Be of Service
Prayer
What We Need to Do to Be Heard By God
The most important step to take in being. Heard by God is to accept Christ as your savior and Lord of your life. If you’re not sure what this means, it’s more than just saying you believe in Jesus. It means you believe He died to pay the price of YOUR sins and was buried and rose again on the third day and now sits at the right hand of the Father in Heaven. It means you accept that your life is now His, as He gives you eternal life in exchange for Him being your Lord. To be Lord means you are under His control and command. You make every effort to do as He desires.
Assuming you have already accepted Christ as Lord there are some other things we need to do in order for God to be willing to hear our prayers.
Turn Away From Your Sins
Isaiah 1:16-17
16 Wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight; stop doing wrong.
17 Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.
This follows the verse from Isaiah 1:15 above telling us God isn’t listening to sinners who have not repented. The first step mentioned above is the process of justification. What we are talking about here is the process of sanctification. Once you accept that Jesus paid for your sins (justification), then you begin the long and arduous journey of sanctification, which is the process of being converted into a godly creation. This is a life-long process of learning to walk with God and follow His path, not your own.
Seek God Humbly and Follow His Will
2 Chronicles 7:14
14 if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
We need to be trying our best to walk with God in order for God to grant us our desires. Our desires need to be aligned with HIS WILL.
1 Peter 3:7
7 Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers.
Peter tells us our prayers can be hindered by our behaviors. This is just an example of how important it is to be in alignment with God to be heard by God. Peter was talking to other believers, so they were already justified. He was explaining that God wants us to be sanctified, or to grow in His righteousness by continuing to turn away from our prior worldly desires. In this example, if we are not loving and respectful to our spouse, should we expect God to hear us?
Learn to Love God’s Word
Romans 12:2
2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
We cannot be of the world, or a person living a worldly focused life and expect God to answer our prayers. To be “transformed by the renewing of your mind” means to be filled with the Holy Spirit and our minds changed to reflect God’s righteousness. This is done through the deep absorption of God’s Word. Not just reading it but developing a burning passion for it. How do you do that? By praying to God for that burning passion. Even if you don’t have it initially, as most do not when they read a bunch of old stories from a culture long since lost, God will see that you putting forth the effort to learn His Word and will open it up to you. The Holy Spirit will show you things in it that you didn’t see before and help you understand how it relates to your life today and how to use it walk with God. It’s God’s doing, not our own.
There is no greater key to unlocking the power of prayer than to develop a deep love for God’s Word. Read it and pray God will give you wisdom and insight into it and fill you with the Holy Spirit. Keep doing so to show God how much you want it. When you read it, don’t just check it off the list. Study it. Cross-reference the book your reading against other books of the bible and look up the meaning of the original language. Use the many free expositions available online. Use study tools like Blue Letter Bible to help you do that for free. Show God how much you want to learn Him and His ways and He will teach you! God’s Word is the KEY!
2 Timothy 3:16
16 All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.
The purpose for God’s Word is to educate us.
