Remember, He is just as ready to answer your prayers while you are on this earth as He was to answer the prayers of Jesus while He was in His earthly ministry. And to assure your success in prayer, He has given you the following three guidelines:
The first guarantee for success in prayer is that if you will pray in Jesus' Name, you will have what you ask.
Jesus tells us that, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you." (John 16:23) This verse tells us that we should address the Father in Jesus' Name.
Early in my walk as a believer, I thought that effectiveness in prayer was a direct result of how long or how loudly you prayed, or how much pitiful weeping accompanied your prayer. Imagine my surprise when, expecting a preacher to pray a lengthy prayer for my financial needs, I heard him simply pray, "Lord bless him. Meet his every need, in the Name of Jesus." My problems were BIG. I expected a BIG prayer. But this man of faith was concentrating on the answer, Jesus, and not my problem. His confidence was in the authority of Jesus' Name, not in the length of his prayer.
The Name of Jesus carries authority over all other names! Paul wrote, "God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." (Phil. 2:9-11)
How do you get your circumstances to line up with the Word of God? Force them to bow their knees to the Name of Jesus when you pray. Praying in the Name of Jesus bases your prayers on His accomplishments, not yours.
Of course, if you haven't been living a life that is pleasing to God, your prayers will be hindered because disobedience robs you of your confidence in Him. But even then, Jesus is still the answer. Don't let sin and condemnation keep God from moving in your life, your heart and your circumstances. Confess it and receive your forgiveness according to 1 John 1:9.
The second guarantee for success in prayer is praying according to the will of God.
God's will is His Word. Those who will let the Word engineer their prayers have this confidence: "If we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: and if we know that he hears us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him." (1 John 5:14-15)
Not only are we to pray, but we are to believe when we pray. Mark 11:24 says, "What things so ever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them." So throw out all the arguments and believe the Word. Once you have based your prayer on the fact that the answer is already yours, then you have something to which you can apply your faith. Faith is our response to what God has already provided, and it is released in two ways: by saying it, and by acting on it. If someone came running in your front door and said, "The house is on fire!" and you believed it, you would immediately get out. You wouldn't wait until you saw smoke!
Faith in God's Word works the same way. Don't wait until you feel healed to believe it. Believe it before anything you can see ever happens, or it will never happen. Faith makes prayer work; prayer doesn't make faith work.
The third guarantee for success in prayer is the work of the Holy Spirit.
He is the power arm of God. To see how the Holy Spirit operates, look at Genesis 1:1-3: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, 'Let there be light': and there was light."
We see that the Holy Spirit was present, moving on the face of the waters before creation. But notice that His presence accomplished nothing until God spoke. He exploded into action based on what God said. He brought forth the light with such vigor that it's still radiating through the universe, devouring the darkness at a rate of 186,000 miles per second! Think about that the next time you start to pray about a seemingly impossible situation!
If you're a born-again believer, the Holy Ghost is present inside you, just as He was present on the day of creation. And He responds to God's Word today just as powerfully as He did then. The more faith you have in Him, the more confidence you place in Him, the more awesome the results will be. Think about that! The power that created the universe, the power that raised Christ Jesus from the dead, is activated in your life when you speak the Word of God in prayer. Hallelujah, what a guarantee!
I urge you, from this day forward, to make prayer the bedrock of your life. Build your marriage, your career, and your ministry on it. If you do, and you pray by the guidelines His Word has given you, you have God's guarantee of success!
Eagle Mountain International Church, Inc.
aka: Kenneth Copeland Ministries
For the last 50 years Kenneth and Gloria Copeland have been passionately teaching Christians all over the world how to apply the principles of faith found in God’s WORD to their lives.
