- Spark Prayer
- Posts
- TRP #004: Answered Prayers & God's Will
Hey friends, welcome to this week’s issue of The Remnant Post!
I’ve wrestled the last several months with how and why God sometimes answers prayers with an obvious and overt ‘yes’, and why other times he’s seemingly silent or answering with a quiet ‘no’.
There appear to be a few things that are connected with answered prayers as we look at scripture, but the primary and prominent one we’ll look at quickly is that prayers according to scripture are answered when they align with God’s will and word.
Proverbs 16:3 was always a confusing verse as it seemed to imply that whatever we commit to the Lord will then be blessed. So as I was looking into this years ago in the original Greek, it appeared that the Amplified (AMPC) Bible seemed to have the most accurate way of articulating this, and it reads:
“Roll your works upon the Lord [commit and trust them wholly to Him; He will cause your thoughts to become agreeable to His will, and] so shall your plans be established and succeed.”
If we get wrapped up in what God is up to, He’ll change our desires, and then He’ll bring them to pass.
The more I dug into this topic, the more it appeared that Jesus told us the same thing in John 15 as he unpacked the concept of abiding in the vine.
John 15:7 says: “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.”
Jesus again in Matthew 6 is teaching the disciples to pray and a primary phrase central to his teaching on prayer is that we are to ask for God’s will to be done. (Matthew 6:10)
I’ve become convinced of the following truth which must fortify our personal and corporate prayer lives:
If we hunger for, seek out, and abide in the presence of God
We allow His words to abide richly in us
Our life, and in turn our thoughts, get rolled up into the Lord and become aligned with his will.
We become more aware of His will and can commit to fervent prayer on behalf of and in alignment with that will.
And then… “it will be done for you”.
I pray this saturates your thoughts over the coming week as you approach God in prayer.
Prayer Prompt of the Week:
Heavenly Father,
Forgive me for both desiring things and asking for things that aren’t aligned with your will. I repent of my selfish desires and ask that you would fill me with wisdom and revelation of the knowledge of you, God. That I would learn to more and more abide in you, and let your words richly abide in me. That they would take root in my heart and be the source of ideas, appetites, desires, and longings so that those things would be aligned with your good and perfect will. Please tear down anything I’ve built that is not aligned with your will and instead give me vision and clarity for things from you that are better.
Your word says I often don’t know how to pray as I ought. Provide for me a fresh glimpse of your will for this city and the people who live here, so that I would know rightly how to pray and in turn could see prayers answered and so prove to the world that we are your disciples. (John 15:7,8)
Would you stir up unity and alignment amongst believers all across this region as you lead us into your will? Help us to hunger more and more for unity and clarity as we seek to see you move in our city.
In Jesus mighty name, amen!
Verse of the Week:
