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| The Power of Prayer series |
Does God Hear Us?
We saw last week that God desires to bring us closer. His voice has the power to change us for the better, but sin can cause us to hide our hearts from Him. In hiding our hearts, we are unable to hear His voice. He’s aware of our weakness though and longs to help us, not to shame us. We must trust His gentleness when we feel that He wants to change the topic of conversation. But, now that we have heard His voice, how do we know that He will listen to our prayers? Do our prayers matter?
We do indeed have many promises that God hears our prayers and that they have power. However, just as the promise we saw last week, these promises are not open-ended but do have a condition. Allow me to show you just a few of them. “When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles.” (Psalms 34:17) “For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.” (1 Peter 3:12) “We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him.” (John 9:31) The promise that He hears our prayers is a promise to the righteous. Now at first glance, this can feel a little harsh, but let’s understand this condition in the proper context.
God Gives Us Righteousness
Romans makes clear that “by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight”. (Romans 3:9-20) So we know that our righteousness doesn’t come from our works, for “to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due.” (Rom 4:4) Our righteousness is a gift that God has given to us. However, it is a gift that we must receive. We receive it by faith, as it says: “To the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.” (Rom 4:5) Like we discussed in our last series, God has freely given us the gift of righteousness so that we might be reconciled to Him and have peace with Him.
Moreover, we saw last week that He doesn’t put the weight of our reconciliation (that is, our righteousness) on us. Instead, He invites us to approach the throne of grace with confidence so that He can help us. In my own story, I saw how God reconciled our relationship by changing my heart when I let down my guard and asked Him to lead me in prayer. This week let me tell you another story that demonstrates how Jesus reconciles us to Himself.
When Jesus was teaching, it was so crowded that no one could reach Him. A man who was paralyzed wanted to see Him, so his friends carried him on the roof and made a hole to lower him down in front of Jesus. That definitely has the hallmark of approaching with confidence. Now I’d say it was pretty obvious why the paralytic was there: he wanted to be healed. But Jesus changed the topic of conversation when He said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven you.” (Luke 5:20 NASB) He didn’t stop there though. Having forgiven his sins, Jesus went on to release His power to heal him.
The Power of Our Prayers
So, our righteousness is given to us when we approach the throne of grace in faith, listening to what He wants to tell us when we pray. When we have received this gift of righteousness then, we have confidence that He hears our prayers. Not only that, but we know that our prayers have power because we have the promise in Scripture that “the prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.” (James 5:16) The translation of ‘power’ in this verse comes from the Greek word ‘energeó’. Let’s look at another verse that uses this same word so we can understand this power better. Philippians 2:13 says, “for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure”. Our root word ‘energeó’ is translated in this verse as ‘works’. The same power that God uses to work is the same power He has given us in our prayers. This isn’t to say we have this without Him, but because “God’s Spirit dwells in [us]” (1 Corinthians 3:16) we have access to His power.
James goes on to show us this power of prayer in action. “Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit.” (James 5:17-18) Wow! Elijah’s fervent prayer had the power to withhold the rain and, later, to release it. It’s easy to think, “I could never do that”, but James’ point is exactly that we can do this. That’s why he said Elijah had “a nature like ours”, that he was just like us. Maybe you don’t feel like you qualify as “a righteous person”. But we’ve already seen how Christ has given us His righteousness which we receive by faith. We’ve even seen how this works itself out when we have faith in Him to lead the conversation and change our hearts as we listen to His voice. He has done it all for us. He provides the righteousness, helps us to receive it, and then saturates our prayers with His power. All He asks is that we “have faith the size of a mustard seed” (Matthew 17:20) and we will see His power at work in our lives.
Thank you both for the emphases you bring out in these messages. This morning the things that were highlighted to me were the receiving the reality of: He has done it all for us. Then you brought out that He provides
He leads us in prayer when we ask Him to do that! That is really important to remember – and also the place of righteousness In prayer, so necessary, and that too is His amazing gift to us – He became sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him!! What an exchange Jesus suffered for us❤️❤️❤️ How Deep the Father’s Love for Us (that song comes to my mind now) when we only believe and keep believing!!