I couldn't help but share the five keys to answered prayer according to Mr. Larry Christenson in his book The Renewed Mind.
What percentage of your prayers get answered? One percent? Two? Five? Ten?
Some people say, "God always answers prayer: Sometimes yes, sometimes no, sometimes wait." There is truth in this, and a No or a Wait answer can teach us much as Christians--things like surrender and patience.
But most of us, when we talk about answers to prayer, mean Yes answers. That's the commonsense meaning, and it's the meaning the Bible normally uses. "All the promises of God find their yes in Christ." (2 Corinthians 1:20)
Ther is one secret--one basic truth--that more than any other will turn the no and wait into yes. If we are willing to learn and put into practice this truth, we will see a dramatic increase in the percentage of yes answers we get to our prayers.
Consider these five keys to answered prayer:
1. Think God's Thoughts
Many of our prayers misfire right on the launching pad because we begin with our thoughts rather than God's thoughts. A situation comes up, and at once we lay hold on it with the grappling hooks of human reason.
When God's thoughts first come to us, they often appear impossible or unreasonable; like Peter, our natural tendency is to reject them. But if we wait and are alert, God will confirm His thoughts to us. One of the ways He does this is to bring the same thought to two or more people.
God's thoughts seldom concern just us alone. He thinks about us in relation to others, especially fellow Christians. So if you believe that God may be beaming one of His thoughts to you, keep your eyes and ears open to see whether He is saying the same thing to others. It's one of the surest ways for Him to confirm His Word to us. And it is a first giant step toward answered parayer. Jesus said, "If two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven" (Matthew 18:19). It isn't agreeing on our thoughts that brings answered prayer, but agreeing on His thoughts.
2. Feel God's Emotions
Our prayers lack power because too often they are bound up and immobilized by our own emotions. They do not reflect God's feelings.
Does it surprise us to think of God as having feelings? The Bible makes that abundantly clear. God is tenderhearted and compassionate. God is sorrowful; He grieves over His people. God becomes angry; He hates sin and wickedness.
God does not take seriously those who do not share His feelings. "This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me (Matthew 15:8). If our prayers are to be answered, we must not only think with God; we must feel with Him.
Emotion, by its very nature, tends to be a shared experience. If you feel an emotion, it's almost impossible to keep it to yourself. Even if you try, those who know you best pick it up. "Say, what's bothering you? You're not yourself today?" Or, You look like the cat that swallowed the canary. What's up?" When you feel something, you tend to communicate it to others.
Emotion is contagious. That is why the writer to the Hebrews tells his people not to neglect to meet together where they can stir one another up to love and good works, where they can encourage one another (Hebrews 10:24-25).
Where we stick to ourselves, or meet in non-Christian settings, the feelings that tend to get expressed are our feelings. Even when we meet together as Christians, too often we simply vent our own feelings. We need to be sensitive to what God feels and express that. Because what we express will spread to others.
If we want our prayers to be answered, we must feel God's emotion.
3. Desire God's Plan
You can think God's thoughts and feel God's emotions, yet still stand on the sidelines as an observer. This is the step of personal commitment. This is where God's thoughts and God's feelings become your personal concern. You not only know what God knows and feel what He feels, but now you want what God wants.
Many of our prayers go unanswered because we try to serve God and obey God without really desiring His plan. We feel certain obligation to God, and so we give a little and do a littel. But whether anything comes of it or not doesn't too deeply move us. Once we've done our duty, we can go back to what we really desire, which is our own plan, our own life lived the way we want to live it.
We need to become so deeply involved in the palns of God that if they fall, we go down with them. We need to become sensitive to the things God wants us to give up in order that He can kindle within us a desire for His plan. "Thy kingdom come!" must become more than a phrase learned by rote. It must become the consuming passion of our lives.
In order to get answers to our prayers, we must desire God's plan. And in order to desire God's plan, we must sacrifice anything that stands in the way of that plan.
4. Speak God's Words
Thinking, feeling, desiring--we think of these as being essentially silent expressions even though, as we have seen, they involve real commitment. But there comes a point in our prayers when we must speak out. We must declare God's Word for a particular situation. We must put our faith on the line.
God thought about a world; He desired a world. But the world came into existence only when God spoke.
Why do so many of our spoken prayers go unanswered? Why do our petitions pour into a torrent, while our answers come back in a trickle? It is because we speak our words instead of God's words.
If we want to learn to speak God's words, we must be willing to submit our prayers and utterances to evaluation and correction by fellow Christians.
This will mean some radical reevaluation of our whole attitude toward prayer. If a person makes a false or ill-founded statement in a discussion, it is called to his attention. But if someone does the same kind of thing in prayer, it is swallowed up in pious silence. Speaking God's words is no easy thing. Where did we ever get the idea that we could learn to do it with never a bit of help, never any correction or guidance? If we want to speak God's Words, we must be ready to enter into the "School of Prayer" in the literal sense of that term. Through help and correction from fellow Christian, we can learn to distinguish God's Word. Then our speaking will not be just words in the air, but the release of power.
5. Do God's Works
If we have started our thinkingGod's thoughts, and followed throught to speaking His words, the chances are that weve gotten ourselves into an impossible situation!. And right here is where a lot of prayer answers get lost. We see the impossible situation, and we push the panic button. "Must have made a mistake somewhere! This is impossible." The tragedy is, at this point the prayer is as good as answered. All it needs now is that we do what is possible--and trust God for what is impossible.
The "possible" may be some kind of a commitment or sacrifice on our part--not enought to do the whole job, but the full extent of what we are able to do. It's the story of the little boy with his five loaves and two fish. All that was possible for him was to give them to Jesus. But it was all God needed to release the miracle. "Doing God's works" means to do everything that is possisble and trust God for the rest.
Think God's Thoughts.....
Feel God's Emotions.......
Desire God's Plans........
Speak God's Words.....
Do God's Works....
What does it all add up to? Jesus put it this way: "The Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever he does, that the Son does liker wise" (John 5:19). The secret of answered prayer is to find out what God is doing--and do the same thing.
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