We can be sure our prayers are answered precisely in the way we would want them to be answered if we knew everything God knows.
HT: Challies.com
Tag Archives: Prayer
A Congregation United
Earth affords not a more impressive, affecting, and solemn sight, than that of a whole congregation uniting in acts of prayer and praise to the great Lord of all.
Prayer Is a Relationship with God
Since prayer is a relationship with God as a Person, anything in our lives that displeases Him will be a hindrance to prayer.
Prayer as a Means of Grace
You cannot tell what the secret purposes of God are, but you know that God has appointed prayer as the means of obtaining good and averting evil. If you neglect the means which he has directed you to use, you have no reason to expect the blessing which you desire: but if you are induced by his grace to use the means, it is a good sign that you are likely to obtain the desired end.
Imprecatory Prayers
Difficulty is felt today with biblical prayers that God will take vengeance, partly because of their Oriental exuberance of expression, which to us sounds like bloodthirstiness and gloating (imagining detail about anyone’s evil prospects is culturally unacceptable to Westerners), but mainly because the pure zeal for God’s glory that these prayers express is foreign to our spiritually sluggish hearts.
J. I. Packer, A Passion for Faithfulness (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1995), 101.
Christ Is No Careless Advocate
Christ is no careless advocate for His people. He knows your precise condition at this moment, and the exact state of your heart with regard to the temptation through which you are passing; more than that, He foresees the temptation which is awaiting you, and in His intercession He takes note of the future event which His prescient eye beholds. ‘Satan hath desired to have thee, that he may sift thee as wheat; but I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not.’
Is Your Prayer Request Your Own Curse?
We indeed feel our misery, but are not fully acquainted either with the cause, or the remedy…. If we know at all what to pray for, yet we have not adequate views of our original depravity, and our exceeding sinfulness and unbelief; nor of the fulness and power of Christ the Saviour. We do not regard the glory of God, but our own ease and pleasure. By nature we love outward good, and are ready to ask, in sickness for health, in pain for ease, in sorrow for comfort, in poverty for wealth, in disregard and contempt for honour and esteem; without considering God’s glory, or our eternal good. The mother of Zebedee’s children asked for a place of great honour for her sons; but our Lord said, “Ye know not what ye ask.” Matt. xx. Often those things which we are ready to ask for, would, if God were to give them to us, be our greatest curse.
Prayer Draws Us to God
We do not say that prayer really changes the purpose of God, though it may be sometimes so expressed in condescension to our infirmities ; but we say his course of dealing is quite different with those who pray and those who do not. We may think, indeed, that we are drawing God nearer to us, when we in truth draw nearer to him, as a person with a boat-hook which he fixes to the shore is ready to think when he draws the boat, that he is moving the land towards him, when in fact he himself is coming nearer the land.
The Prayer Test
Prayer is the best test of an individual, and it is also the best test of a church. A church can be flourishing: she can be successful in terms of organizations, she can be tremendously active and appear to be prosperous, but if you want to know if she s a real church or not, examine the amount of prayer that takes place…So I ask you: how much do you pray? What evidence is there of prayer in your life? This is the way to discover where we are.
Knowledge of God Teaches Us To Pray
The more we reflect on the kind of God who is there, the kind of God who has disclosed himself in Scripture and supremely in Jesus Christ, the kind of God who has revealed his plans and purposes for his own “household,” the kind of God who hears and answers prayer — the more we shall be encouraged to pray. Prayerlessness is often an index to our ignorance of God. Real and vital knowledge of God not only teaches us what to pray, but gives us powerful incentive to pray.
D. A. Carson, A Call to Spiritual Reformation (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1992), 201.
Life Is Worship 