God Has Promised Us to Answer Us
“Behold, the Lord’s hand is not so short That it cannot save; Nor is His ear so dull That it cannot hear. But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, And your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear” (Isaiah 59:1-2).
1. God Has Promised Us to Answer Us
One of the sources of great joy for God’s children is the fact that the Almighty God is alive, answers their prayer, and in all things works for their good. People who believe in this fact pray zealously so that they may receive anything for which they ask from God and give glory to Him to their hearts’ content.
1 John 5:14 tells us, “This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.” The verse reminds us that when we ask according to God’s will, we have the right to receive anything from Him. No matter how evil a parent may be, when her son asks for bread she will not give him a stone, and when he asks for fish the mother will not give him a snake. What, then, could possibly prevent God from giving His children good gifts when they ask Him for them?
Through the Bible, God promised us that He would certainly answer our prayer and pleas. Therefore, only when we do not doubt this promise can we zealously ask and receive everything for which we ask from God.
Numbers 23:19 reads, “God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent; Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?” In Matthew 7:7-8 Jesus promised us, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.”
Throughout the Bible are many references pointing to God’s promise, “He would answer us if we ask according to His will.” The following are a few examples:
“Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you.” (Mark 11:24).
“If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” (John 15:7).
“Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” (John 14:13).
“Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.” (Jeremiah 29:12-13).
“Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I shall rescue you, and you will honor Me.” (Psalm 50:15).
God’s such promise is found time and again in both Old and New Testaments. Even if there were only one Biblical verse regarding this promise, we would hold fast to that verse and pray to receive His answers. However, for this promise is found numerous times throughout the Bible, we must believe that God is indeed alive and that He works “the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).
2. Many Blessed People in the Bible Who Received God’s Answers
Moreover, the Bible tells us of many blessed people who believed in God’s Word, asked, and received His answers. We ought to take after the faith and the heart of these people and lead our own lives in which we always receive His answers.
When the Canaanite woman in Matthew 15:21-28 came before Jesus, she not only received answers to her prayer but also fulfilled the desires of her heart. Even though her daughter was suffering from terrible demon-possession, the woman asked Jesus to heal her daughter because she believed everything was possible for those who believed. What do you suppose Jesus did for this Gentile woman who asked Him for her daughter’s healing without giving up?
As we find in John 16:23, “Truly, truly, I say to you, if you ask the Father for anything in My name, He will give it to you.” upon seeing the woman’s faith Jesus immediately granted her request. “O woman, your faith is great; it shall be done for you as you wish.” (Matthew 15:28). How marvelous and sweet God’s answer!
When Jesus told a paralytic in Mark 2:1-12, “Your sins are forgiven. Get up, pick up your pallet and go home,” the paralytic got up, took his mat and walked out in full view of them all, and all the witnesses were amazed and could only praise God. A centurion in Matthew 8:5-13 came before Jesus for his servant who was paralyzed and in terrible suffering, and told Him, “Just say the word, and my servant will be healed.” We know that when Jesus said to the centurion, “Go! It will be done just as you believed it would,” the centurion’s servant was healed at that very hour.
A leper in Mark 1:40-42 came to Jesus and begged Him on his knees, “Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean.” As He became filled with compassion for the leper, Jesus reached out His hand and touched the man, “I am willing. Be clean!” We find that the leprosy left the man and he was cured.
God allows all people to receive whatever they ask Him in the name of the Lord. God also wishes all people to believe in Him who has promised to answer their prayer, pray with an unchanging heart without giving up, and become His blessed children.
3. Destroy the Walls of Sin Blocking Us from Receiving Answer
God has told His children, “Ask and it will be given to you…For everyone who asks receives” (Matthew 7:7-8) and promised to answer their prayer. Yet, why do many people fail to receive God’s answers to their prayer despite His promise? God does not hear the prayer of sinners; He turns His face away from them. He is also unable to answer the prayer of people who have a wall of sin standing in their path to God.
Therefore, in order to enjoy good health and that all may go well with us as our souls prosper, destroying the wall of sin blocking our way to God must be a priority. By exploring various elements that have taken part in constructing the wall of sin, I urge each of you to become God’s blessed child who repents of his sins if there is a wall of sin between God and himself, receives everything he asks God in prayer, and gives glory to Him.
1) Destroy the wall of sin for your unbelief in God and not accepting the Lord as your Savior
The Bible dictates that it is a sin for anyone to not believe in God and accept Jesus Christ as his Savior (John 16:9). Many people say, “I am sinless because I’ve led a good life,” but in spiritual ignorance they make such remarks without knowing the nature of sin. For the Word of God is not in their heart, these individuals do not know the difference between true right and true wrong and cannot distinguish good from evil.
Furthermore, without knowing true righteousness, if the standards of this world tell them, “You are not that evil,” they can say without reservation that they are good. No matter how good a life one may believe he has led, when he looks back at his life under the light of God’s Word after accepting Jesus Christ, he discovers that his life had not been “good” after all.
This is because he realizes his not having believed in God and accepted Jesus Christ was the greatest of all sins. God is obligated to answer the prayer of people who have accepted Jesus Christ and become His children, while the children of God have the right to receive His answers to their prayer according to His promise.
The reason God’s children – who believe in Him and have accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior – are unable to receive answers to their prayer is because they fail to recognize the existence of a wall, which has stemmed from their sin and evil, standing between God and themselves. That is why even when they fast or stay up all night in prayer, God turns His face away from them and does not answer their prayer.
2) Destroy the sin of failing to love one another
God tells us that it is only natural for His children to love one another (1 John 4:11). In addition, because He tells us to love even our enemies (Mathew 5:44), hating our brothers instead of loving them is disobeying God’s Word and thus constitutes a sin.
For Jesus Christ has shown His love through the crucifixion for mankind, who had been confined in sin and evil, it is right for us to love our parents, brothers, and children. Yet, it is a grave sin before God to harbor such frivolous emotions as hatred and unwillingness to forgive each other. God has not commanded us to show Him the kind of love by which Jesus died on the cross to redeem man from his sins; He has merely asked us to turn hatred into forgiveness of others. Why, then, is this so difficult?
God tells us that anyone who hates his brothers is a “murderer” (1 John 3:15), that in the same way our Father will treat us unless we forgive our brothers (Matthew 18:35), and urges us to harbor love and stay away from grumbling against our brothers to avoid judgment (James 5:9).
For the Holy Spirit dwells in each of us, by the love of Jesus Christ who was crucified and has redeemed us from ours sins of the past, the present, and the future, we can love all people when we repent before Him, turn from our ways, and receive His forgiveness. For the people of this world do not believe in Jesus Christ, however, there is no forgiveness for them even if they should repent, and they are unable to share true love with one another without the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Even if your brother hates you, you have to possess the kind of heart by which you stand by the truth, understand and forgive him, and pray for him in love, so that you do not become a sinner yourself. If we hate our brothers instead of loving them, we will sin before God, lose the fullness of the Holy Spirit, become wretched and foolish spending all of our days lamenting. Neither should we expect God to answer our prayer. Only by the aid of the Holy Spirit can we come to love, understand, and forgive our brothers and receive from God whatever we ask in prayer.
3) Destroy the wall of sin of disobeying God’s commands
In John 14:21, Jesus tells us, “He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him.” For this reason, 1 John 3:21 tells us that “Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God.” In other words, if a wall of sin has been created because of our disobedience to God’s commands, we cannot receive His answers to our prayer. Only when God’s children obey their Father’s commands and do what is pleasing to Him can they ask Him for anything they desire with confidence and receive whatever they ask.
1 John 3:24 reminds us, “The one who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him.” It stresses that only when one’s heart is filled by the truth by wholly giving Our Lord his heart and he lives by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, can he receive everything for which he asks and his life be successful in every way.
For instance, if there were a hundred rooms in one’s heart and he gave all hundred of them to the Lord, his spirit would get along well and receive the blessing of everything’s going well for him. Yet, if the same person gave the Lord fifty of the rooms in his heart and used the other fifty at his disposal, he could not always receive God’s answers because his only fifty rooms given to God will receive the Holy Spirit’s guidance while he uses the other fifty to ask God in his thought or in accordance with the lustful desires of the sinful nature.
For Our Lord dwells in each of us, even if there is an obstacle before us He strengthens us to either go around or run over it. Even if we go through the valley of the shadow He gives us a way to avoid it, works for our good in all things, and lead our ways to prosper.
When we please God by obeying His commands, we live in God and He lives in us, and we can give glory to Him as we receive everything we ask for in prayer. Let us destroy the wall of sin of disobeying God’s commands, begin obeying them, become confident before God, and give glory to Him by receiving everything we ask.
4) Destroy the wall of sin of praying to satisfy your cravings
For God tells us to do everything in life for His glory (1 Corinthians 10:31), if we pray for everything except for His glory, we are seeking to fulfill our cravings and the lust of the flesh, and would not receive God’s answers to such requests (James 4:3).
On the one hand, if you seek material blessings for God’s kingdom and His righteousness, and to provide relief to the poor and the salvation effort of souls, you will receive God’s answers because you are in fact seeking His glory. On the other hand, if you seek material blessings in hopes of boasting to a brother at church who rebukes you, “How can you be poor being a believer?” you are in fact praying in accordance with evil to satisfy your cravings, and there will be no answers to your prayer. Even in this world, parents who truly love their child would not give him $100 to squander at an arcade. By the same token, God does not want His children to walk down the wrong path and for this reason does not answer every request His children make.
1 John 5:14-15 tell us, “This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him.” Only when we discard our cravings and pray according to God’s will and for His glory, will we receive anything we ask Him in prayer.
5) Destroy the wall of sin of doubting in prayer
For God is pleased when we show Him our faith, without faith it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6). Even from the Bible we can find many instances in which God’s answers found their way to people who showed Him their faith (Matthew 20:29-34; Mark 5:22-43, 9:17-27, 10:46-52).
When people failed to show their faith in God, they were rebuked for their “little faith” even if they were Jesus’ disciples. When people showed God their great faith in Him, even the Gentiles were commended (Matthew 15:28). God rebukes those who are unable to believe but rather doubt even a little (Mark 9:16-29), and tells us that if we harbor even an ounce of doubt while praying, we ought not to expect that we will receive anything from the Lord (James 1:6-7). In other words, even if you fast and pray through the night but your prayer is filled with doubts, you should not even expect to receive God’s answers.
Moreover, God reminds us in Mark 11:23-24, “Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says is going to happen, it will be granted him. “Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you.”
For “God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent” (Numbers 23:19), as promised God indeed answers to the prayer of all those who believe and ask for His glory. People who love God and possess faith are bound to believe and seek for God’s glory and that is why they are told to ask whatever they wish. As they believe, ask, and receive answers to whatever they ask, these people can give glory to God. Let us rid ourselves of doubts but only believe, ask, and receive from God so that we can give glory to Him to our hearts’ content.
6) Destroy the wall of sin of not sowing before God
As governor of everything in the universe, God has established the law of the spiritual realm and as a righteous judge guides everything in an orderly fashion.
King Darius could not rescue his beloved servant Daniel from the lions’ den because, even as king, he could not disobey the decree which he himself had put in writing. Likewise, for God cannot disobey the law of the spiritual realm He Himself has established, everything in the universe is run systematically under His supervision. Therefore, God cannot be mocked and allows man to reap what he sows (Galatians 6:7). If one sows prayer, he receives spiritual blessings; if he sows his time, he receives the blessings of good health; if he sows offerings, God keeps him away from troubles at his business, work, and home, and gives even greater material blessings.
When we sow before God in various ways, He answers our prayer and gives us whatever we ask. By zealously sowing before God, let us not only bear abundant fruit but also receive whatever we ask Him in prayer.
7) Destroy other walls of sin
In addition to the six walls of sin mentioned above, “sin” includes things and works of the flesh such as wrongdoing, envy, rage, anger, pride, and the like, not fighting against sins to the point of death, and the inability to be zealous before God. By learning and understanding a variety of factors that constitute a wall standing between God and us, let us destroy the wall of sin and always receive God’s answers, thereby giving glory to Him. All of us ought to become believers who enjoy good health and have our every affair go well even as our souls get along well. Based on God’s Word found in Isaiah 59:1-2, we have examined a number of factors that constitute a wall standing between God and us. May each of you become God’s blessed child who first understands the nature of this wall, enjoys good health and has his every affair succeed even as his soul gets along well, and gives glory to his heavenly Father by receiving everything for which he asks in prayer, in the nameof Jesus Christ I bless!