04/21/2026
God hears our prayers; He gives each of them audience and provides us with all those things we have prayed for within His will. The question that we who pray should ask is this... “Do I have confidence that God hears me as I pray and that He will answer me?” Confidence in the Word of God is of the utmost importance to those who pray. Put more simply, we must trust in the fact that God will do what His Word says He will do. But, do you we know what that is?
“But as for me, I will look to the Lord; I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me. Rejoice not over me, O my enemy; when I fall, I shall rise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to me.”
Micah 7:7-8 ESV
If we have no faith that God will abide by His Word, then we might as well walk away now. If our God fails to do what He says, then what is left to us? This isn’t fatalism, it is simply and obviously fact. But we have a part in this equation too... we must align ourselves and our prayers with His Word, and His will. Asking God for something which is contrary to His promise, or that is against the very essence of who He is will place us in a position where our prayers have a foregone conclusion... they cannot, and thus will not, be honored.
If we have children then we are familiar with these kinds of requests. A child can ask something of us that goes against everything we believe in... so the answer to it is no before it ever leaves their lips. When this kind of request is made of God it isn’t an unanswered prayer, this is asking Him to agree to and the answer “Yes” to a prayer that is outside His character and desire to provide, without it changing who He is. It is the prayer of a child who either doesn’t understand the core values of their parent, or wants something desperately enough to challenge them. We must ask all things in accordance with who we know God to be... according to His will.
“And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.”
1 John 5:14-15 ESV
So, if we pray within the bounds of who God is, and within His will, (in the name of Jesus) then His Word tells us He will answer... He will give us what we are asking for.
Reading our two opening verses today from Micah 7 encourages me. There was a time in my past prayer life when I would have uttered my requests in uncertain hope that God would hear me, and that if by chance He did, that He still might not provide what I was asking Him for. This wasn’t the prayer of a man who didn’t believe there was a God... but rather the prayer of someone who didn’t understand who they were praying to, who didn’t trust in the possibility that the Creator of the Universe would take the time to listen to a lowly person like them, or a God who might not find their simple prayer as being worthy of His attention.
Even so, I would continue to pray because the Bible said I should, and on the outside chance that God might somehow find that my prayer fit within the grand flow of His creation. Did you ever feel this way? Do you still pray with a lack of certainty and expectation today? Many people feel this way, and this is why pastors preach and write so often about having faith in prayer... listen to the words of Pastor Andrew Murray...
“When a man can and does declare in living faith, “My God will hear me!” surely nothing will keep him from prayer. He knows that what he cannot do on earth can and will be done for him in heaven. Let us bow in quietness before God and wait on Him until He reveals himself as the God who hears.” - Andrew Murray
These are a pastor’s words regarding the trust we should place in God, not just in his hearing, but in His promise to act, and of our need to live in faith. Are we believers? Do you have faith in God’s Word? Are we asking and living within His will?
If you watched the adventure movie “Raiders of the Lost Arc” in which the Nazis during WWII were seeking to obtain the Arc of the Covenant so that they could use it against their enemies, there was some semblance of truth there. What these characters found during the movie was that God isn’t a tool for man to use for his unrighteous purposes. Well, our real-life prayer is like that too. Before you pray ask for forgiveness, accept God and Jesus Christ for who they are, and then as you pray ask for those things that you know the Father will provide without changing who He is. Trying to use prayer simply as a tool to get what you want by convincing yourself that you can use God’s promises against Him is not within the Spirit of His Word. It is like taking a sentence out of a complex law and saying, “This is it!” When we do this, we are removing the something vital, and indeed ourselves, from the context of God’s will! We read scripture such as this...
“If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.”
John 14:14 ESV
While ignoring scripture like this...
“You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.”
James 4:3 ESV
We should live and pray within the will of God, and ask for those things which reside firmly within that will; and if we do this we will receive those things which are within His desire and ability, to provide. Don’t ask God to change who He is, don’t ask Him to change His character and all that the Bible says of Him, just so our selfish needs can be met. You see, if we live and pray as we should then the entirety of God’s Word will come to rest on our prayers and desires... and there will be nothing that He will not grant us.
God hears our prayers... do we hear His voice, and really understand who He is?
Prayer:
Father, I thank you for answering our prayers, and giving good things to us, your children, as we lift our needs and desires to you. I thank you for your Son Jesus Christ who said you would provide anything we asked for in His name, and I ask you to help me as I struggle to understand more each day what it means to ask in His name, and the life and faith that requires of me. Help me Holy Father to fathom His Words so that I might find myself living and praying within your perfect will. I know that you hear my prayers, Merciful Father, and that you will answer me. So, lead me to align myself with you, and to ask in accordance with who you are, and within your Word, and will. Reaffirm in me that by doing so I will find that my relationship with you has grown, and that my faith will have been further perfected by my prayers. Great are you my God, and great is your Holy Word. Hear my prayers today as I ask them in the Name of Jesus... knowing that He abides in me... and I in Him… and that together we are sharing in your will.
Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! My God is good, true, and my constant provider. My God is perfect in His love and in all His ways, and I am His doting and obedient child!
Amen!
Rich Forbes