Prayer And The Character Of God

Prayer, we have discovered, is the whole-hearted expression of your desires to God and God puts those desires in your heart in the first place and stirs you up to pray.

“Prayer comes from God and returns to God.”

C H Spurgeon

But sometimes your prayers are not answered because you also desire and pray for things you ought not to pray for. You see, alongside your new born again heart you still have an old nature: the flesh. That means that as well as the good desires that God has placed within you other desires surface from time to time, and some of them are selfish, some are outright sinful and all of them are out of line with God’s plans.

How can you be sure that the desires you are bringing to God are right and your prayers good?

How well do you know God? I’m not just thinking about factual information here. I mean how well do you understand God’s ways? Alongside the factual information you have gleaned from His word, do you have experience of walking with Him: experience that shapes not only the way you behave but your attitudes, the way you think, your values and the way you make decisions? That’s what it is to know God.

You get to know God like that by reading and meditating on His word, of course, but you also have to live in the light of it — walk in His ways.

The better you know God the more effective your prayers will be. Recalling those facts you know about Him will stir up good desires and call into question wrong ones. For example, knowing about His holiness will draw out humility and confession, knowing about His sovereignty will elicit trust and submission, knowing about His majesty will draw out praise and awe and knowing about His grace and power will provoke boldness. But experience gained through walking with God, over time, builds an understanding of what pleases Him and what He is likely to do in any given set of circumstances. And, deeper than that, as you get to know God it changes you. You become more like Him in your ways and in your thoughts. You come into greater harmony with Him. You find yourself more naturally desiring the things that He desires and praying as he would have you pray. When that happens, you will be better able to distinguish good desires from bad and you will, therefore, see more positive answers to your prayers. On top of that, you will be able to pray with more confidence, boldness and persistence.

Because God never changes, He must always act in ways that are consistent with His character. Prayers that are based on a sound knowledge of His character put Him in a corner: He must grant what you ask. God likes prayers that do that.

One last thought for now. It’s a good test of how well you know God. Are you increasingly prevailing in prayer? If you’re not, don’t settle for that. Set about getting to know Him better.