Praying with Faith

"Therefore, I tell you whatever you ask for in prayer believe that you have received it, and it will be yours" (Mark 11:24).

It’s as if when we ask our Heavenly Father for something, he puts the answer with our name on it in the Heavenly Post. It will arrive in God’s Perfect Timing.

Many times Jesus encouraged and exhorted His disciples to ask the Father and receive things from Him (Matthew 6:6, Matthew 7:7-11, Mathew 18:19, John 14:12-13, John 15:7, John 16:23-24).

As disciples of Jesus, we need to learn how to pray and receive things from our Father in Heaven.

The Scriptures never promise that God will give us everything we want. The promise is we shall receive what we need.

Prayer is not about me asking for my will to be done. Prayer is about asking God for His Will to be done, "thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

So it is essential that as his disciples we learn from Scripture what the Lord wants to do. And that’s where the prayers in the New Testament are so helpful: The prayer Jesus taught His disciples to pray, Matthew 6:9-13; Jesus’ own teaching about prayer, Luke 11:1-11; Jesus’ parables about prayer, Luke 18:1-14; Paul’s prayers for the churches in his letters; the five clear statements of God’s Will; 1 Thessalonians 4:3, 1 Thessalonians 5:18, 1 Peter 2:15, 1 Timothy 2:4, 2 Peter 3:9.

We are on the strongest possible ground when we ask the Father to do the very things he has already said he wants to do. And we are on the strongest possible ground when we pray to our Heavenly Father on the basis of the promises he has made (2 Peter 1:4).

We ask and God puts the answers in the Heavenly Post. The answer may come today, or in a month’s time, or after five years, or at the end of our lives, or even like the people mentioned in Hebrews 11:39-40 after the end of our lives. Like Abraham we are called to believe the answer is on its way and worship the Lord as we wait for Him to do what he has promised (Romans 4:20).