Praying for Answers
And They Remembered His Words • Sermon • Submitted
0 ratings
· 8 viewsA message about how to get your prayers answered
Notes
Transcript
Handout
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.
Pre-Sermon Ice-Breaker
Pre-Sermon Ice-Breaker
A woman gets on a bus with her baby. The bus driver says, “That’s the ugliest baby that I’ve ever seen. Ugh!” The woman goes to the rear of the bus and sits down, fuming. She says to a man next to her, “The driver just insulted me!” The man says, “You go right up there and tell him off – go ahead, I’ll hold your monkey for you.”
Introduction
Introduction
What is the most urgent need in the church today?
Following the death of George Floyd Some would point to racial reconciliation as the most urgent need.
Others might feel that the arrest of Josh Duggard indicates that Pornography and Child Abuse are the most urgent need facing the body of Christ.
Still some would look at empty seats in churches following the Corona virus Pandemic and say the revitalization of attendance is the most urgent need.
Don Carson in his book “A Call to Spiritual Reformation” attempts to answer this question. He says, “There is a sense in which these urgent needs are merely symptomatic of a far more serious lack. The one thing we most urgently need in the church today is a deeper knowledge of God. We need to know God better.
Then he says that prayer is one of the foundation steps in knowing God - “Spiritual, persistent, biblicallly-minded prayer.
During 2021 we have been engaged in the 2021 Scripture Memory Challenge. Each month we have focused on a different theme as we have memorized together as a congregation a passage of Scripture that I have preached on and we have studied.
Our theme in January was Salvation, February was love, March was service, April was Christ. And in May are theme is Prayer.
Last Sunday in our first message on this theme we examined Philippians 4:6
6 Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.
Today we want to discover another aspect of prayer in a message entitled, “Praying for Answers”
Have you ever felt like God doesn’t answer your prayers. Maybe even worse you may feel like the heavens are brass and when you pray God not only doesn’t answer your prayers he doesn’t hear them. Jesus in John 15 makes his final discourse to his disciples and address the topic as he discusses what discipleship really looks like.
In our memory verse this week we will identify 3 Ingredients for Answered Prayer. Jesus says that if you want your prayers answered...
Body
Body
…You must Abide in Him
…You must Abide in Him
Look at the context for Jesus teaching on prayer here. Verses 1-6 deal specifically with a relationship with Jesus.
1 I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman.
2 Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.
3 Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.
4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me.
5 I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.
6 If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.
12 But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:
31 Now we know that God heareth not sinners: but if any man be a worshipper of God, and doeth his will, him he heareth.
The first ingredient to answered prayer is to know Christ, to abide in Him, to be born again.
…Abide in His Word
…Abide in His Word
Effective prayer is based on faith in Christ and on His words remaining in believers. Christ’s words condition and control such a believer’s mind so that his prayers conform to the Father’s will.
16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.
11 Thy word have I hid in mine heart, That I might not sin against thee.
31 Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed;
We have spent two years getting into the Word. It is important to Read the Word, Study the Word, to Meditate on the Word.
This year we are memorizing the Word. We are getting the Word into us.
4 But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
If we are praying for Answers we must Abide in Christ, we must Abide in His Word and...
…Ask
…Ask
Ask = Aiteo (Ahee-teh-o) The word is is a second person imperative it is literally a command.
7 Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:
2 Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not.
Conclusion
Conclusion
These 3 Ingredients are paramount if you want to pray for answers.
Abide in Christ (Are you born again?)
Abide in His Words (Are you reading, studying, meditating on and memorizing His Word)
Ask (Are you talking to God)
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.