We Can Pray for Anything!

September 17, 2020
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| Prayer, Praying Effectively

In Mark 11:24(NLT), Jesus Christ said, “I tell you, you can pray for anything, and if you believe that you’ve received it, it will be yours.” This verse is such tremendously good news that it is truly mind-blowing. One of the reasons that it is so powerful is because it packs a huge wallop of information and does so in a very simple way. We can tell that it’s going to be an incredible piece of truth and knowledge for us simply by the way Jesus Christ begins it. He speaks in total authority and with an absolute delivery when he lays out the reality of what the Father has made available to us through Christ. He allows us to know that we can tap into God’s abundant resources. He also wants us to realize that it is the heart of God for us to pray in a way that we see results. It really doesn’t get any better than this! We can pray through our faith in God and impact not just our own lives, but we can impact the lives of so many others.

Our Heavenly Father wants us to come to Him in prayer because He is our Source and Supplier of all good things. Through the Apostle Paul, God tells us in Philippians 4:19(NLT), “And this same God who takes care of me will supply all your needs from his glorious riches, which have been given to us in Christ Jesus.” God has glorious riches in heaven. He has an unyielding, infinite, and overflowing supply that never ends. We can never bankrupt God and His resources will never dry up. He’s given us all access to this overflow of blessings, and this access is available through the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the channel by which God’s abundant blessings flow.

When I was a kid growing up, like so many others, I thought God had the business of the universe to run and couldn’t be bothered with me and my little problems. I had no idea that I could pray to Him or that He’d actually hear me. As I grew older and learned a little bit about prayer, it was a tool I only pulled out of the toolbox when things got so bad that I felt I couldn’t handle them. During those times, in my mind prayer wasn’t about deepening my relationship with God through Jesus Christ, it was about getting my needs taken care of. Certainly, we can see God is willing and able to take care of our needs, but prayer is about relationship, and we can never forget this.

In Mark 11:24, Jesus Christ said, “If you believe…” This brings relationship in full view, because our faith in God is the foundation on which our relationship with Him rests. Heavenly Father is God all by Himself. He doesn’t need anything from us to make Him who He is. His power, love, holiness, and magnificence aren’t altered by our failure to acknowledge His nature and character. Out of His incredible generosity, in Romans 12:1(NLT), He tells us the very least we can do for Him for all He has done for us. This verse tells us, “…to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him.”  He tells us to give Him our bodies and everything that they contain to Him. He knows we’ve got funky stuff going on, that we don’t give, love, and share the way that Christ does, but we’re to give Him our whole selves any way. He’ll do a work in our hearts so that we continue to get better.

Romans 12:1 is the way God has given us to build our relationship with Him through faith. It allows Him to do all the heavy lifting through the Lord Jesus Christ. We’ll build our faith as we surrender our will for His Will, and this develops intimacy with God, but like any relationship, it takes time. Prayer then becomes infinitely more important than we imagined, because it is a practice of speaking to God about what is going on with us, and it is also paying attention to what He has to say.  It’s a dialogue that comes out of the exclusive attention we commit to give God.

Humans don’t give attention to things they don’t believe exist. It’s only when we believe in something or someone that we will invest our trust, faith, and energy. God is deserving of every good thing you and I can give Him, and He has told us in His Word, that the good thing we can give Him is giving Him ourselves. Jesus Christ told us in Mark 11:24 that we can pray for anything, and if we have faith that God will give it to us, it will be ours. This promise was made to individuals who wanted to please God and do His Will. It is not intended to promote a “kid in a candy store” attitude. It is a promise by God given to His people so that they are always confident that He wants to hear their prayers, loves them, and He is willing and able to bless them according to His riches in Christ Jesus.■

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

“We Can Pray for Anything!” written for Springfield Fellowship, Inc. Copyright© 2020. All rights reserved. All praise and honor to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.

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Praying Effectively: Part 1 – Diligence