John 15:7
Does Prayer Pay?
John 15:7 If ye abide in me, and my words abide
in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall
be done unto you.
Does prayer pay? That is a good question. By it, I mean do we get
what we pray for? The Bible certainly indicates that we should:
Mt 6:6 But thou, when thou prayest, enter into
thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door,
pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy
Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee
openly.
Mr 11:24 Therefore I say unto you, What things
soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye
receive them, and ye shall have them.
Lu 11:9 And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be
given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it
shall be opened unto you.
There are many other verses, but notice that I have given you the
words of Jesus from each of four gospels. They—as well as the
writers of the epistles—all agree. We have every right to expect
prayer to pay.
Yet, does it? In the last few days, I have heard of another who is
apparently defeated and seems to have lost ground in their faith. I
do not know all of the details, but I do know the feeling. Having
thought God was going to do something—something I very much wanted
and expected Him to do—I have been severely disappointed.
To be honest, that happened to me often—way too often—especially in
the earlier years of my Christian walk and ministry. So much so, that
it made me wonder if the Bible was true, if what I believed was
correct, and if what I was attempting to do was even possible.
Tonight for a few minutes, let me share with you what I have learned.
I. Concepts
A. False Concept
1. Simply put the false concept that many Christians seem to
have is that God is a Bank and prayer is the withdrawal
slip.
a. To the best of my remembrance, I have only been to a
bank to borrow money once—and that was for a 1969
Blue Chevy Impala.
(1) The best I recall, it was 1975, Kathy and I had
not been married long, and we needed another
car.
(a) I think my dad actually lined things up.
(b) The bank owned the car and all of the
details were worked out before I got there
so that all I had to do was sign the papers
and walk out with the keys.
(2) Borrowing money really should not have been THAT
easy!
b. But that is the way most Christians see prayer.
(1) We see something we want.
(2) We close our eyes to ask for it.
(3) And when we open our eyes, we expect to see our
request setting before us.
2. That is the wrong concept.
a. God is not a bank, and prayer is not the withdrawal
slip.
(1) Someone says, "Well doesn’t the Bible say, ‘Ask
and ye shall receive.’"
(2) Yes, but It doesn’t say, "Just ask and you will
receive."
b. Notice even in our text, the promise to answered
prayer comes surrounded by a conditions necessary to
get our prayers answered.
(1) \\#7\\ "if ye abide in Me…"
(2) "if my words abide in you…"
(3) And the that whole verse is dropped into a
parable with an emphasis on being part of the
Vine which is Jesus Christ.
c. No. God Is not a Bank.
B. What is a better concept?
1. Our prayers are stocks and the answered prayers are our
dividends.
a. I do not mean to be crude and degrade God or prayer.
b. I am just attempting to take a totally false concept
and improve some upon it.
c. Nothing I compare God to will be perfect, but I do
think this is better.
2. With stocks, your dividends grow based on three things;
the same three things that cause your power in prayer
before God to grow.
a. Time
b. Investment
c. Faith in that stock
3. Please understand. I am no Wall Street wizard. In fact,
I have never owned a stock; but I think I get the
concept of stocks and of prayer; and I think they are
similar to making our prayers pay.
a. Time helps our prayer payout.
(1) I do not know what the hot stocks are today, but
some of the older folks might imagine what you
would have today if you had bought IBM,
Microsoft, or Intel when they first came out.
(a) Even a small investment over time would
have earned you a large payout.
i. In a case like that, time becomes a
golden syrup.
ii. Just pour it on the stocks and watch
them increase in value.
(b) So time, if well spent, CAN increase your
prayer payout.
(2) I say CAN because time is not required for our
prayers to pay, but for most Christians, I think
it will be needed.
(3) It took me time to learn a few basic things about
God that have helped my prayers to pay off.
(a) For example, I had to learn that prayer does
not make me God’s master.
i. The promise of answered prayer is not
a promise that God will obey me.
ii. Prayer is one of the tools God has
given to help me to obey Him.
iii. To be honest, it took me a long time
to understand if I am not getting my
prayers answered, I am either not
praying the right prayers or I am
not living the right life or both.
(b) And there have been many other lessons I
have had to learn and then to relearn!
i. The time necessary for me to learn
these lessons is that golden syrup.
ii. For me it was necessary and is time
well spent.
(c) I am slow. Maybe you figured these kinds of
truths out much quicker than I did; but for
me, it took time.
b. Investment helps our prayer payout.
(1) No matter what stock you buy, your payout will
always be in correlation to your investment.
(2) So it is in prayer.
(a) You can talk to God day and night, but if
you live like the devil or even a carnal-
Christian life, you are far less likely to
get your prayers answered.
(b) I have been surprised to see that while
most know that in their heads, they don’t
live it in their lives.
(c) I am not auditioning for the role of judge
in your life, but if you are drinking,
drugging, lying, harboring bitterness,
filled with doubt, being hypocritical, or
even neglecting your Bible and worship,
you are diminishing your prayer payout.
(3) Again, someone says, "I didn’t think works saved
us!
(a) Works do not save us. Grace does.
(b) But after we are saved, our works do
determine our blessings.
(c) If you want a larger prayer payout, give God
some better works.
c. Faith helps our prayer payout.
(1) No one does well in the stock market who does not
have faith in their stocks or their stock
broker-—whoever is calling the shots.
(a) There are days when even the best market is
going to dip.
(b) If you doubt your stock or broker and insist
on selling the dips, you payout will be
greatly diminished.
(2) So it is in prayer.
(a) The first requirement to getting our prayers
answered is to have a rock-solid faith in
God.
(b) Will God do everything you want the way you
want it? NO.
(c) As a matter of fact, in my life, it seemed
at the time that God never did anything I
wanted— especially the way I wanted it; but
now looking back, I can’t see any plan I
had that God has not done better or any
desire that I had that God has not given me
more.
(3) Have faith in God!
II. Means - To help us to see how God might pay our prayers out, let
me share some ways I have seen God answer prayer.
A. God has paid out prayers by blessing personal effort.
1. I do not know, but I think this may be the way God has
answered most of our prayers.
a. I think of the children and our prayers for them.
Without doubt, Kathy but forth the most effort to
point them to Christ, but God blessed her efforts.
b. I think of our finances. I do not work hard these
days, but there have been days when both Kathy and I
worked very hard. I am not complaining. God took
what we did and blessed it.
c. In the ministry, I could point you to the Apostle Paul.
He prayed for open doors and the effectual working
of God through the gospel, but then he traveled to
city after city, preaching the gospel; and God
blessed his labor.
2. It does not matter what field you are praying about: from
souls to be saved, lives to be delivered, down to taters
to grow in the garden, and little puppies to get well.
a. Pray much. Pray often. Pray hard.
b. Then do what you can do so that God can pay out on
your prayer and bless you.
B. God has paid out prayers by doing things differently.
1. God has a way of doing what we ask but in ways we never
imagined.
a. I have said before that when it comes to me praying
for things, I can almost guarantee that the way I
figure out for God to do a thing WILL NOT be the
way He will do it.
b. He often pays out prayers in ways that we would never
expect.
2. If you do not believe that God pays out prayers in
completely unexpected ways:
a. Ask Moses who stood by the Red Sea, probably waiting
for God to send a ball of fire from heaven to destroy
the Egyptian army only to end up walking through two
walls of water and never getting his sandals wet.
b. Or Shadrack, Meshack, and Abednego whose last hope
of salvation likely disappeared when they were cast
into the midst of the burning fiery furnace, only to
have it rekindled again when they hit the bottom and
found God waiting on them.
c. Or ask Paul and Silas, who were content to sit in
shackles until God sent bail money only to have the
earth shake the locks of their hands and their doors
off their hinges.
3. I am not speaking of the magnitude of the miracles here,
although I will in a moment.
4. I am only speaking of HOW God pays out prayers.
a. Sometimes He does it by blessing the effort of those
who do the labor.
b. And sometimes He does it by doing something completely
unexpected.
C. God has paid out prayers by doing something absolutely
supernatural.
1. I do not want to give you the idea that God depends on our
efforts to pay out prayers.
a. He does answer prayer quite often by blessing our
efforts.
b. And I think if we do not put forth any effort to do
His work while we wait on our prayers to be paid out,
we will greatly diminish the payout if not cause it
to be declined all together.
2. However, God does not need us to answer our prayers.
a. God could have parted the Red Sea without Moses
lifting his staff.
b. God could have brought water from the rock without
Moses smiting the stone.
c. In fact, God did resurrect His Son without the
disciples prying against a single rock.
d. He also stopped the mouths of the lions without Daniel
sewing a single pair of lips together.
3. God is God and God needs no help at all.
4. He is the God of all power, and can make our prayers
payout without any effort on our part at all.
III. Stops
A. There are somethings that will stop God from answering your
prayer. I do not have the time to elaborate on them, but let
me give them to you.
1. His glory - God will not answer a prayer that does not
give Him the glory He desires.
a. This is why we must pray in the will of God.
b. God’s first and greatest desire is to be glorified.
2. Man’s freewill - God will not violated a person’s
freewill.
a. He will allow us and circumstances to push individuals
toward the right path, but God will not violate a
person’s freewill because we have asked for
something.
b. This is one area where we will have to do much of the
work.
c. With love, kindness, and grace, we must plant the
seeds so that God can water them.
3. Personal Sin
a. As a rule, God does not reward sinful behavior, and
you don’t really want Him to do so.
b. If God answers our prayers when we are away from Him—
or even worse, against Him—there would be one more
reason for us to continue on our wayward path instead
of return to Him.
B. Even if we pray for good and noble things, if they hit one of
these stops, they will not be answered.
Believe it or not, God wants us to pray. He wants us pray for things
that He wants to give to us, and He wants to give us things that He
has planned for us. The challenge is to learn to pray so that God
can do these things for us. I don't know that praying like that is
hard, but I know it is hard work; however, it pays with some
miraculous dividends!
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