The Sensibility of Believing When You Pray (Part 2)
Mark 11:25, 26 "And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses. But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses."
- If your connections with men are right and your petitions are unselfish and in the will of God, He will hear you.
- Timing is everything. Faith and right standing must be in synch at the time of your petition—not after.
- If your petition and the petitioner is right with man and God—God will process it immediately—for an answer.
- Compare it to an, “On earth as it is in Heaven.” We must be willing to order our lives on earth to resemble what we want from Heaven.
- Know that what you do towards other men, God will do toward you.
- God wants to hear you. It is not as though He wants to be distant or difficult.
- God wants to respond favorably to you. Why not?
2 Corinthians 1:20 "For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us. Now he which stablisheth us with you in Christ, and hath anointed us, is God. Who hath also sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts."
- There are predetermined things, and on some accounts, God is predictable.
- He cannot recant what He has spoken because His integrity is attached. It would make him appear to be incapable or unstable.
- We are well advised to pray based on what God has already declared. Those things are irrefutable.
Numbers 23:19 "God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?"
- God must deliver on what He has spoken. What God has spoken previously is what the things that were spoken after rely upon.
- He cannot be prevented from delivering on what He has spoken, and based on Him being absolutely sovereign, we should believe to receive as long as what we petition is according to His will.
- God never has to recall anything based on His inability to execute what He said, so neither do we need to recall what we ask Him because we think it is suddenly beyond Him to deliver. God does not change. (Mal 3:6)
- If God can do, should do it and you ask Him--He will do it!
- Part of how God gets His glory is by Him honoring His own word. To not keep His word is for Him to lose credibility. God cannot afford to lose face with you. He must keep His word.
- Even we are commanded to: Jas 5:12 But above all things, my brethren, swear not, neither by heaven, neither by the earth, neither by any other oath: but let your yea be yea; and your nay, nay; lest ye fall into condemnation.
- Just the basis of us making statement should be enough that we should never need to swear to strengthen them.
- A man keeping his word is what glorifies him.
- God has declared that He will not give up His glory or praise. For Him to go back on what He has spoken, is for Him to give up His glory.
- You have more reason to believe than to doubt.
- God is serious about you, and He indicates that with the earnest or down-payment that He has already forwarded to you.
- With what God has already given us, we should have the confidence to believe our prayers as we pray them. Surely God has the balance of what He has promised to us.
John 6:62-64 "What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before? It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. But there are some of you that believe not. For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed not, and who should betray him."
- You have His words to hang onto.
- You have nothing greater to believe in than the spirit that makes all things possible.
- We are too oriented to the miracle or phenomenon itself and less oriented with the spirit that makes it possible.
- We are also too inclined to magnify our problem to the degree that we make them beyond resolution.
- Gifts are not greater than the giver. Miracles are not greater than the worker of miracles.
- Incline yourself to the word of God. By it the worlds were framed. The whole existence of man and matter began with the word of God.
Hebrews 11:3 "Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear."
- Everything follows the word. And although Jesus lamented in Joh 14:11 that they should believe Him for His works sake if they could not believe on Him, He would really rather that they took His word for things.
- Advanced and mature faith is word based.
- People believed in the miracles, but they did not believe in word.
- I believe His word.
- Attached to His word is life and spirit, guaranteed unstoppable forces.
Matthew 19:26 "But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible."
- Know that you are not talking about a man.
- Your God is without limit!
- Pray no limit prayers!