Luke 11:9
All Your Prayers
Luke 11:9 And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall
be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock,
and it shall be opened unto you.
One of the most powerful weapons in the Christian arsenal is prayer;
yet, for most Christians, I suspect our weapon is rusty from lack of
use. Hopefully that has changed in 2020. If this year, with viruses,
lock downs, and political unrest and turmoil as not seen since our
civil war, we have not begun to pray much more often and much more
intensely, I don’t suppose we ever will.
Yet, with all weapons and all tools, they are only as good as the
ones who use them. Prayer will only be as effect as we correctly use
it. This morning, three questions need to be answered concerning
prayer. They will be the three points of the message.
The three most important questions to answer about prayer:
1. Does prayer work?
2. How does prayer work?
3. Will prayer work for me?
I. Does prayer work? Yes
A. Perhaps not like you and I would like it to work, but it
works.
B. If you want to know how I know that, I will tell you
1. It isn’t because I get everything I ask for, because I
do not.
2. I know prayer works because the Bible says so.
a. It does not just say it in one verse
b. It says so in many verses.
Jer 33:3 Call unto me, and I will answer thee,
and shew thee great and mighty things, which
thou knowest not.
Mt 21:22 And all things, whatsoever ye shall
ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.
Joh 15:7 If ye abide in me, and my words abide
in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall
be done unto you.
1Jo 5:14 And this is the confidence that we have
in him, that, if we ask any thing according to
his will, he heareth us:
15 And if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we
ask, we know that we have the petitions that we
desired of him.
C. Understand:
1. If prayer does not work then the entire Bible is bogus.
a. All of it.
b. It is completely worthless, and we have been
deceived, and I have spent my whole life deceiving
others.
c. Have I? No.
d. Prayer works.
e. Even more, based on the Bible, we need to take this
truth up a couple of notches.
2. Righteous praying works 100% of the time.
a. If prayer works 100% of the time, why don’t we get
100% the things we ask for.
b. That is because we pray based on a false notion, that
we pray to get what we want.
c. Prayer does not and never has worked to give us the
things we want. That is NOT how prayer works!
3. I do somethings in a tolerable fashion, some things poorly
but I out stubborn them, and some things I just can’t do.
a. Toward that bottom scale is my talent at plumbing.
b. Even so sometimes I am forced to attempt it.
c. Granted, it may be that my bad attitude toward
plumbing has something to do with the results of my
plumbing.
d. I was working on a sink a while back and could not
get it to stop leaking. After several failed
attempts, I called Joseph. Isn’t it amazing how the
roles reverse with time? Joseph came over, took the
same tools I was using and even the same parts I had
and stopped the leak. The problem was never the tools
r the parts. The problem was I didn’t know how to use
them.
4. The problem for Christians has never been that prayer does
not work. The problem has been that we do not know how
prayer works.
II. How does prayer work?
A. That is the message this morning.
1. Let me say that I am no expert, but I do have some
mileage; and I can tell you some things I have learned.
2. I hope it will be helpful to you.
B. First, always pray for God’s will.
1. The is the first and most important lesson you will ever
learn about prayer.
a. Christians always pray for God’s will above all else.
Matt 6:10 Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in
earth, as it is in heaven.
Luke 22:42 …Father…not my will, but thine, be
done.
John 6:38 For I came down from heaven, not to do
mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.
b. If you pray for God’s will, you will get every prayer
you pray answered.
c. All of them.
d. Why? Because God will always do His will.
2. I almost gave up on prayer before I learned that prayer is
not about me getting what I want but about me getting
what God wanted me to have.
a. I feel sure that preachers preached this to me and
that teachers taught it to me, but I don’t remember
them doing so.
b. Perhaps I was not paying attention. I have been told
that of all the skills and talents I have, the only
one I have mastered is not paying attention.
c. But perhaps it was not emphasized as strongly as it
needed to be. So I will say it as plainly as I can.
(1) Prayer is not about us getting what we want.
(2) Prayer is about us getting what God wants us to
receive.
3. I already told you that we don’t get 100% of the things we
want, but Christians can and should always get 100% of
their prayers answered.
a. And they will if they are always praying first and
foremost for God’s will to be done.
b. But you say, "Wait a minute. I don’t always want what
God wants."
c. And that is the reason we do not get our prayers
answered.
d. Prayer has never been about us getting what we want
from God.
e. Prayer has always and only be about us getting what
God wants us to have.
4. Two more thoughts come with this truth.
a. We have to be learners for prayer to work,
(1) Somehow we have the notion that prayer is about
us teaching God.
(2) We seem to think God needs our counsel and wisdom.
(a) He does not.
(b) We will never tell God about any situation
that He does not already know, and we will
never give God a plan better than the one
He already has.
(c) Prayer is not and never has been for us to
instruct God.
(d) Prayer is for our learning, not His.
(3) Until we change our attitude in praying from
thinking we have the answers and God needs our
instruction to we don’t even know the questions
and we need His instructions, we will never know
how prayer works.
b. God will not give us even the things He wants us to
have if we will not pray humbly and hungry to learn.
(1) God has a great plan for the life of every
person—especially His own children—but few
will ever find it because they will not seek it
in prayer.
(2) I heard the story of the Christian who got to
heaven and was seeing the Lord for the first
time. The two talked and fellowshipped for what
seemed like an eternity before the man looked
around and noticed scores and scores of
beautiful packages all around the throne. He
asked the Lord, "What are all of these gifts?"
Jesus’ face grew solemn as He answered, "These
are all the presents I wanted to give you but
you never received them."
"But, Lord," the man answered. "I asked for
your blessings and help; yet seldom received it."
To which Jesus replied, "Yes you asked but never
listened to My instructions telling you where to
go to get them."
(3) In prayer, we learn where to go, who to be, and
what to do so that God can give us the things He
wants us to have.
C. Second, you do not have to know what God’s will is to pray.
1 It helps, and God’s desire is for us to learn to know God
and His will, but if the only things I prayed about were
the things I presently knew God wanted to do, my prayer
list would be extremely short.
2. Most of the time, I am praying to learn.
a. I pray to learn how to pray.
b. I pray to learn what God’s will is.
3. Then how do we know what to pray for?
a. We pray first yielded and seeking God’s will.
b. We pray second what guessing would want might want
based on what we know of Him from the Bible and
through the Holy Spirit.
4. My guesses could and often are wrong.
a. To be honest, I tend to pray the most elaborate
request.
b. I know our God is not limited so I pray big.
c. God does not always do as big as I am praying, but if
I am praying for God’s will, I get all my prayers
answered.
5. For example:
a. I have talked to the Lord several times about the
election.
(1) I learned Friday night that the Supreme Court
will not hear the petition of Texas concerning
alleged voter fraud.
(2) I do not know if that ends the hope of stopping
the socialists from four years of ruin or not.
(3) That was not the way I wanted things to go, but
I have and will pray about it anyway.
(4) Even though I did not get what I wanted, I did
get my prayer answered.
(5) Because of what man is choosing to do, God’s will
is being done in the matter of the election.
b. I have talked to God about the Coronavirus, especially
that He would keep it out of our church.
(1) I do not know what He will do, but I have and do
pray He will keep it away from our people.
(2) Obviously, God has not kept it out—not
completely.
(a) As far as I know, God has kept out the
severe cases of Coronavirus—and for that I
am very, very thankful.
(b) But we are meeting outside again because
several people have either tested positive
or showed symptoms.
(c) That is not what I wanted, but every prayer I
pray is first and foremost subservient to
God’s will—even when I do not know what it
is.
(d) I want God’s will more than anything else;
and because I want God’s will, I get all my
prayers answered.
6. But we pray and we pray hard even when we don’t know what
God’s will is.
D. Learn God’s will AS you pray.
1. Most every prayer we pray begins with a biased point of
view.
a. We see a need that needs to be met, a wrong that needs
to be righted, or a problem that needs to be solved,
so we pray about it.
b. Inadvertently, when we saw the need, we also figured
what we believe would be the best solution.
(1) I see the dangers of a socialistic presidency
and naturally assume the solution is for the
Lord to defeat them at the ballot box.
(2) I see the dangers of a virus and naturally assume
the solution is for God to put up a hedge to
keep it out of our church.
2. However, God seldom solves the problems we see in the way
we think.
a. Why would He?
(1) Our vision is poor.
(2) Our thinking is faulty.
(3) And our desires our sinful.
b. If God were a man with unlimited power, He might see
things the way we see them, think the we think, and
want what we want; but then He would just be a sinful
man with unlimited power.
c. But God is not a sinful man with unlimited view,
unlimited wisdom, and unlimited power.
d. He is so different from us that what we see as the
problem may not even be the problem.
(1) It might only be a symptom of the problem.
(2) God may be working somewhere else completely.
3. The point is that while we pray, we watch what God does,
and we attempt to hear what God says, where God is going,
and what God will do.
E. Fourth, we don’t get angry with God regardless of what He
does.
1. Many have prayed for what they wanted the way they wanted
it and God did not bow to them, so they are left
disillusioned, angry, and bitter with God.
a. Most like that are probably lost.
b. Some may be saved.
c. Regardless, that is their choice.
2. But it might help if we understand that God’s will is
often a response to our actions.
3. And if we want a better answers from God, we might should
give better actions to God.
a. Try perseverance.
b. Try humility.
c. Try righteousness.
d. Try UNCONDITIONAL service.
III. Third and last question: Will prayer work for me?
A. That is up to you.
1. Prayer works, but we must use it properly.
2. Prayer will never be a tool to force God to give you what
you want. Never.
3. But if we will use prayer to get what God wants us to have
when, where, and how He wants to give it to us, then
prayer will work for you.
B. The very first step is to be saved. If you never have, I pray
you will be saved today.
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