of most people are about care of the body, very rarely for the soul and almost never for the spirit. We are more concerned with our physical life than the spiritual. The gift of tongues from the Holy Spirit is for us to pray for what the Lord wants us to seek and about giving expression to our spiritual needs. The Holy Spirit also prays for such blessings for us, while also guiding us to seek to serve and connect with God in a closer relationship. Thus praying is not about asking God to change His mind and His plans for us but ‘to do something to yourself’ by recognizing our spiritual needs. Then it is not to ask, ‘Is God listening to my prayers?’ but rather ‘Am I listening to my prayers?’ Am I being changed through what I am asking? The one who wants to convey information to the ‘El-Shaddai’, the Almighty , All-knowing God is fooling himself. He knows all that we need but desires a close relationship with us. The command from the Lord is to ‘love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength’ (Mark 12:30). Each aspect is independently emphasized and God must rule all our thoughts, desires, actions and also our strength as given by Him in every sphere of life. Once we do this, we are well connected to Him and God the Father, His Son and the Holy Spirit are all glorified in our prayers and our lives.
Effects of answered prayers on our life – Jacob was told by his ten sons, who had sold Joseph into slavery, about his probable death but then he saw his son as the chief or in-charge of everything in Egypt. Jacob said to Joseph, ‘I had not thought to see your face’ and the Hebrew word used is ‘filalti’ which means ‘to hope, to envision, to anticipate’ (Genesis 48:11). It would thus be to ‘fill one’s heart with hopeful thoughts’ and is connected to ‘teffillah’, to pray. Through prayer we fill our hearts with thoughts and dreams of answered prayer and how our life and lives of others connected to us will be changed. Thus prayer is the service of the heart to understand and then do what God desires from us. Someone called for help regarding payment of a huge debt that he had incurred and how it was impossible for him to repay that. We never focus on what is required of us, to get closer to God and learn the ways of avoiding such a situation in future and seek ways to repair the damage.
God is merciful and He is always ready to help, for His promise is ‘I will not leave you as orphans’ (John 14:18). The Son of God became man to help us out of the slavery to sin, demons and the devil, a state from which it was impossible for us to escape on our own. An amazing prayer is listed in the Old Testament of Jabez, who was given this name by his mother, saying, ‘Because I bore him in pain’ (1 Chronicles 4:9-10). He must have suffered great humiliation for his name but in the eyes of God he ‘was more honorable than his brothers’. Jabez prayed to God, saying, ‘Oh, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that Your hand would be with me and that You would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain’. And God ‘granted him what he requested’.
This prayer of Jabez has many lessons for us to follow; First, recognize God as the only source of all blessings. Apostle James emphasizes this, ‘every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights’ (James 1:17). Asking in Lord Jesus’ name is to align with His character and live. Second, ask with your heart fully focused on His mercy and grace and assurance of an answer. Third, ask to reclaim what the devil has stolen from you and seek God to multiply your reach to do more for Him and be a channel for His love to others. Fourth, Ask beyond material things for His hand be on you to strengthen, guide and lead you in your trials. Five, Pray to turn your shame into your glory and to be a blessing to others, even those who suffered because of you in the past.
The real problem is not with God but with us and Apostle James clears this by saying, ‘you do not have because you do not ask. You do not have because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures’ (James 4:2-3). Once we analyze our prayer requests and judge on these two criteria, we shall definitely receive answers from God. Do not hesitate to ask God but rather be bold, for you are His child and He as a loving Father is willing and ready to reach out and bless. Also do not be miserly in asking for His promise is clear, ‘open your mouth wide, and I will fill it’ (Psalm 81:10). Ask, receive, thank, bless others with your gifts and give glory to God in everything!
King David, the man of God’s heart, also felt lonely in his troubles and cried out in despair, ‘How long, O LORD’. A man was walking in the desert alone and was comforted by God’s presence with him in two sets of footprints behind him. But then suffering severe hunger and thirst, he saw one set of footprints missing and was grieved. A little later he found a water source and was nourished by that and some fruits there and complained to God for having been abandoned by God. He was informed that during the time of his suffering, God was carrying him and that was the single set of footsteps. In like manner God always cares for and helps us in every situation but we are unable to feel His presence due to focus on worldly sources!
