Prayers : Part 17

Today, we continued to address the prayer of faith, also known as petition prayer. The prayer of faith is the most commonly thought of and the most straight-forward prayer. Unfortunately, some people believe that prayer is a gamble. Nothing could be further from the truth. When we pray the way God wants us to pray, we are guaranteed to get answers to our prayers. When we pray the way God wants us to pray, our complaining about, blaming and criticizing other people in our lives will disappear. The Bible tells us exactly how to pray the prayer of faith:

Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.

Mark 11:24

The first step in the prayer of faith is to identify what you want.

To guarantee that our desires, i.e. whatever we have a strong affection for, will not be ones that God has a problem with, we must know our inheritance. The Bible tells us what our inheritance is as believers in Jesus Christ. Therefore, to know our inheritance, we must devote time to the Word of God. In order for us to become “like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season,” we must spend time consistently studying and meditating on the Word of God (Psalm 1:1-3).

The second step in the prayer of faith is to believe that you have your request.

In Mark 11:24, Jesus tells us to believe that we receive whatever we desire at the moment we pray. This is crucial to getting our prayers answered. We receive at the moment we pray, not after that moment. Do not believe that you will receive it because it won’t work. We must believe that we receive it now when we pray. The spirit must take place first. God told us to take care of the spiritual things and He will take care of the physical things.

Every time people received from God in the Bible, Jesus emphasized that it was their faith that did it, not His faith (Matthew 9:27-20). In the Bible, “believe” and “faith” are synonymous. In order for us to see our desires manifest in the physical world, we have to believe (or faith) it in the spiritual. We know that we can’t drive our car without the key. Similarly, we can’t make our prayers work without faith. Faith is the key that unlocks all of the answers to our prayers. Faith is active. The Bible says that “faith without works is dead.” (James 2:14-26) We have to put action to what we claim we believe. So, at the moment we pray the prayer of faith, we have to be in action that we have it.

Mark 9:23 says “all things are possible to him that believeth.” You have to believe that nothing is impossible. God doesn’t move for emotion or hope – He moves for faith. Hebrews 11:1 says “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Faith and hope are two completely different things. Hope changes your attitude. Hope is the target identifier – our covenant gives us hope. You don’t know what to do with faith without hope. Hope targets, but faith brings what we hope for into manifestation.

We must cooperate with the supernatural laws that God put into place. In the spirit realm, what God has done is already done. Faith is the evidence that we have whatever we pray for right now. Faith is the proof of what we cannot see that already exists in the spirit realm. Once the thing we asked God for manifests itself in the physical realm, we no longer need our faith for that thing.

To have answered prayer, we must act on what God has already provided for us. The ball is in our court!