Requirements for Answered Prayer

“Come and hear, all you who fear God, and I will tell what He has done for my soul.  I cried to Him with my mouth, and high praise was on my tongue.  If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.  But truly God has listened.  He has attended to the voice of my prayer.  Blessed be God, because He has not rejected or removed His steadfast love from me.  –Psalm 66:16-20 (ESV)  “And He told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.” –Luke 18:1 (ESV).  “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.” –James 5:16b (ESV).

What are God’s requirements for our prayers to be answered?  The focal scriptures for today give us very useful clues.  First is to fear God.  This means we hold Him in awe, as Sovereign, Majestic, Omnipotent, Omniscient and Omnipresent—and a God of love who wants our best interests if we meet His requirements for godly living.  He alone is worthy of our reverence and honor.  Because of Who He is and what He does, we ought always to give Him our highest praise. 

Second, we must recognize that He wants us to come before Him with a clean heart.  If I “cherish iniquity in my heart,”  I cannot expect Him to hear and answer my prayers.  If I am beset by sins of resentment, rebellion, or any sin that separates me from His love and forgiveness, I cannot expect Him to answer my prayers.  We pray after first repenting of any iniquity we hold, approaching Him as the Psalmist says, “with clean hands and a pure heart (Psalm 24:4).  How reassuring to know that God hears and answers prayers of His followers when they have made themselves right with Him.  With the Psalmist we can then declare:  “He has attended to the voice of my prayer.”

Jesus gave a parable that well illustrates what He meant to “pray and not lose heart.”  He told the story of a widow who kept approaching the judge to plead for what she needed.  At first the judge did not grant her plea, but because of her persistence, her request was granted.  It is not that God does not hear when we first approach Him with a request.  But to keep on asking, as the widow did to the judge in the parable, God is pleased with our persistence—and at the same time we have learned to patiently wait. 

James wrote a great truth about fervency in prayer.  We probably memorized this verse in the King James Version:  “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much” (James 5:16).  In these words are bound up all the characteristics of earnest prayer:  coming from a righteous person, being fervent (intense, ardent, zealous, heart-felt); then it “availeth much”—or brings assistance, aid, profit and gain.

Let us measure our regular, daily praying by these standards:  fear God; cleanse ourselves of iniquity; be persistent (zealous, intense, earnest).  Then, when God hears and answers our prayers, as He will—either with an immediate answer, and  usually much more than we even prayed for; with a “No,” and turning us in another better direction; or with a “wait awhile” because we are not yet ready to receive His answer.  And then when answers come, let us not forget that our gratitude and thanksgiving are vital characteristics of prayer.  Thank Him! Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote, “More things are wrought through prayer than this world dreams of.” 

                                                              -Ethelene Dyer Jones  02.23.2014