God Wants Us to Pray and Get What We Pray For

For some people, I suppose, prayer seems like an irksome religious duty. For my part, I love to pray. And what’s more, I get what I pray for. When we come to God, He does not scold us. He welcomes us.

If anything, He says, “Why have you waited so long?” There’s a beautiful picture of how God welcomes us when we come in the 15th chapter of Luke’s Gospel. It’s the well-known story of the prodigal son who’d strayed away from home, wasted all his living, got himself into real deep trouble, and ended up absolutely down and out, totally broke, with no resources.

And when he came to the end of all that, his thought was, “I’d better go back home. Perhaps my father will receive me. I couldn’t ask him to take me back as a son, but I could ask him to take me as one of his hired hands.”

“So he got up and went to his father.”

Now, I want you to notice how the father received him.

“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.”

See what a welcome he got as soon as he was willing to turn around and go back home. He never had a chance to say, “Make me as one of your hired servants,” because before that, his father was kissing him and welcoming him back as a child. That’s a beautiful picture of how God receives us. He doesn’t scold us. He doesn’t blame us. He isn’t stern and distant. He’s loving and warm and gracious. And when we get that picture of God, it altogether changes the way we pray.

Jesus came to represent the Father to humanity. And the teaching of Jesus on prayer was as totally positive as any area of His teaching. This is what He says in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7, verses 7 and 8:

“‘Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.’”

And again, in Mark 11:24, Jesus says,

“‘Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.’”

What could be more all-embracing than those statements? “Everything you ask in prayer,” “Whatever you ask for in prayer.” And notice what Jesus says in that second context. He says, “‘Believe that you have received it.’” It’s so important to realize that we receive when we pray. The actual experience of what we’ve prayed for may have to wait, but by faith, we receive what we pray for when we pray.

In His closing discourse to His disciples in John’s Gospel, Jesus three times assures us that God will answer our prayers. Listen to these words, John 14, verses 13 and 14:

“‘And whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.’”

How comprehensive! “‘If you ask anything, I will do it.’”

Again, in John 16, verse 24:

“‘Until now you have asked for nothing in My name. Ask and you will receive, that your joy may be full.’”

There is a special kind of joy that comes from getting our prayers answered; to know that Almighty God, Creator of heaven and earth, the Ruler of the whole universe, has His ear open to our personal, individual prayer; that He’ll do what we ask Him to do individually. That’s one of the most exciting experiences that anybody can ever have.

Now, I’d like to give you a final picture which illustrates what God wants us to become through our relationship to Him in Jesus Christ. The words are found in Revelation, chapter 1, verses 5 and 6:

“To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father— to him be glory and power for ever and ever! Amen.”

We have become a kingdom and priests. But we combine two of the highest functions ever made available to man through our relationship to God in Jesus Christ. What kind of spiritual sacrifices does God expect us to offer? Well, we can look at the example of Jesus as recorded in Hebrews, chapter 5 and verse 7. It says,

“During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions.”

That’s the kind of sacrifice and offering that God expects from us as priests: prayer and petition.

So God wants us to rule as kings. He wants us to offer the sacrifice of prayer and petition as priests. But in order to rule, we first have to learn to minister as priests. In other words, we aren’t qualified to minister as kings, to rule and to govern, until we’ve learned first to minister as priests in prayer. In other words, when we learn to pray, then we’re qualified to rule. Or put it another way, we learn to rule by praying. But first, we have to learn to pray.