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The Power of Prayer - How to Pray with Absolute Confidence, Part 2

Living on the Edge / Chip Ingram
The Truth Network Radio
October 4, 2024 1:00 am

The Power of Prayer - How to Pray with Absolute Confidence, Part 2

Living on the Edge / Chip Ingram

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October 4, 2024 1:00 am

Imagine what it would be like if you needed wisdom, or deliverance from a difficult situation, or financial provision…and you could pray a prayer that God would answer 100% of the time. You can! In this message, Chip shows us how to pray with absolute confidence.

Main Points

Faith:

  • Definition = Hebrews 11:1
  • Importance = Hebrews 11:6
  • Faith, therefore, is having absolute confidence that whatever God says, He will do.

Question: When you pray, are you going to God with absolute certainty and confidence that what you are asking for will be given?

You can pray with absolute confidence. -1 John 5:13-15

How?

  1. To whom is this promise made? -1 John 5:13
  2. How must we pray to know God hears our prayers? -1 John 5:14
  3. How can we know the will of God? -1 John 5:14 -- By the promises of His Word
  4. How can we know God’s will when we have no promise for a particular situation? -Romans 8:26-27

Conclusion: “We must pray in faith. That is, we must pray with confident expectation of getting the very thing we ask.” -George Mueller

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About Chip Ingram

Chip Ingram’s passion is helping Christians really live like Christians. As a pastor, author, and teacher for more than three decades, Chip has helped believers around the world move from spiritual spectators to healthy, authentic disciples of Jesus by living out God’s truth in their lives and relationships in transformational ways.

About Living on the Edge

Living on the Edge exists to help Christians live like Christians. Established in 1995 as the radio ministry of pastor and author Chip Ingram, God has since grown it into a global discipleship ministry. Living on the Edge provides Biblical teaching and discipleship resources that challenge and equip spiritually hungry Christians all over the world to become mature disciples of Jesus.

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One thing I know about Jesus, he had absolute confidence that God heard his prayers, that God's power would be unleashed as he trusted him. Yes, Jesus was fully God, but he was fully man. And his prayers were as a dependent human being in faith, trusting the will and the promises of God. Here's my question. Do you know how to pray with absolute confidence? If not, stay with me.

That's today. Welcome to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. The mission of these daily programs is to intentionally disciple Christians through the Bible teaching of Chip Ingram. Thanks for joining us as we wrap up Chip's series, The Power of Prayer. For the past several programs, we've learned how God wants to answer our impossible situations, the lifestyle we need to follow to communicate with our Heavenly Father, and the roadblocks that often stand in the way of God answering our prayers.

To learn more about this insightful series, catch up at livingontheedge.org or through the Chip Ingram app. Well, if you have a Bible, open now to the book of 1 John chapter 5 as we join Chip for part two of his message, How to Pray with Absolute Confidence. The next question as this passage opens up is not only how to pray according to God's will, but how do you know God's will?

See, at this point, I hope your mind is saying, and let me just have a quick aside. I hope your mind is saying in your heart of hearts, I pray a lot of vague prayers. I'm not sure I pray real specifically. I think instead of having faith, you know what I find in my life and probably with many of you?

I find instead of praying in faith, I'm usually praying in hope. Oh God, I hope this happens. Oh God, this is a good desire.

Oh God, this would be nice if you did it. That's not what Jesus said. When you come, asking in faith, believe that you've received it and it'll be given to you. I don't think he's joking, people.

I don't think he just threw that one out to impress Peter and the boys. I think he was saying, if you can know what the will of God is, once you understand my will, then you can ask for it and I will deliver and you can take it to the bank. I want you to pray specifically and with certainty and with confidence and I will answer. Now the question, that's a $64 question, is how do you know God's will so you ask the right stuff, right?

There's two ways. The first is by the promises of God in scripture. The second, on those areas where they're not promises that we'll look at later, is by the ministry of the Holy Spirit leading you in prayer and showing you that God can give a personal word for you in how to pray. You see, right here in this book, and I understand some of the promises in this book are just for Israel.

They're not for you and me. Some of the promises for specific people, you know, Hezekiah gets some special promises, but some are for special New Testament saints. But I want to tell you there are literally hundreds of promises that I can claim, you can claim, I know it's God's will, I can ask according to that promise and God promises, 100% of the time, He'll answer your prayer when you bring that promise and pray according to His will. You know, the amazing thing that I've learned as I've been studying on prayer is the great men and great women of God who pray, they pray with an open Bible. They pray with the Bible open, and they go to God not thinking, let's see, I've got to read three chapters today to keep up with my little chart. They read and they pray, God, show me your will for me, show me your will for your family, show me your will for the future. And they ask God and He gives them specific promises and they take it to the bank and they pray specifically and God comes through for them. Let me give you a couple examples of how to pray according to the will of God, first by the promises. Let's pretend, I'm sure no one here has this, let's pretend some of you have a big decision to make or you have a big problem.

And you would really like to know what God would want you to do. You either need to know what to do or you need to know how to do it. You got a married situation and you need to say something to your spouse but you're afraid if I say it that way, oh gosh, if you would give me wisdom, God, about how to say it. Or you got a situation with one of your children and you know that you are backing away and you need to move into this situation and speak the truth but you know if you do it wrong, you're going to have fireworks. And you need God to give you wisdom about how to approach your child.

Or some of you have job situations and your supervisor or one of the people that work for you. You need wisdom from God about how to step into this delicate situation and know God's will so that He can work it out. And so your need is wisdom. Biblical definition for wisdom is the ability and the skill to understand God's design for life and then find your part in it so it works. So can I tell you this morning that if you need wisdom, there's a promise from God.

James 1.5 and then some conditions in verse 6 and 7. Here's what God promises to every person in this room. If any man, it's generic, man or woman, if any man lacks wisdom, let him ask of God who gives to all men generously and without reproach.

Right? But let him ask in faith without any doubting. For the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea that's tossed to and fro. Let not that man expect that he'll receive anything from the Lord.

So here's a promise. You have that conversation, you need to know what, you need to know how to do something. The Bible says you can go right before God and say, God, my fingers on this promise. You said if I ever need wisdom that I can come and ask. I know it's according to your will because it's right in your word. I'm asking right now for wisdom.

Please give it to me. And as you do that, you can be guaranteed with certainty God will give you wisdom. Now note, you will have to keep your end of the bargain. Every promise has a condition.

The condition is it's without any doubting. And that doesn't mean there's no little doubts in your heart. That means the word talks about it's a double-minded man. It means that once God shows you what the wisdom is, you already sign off and say, whatever you show me, I'll do. Because you were hoping it would be a nice little light conversation and you pray and God shows you, you need to confront so and so. Or you need to address this head on.

Or you need to bring up an issue that everyone in the whole family has been afraid to talk about. He says, if you will ask me for wisdom, I guarantee 100% of the time I'll show you exactly what to do and exactly how to do it. That's pretty specific, isn't it? That's how God wants you to pray. Where do you need wisdom? You can pray for it and He'll show you.

How about for deliverance? If it's drugs or alcohol or pornography or issues in your mind or you're involved in a relationship that you know is not holy, there is a promise from God. You can pray specifically and God guarantees He'll hear it.

You know what it is? 1 Corinthians 10, 13. It says, no temptation has taken you, but such is common to man.

We've all had it. But God is faithful and with the temptation will provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it. You can come to God if you need deliverance. If you need help in getting over the hump of something, you can open your Bible and put your finger on that promise and say, God, show me the way of deliverance.

And then the condition is that you take it. It might be joining a 12-step program. It might be sharing your struggle with a close friend or even your mate. It might be saying I'll never drive home that way anymore.

It might be that you get your cable disconnected because you're up late at night watching trash and you keep finding yourself drawn back to it. I don't know the way of escape, but God says you pray specifically. He'll do it. He'll answer you.

The third example here is how about for rest or peace? Some of you have come and, man, you know the truth or known? If we could look, peel back the facade of how energetic and cool and nice and warm and lovely that we all look is you're dying inside. You're worn out and you're beat and what you need is rest and what you need is peace and your RPMs are going zoom, zoom, zoom. And you open your calendar and you think, oh, it's another week and Monday here and Tuesday here and Thursday here and the kids over here on Wednesday. And you're about ready to go nuts. And some of you, you're at the emotional end of your wits and you think, I can't take it.

I mean, I can't take life anymore. There's a promise. You can pray a specific promise and you know what God will do? God will step in. He'll calm the storm and he'll restore your body and he'll restore your emotions. You know the promise? Matthew 11, 28. Come unto me, all of you that are heavy burdened or laden down.

Overwhelmed is the idea. And I will give you rest. Take my yoke. Come into my leadership, my authority for your life. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. For I'm meek and I'm lowly of heart. I'm humble. I'm not going to put a trip on you.

I love you. I'm God. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. For some of you, you need to block off a couple hours today and turn off all the TVs and turn off all the junk and get two or three hours alone with God and say, God, I come to you because I need rest and I'm dying.

And you go sit in the presence of God for a couple hours and it'll do more than any pill you could ever take. He'll slow you down. He'll show you where you need to slow down.

All those pushes and those aughts and those shoulds and all those demands from people. He'll show you what His yoke demands and how you can say no to stuff and how you can say no to pressure and how you can be walking in His will and how He can renew you from the inside out. And you know the people that need rest the most are those that are sitting here and you've never made a personal relationship. You've never asked Christ to come into your life. You're just a great person.

You're a neat person and people like you. What you really long for is peace in your soul. And right now, as I'm talking, you can shut off the whole rest of this message and you and God can have a conversation and His invitation, His condition to you, come right now, okay?

Forget what that guy in the striped shirt is saying. Listen to me. You come right now and you ask me to come into your life. Ask me to forgive you. Take my yoke. Come under my leadership and my authority for your life.

Take my word as guidance. I'll give you rest. I'll give you peace. I'll restore the relationships. I'll give you forgiveness.

You do that right now. He'll honor His word. You're listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram, and we'll get back to his message in just a minute. You know, we love to hear how you are deepening your relationship with God as you study His Word with us. But another way we want to support you in that is through our free resource called Daily Discipleship with Chip. Let me encourage you to stick around after this message as Chip will tell you more about it and how to sign up. But for now, let's get back to the remainder of his talk. The final one here is for financial permission.

Maybe you're here and you're thinking, how do you pray? I've got bills up to my ears. I've got credit people giving me calls. And other people keep sending me more credit cards.

I've never understood that. Every week they want to give me more credit cards. But you're overwhelmed. And you look at that stack of bills and you look here and you think, yay, yay, yay, yay, yay.

And you think, it's pressure all the time. God says you can pray specifically for financial issues and He will answer. Here's the promise, Philippians 4.19. My God, the apostle Paul writes, to a struggling, young, poor church that has just given a very generous gift to His ministry. My God, he says, shall supply all your needs by His riches and by His glory in Christ Jesus.

You got a need? He says, I'll take care of it. Now please don't read that to me. My God shall keep my middle class lifestyle intact.

It doesn't say that. He says, I'll meet your needs. You know, if you're debt up to your ears, if you made unwise financial decisions, God may allow some consequences to get you in a position of getting real dependent, real quick, late. The other thing you'll notice is there is a condition of this passage. It is written to a group of people who don't have much but have been generous with the first fruits of what God gave them. This promise is for people that have financial need but who by faith are giving first to the work of God. And if you're not doing that, this promise doesn't apply to you.

See, with every promise there's a condition. God promises to meet the needs of those who are trusting Him by faith. And as you trust Him by faith with your time and with your finances, He says, I'll always come through for you. And the biggest evidence that we don't trust Him is when I don't give Him my time and when I don't give Him my finances. Because what I'm saying is, if I give it to you God, then how am I going to pay these other bills? And so, finances are so important to the American church because it's probably the only way in such a wealthy society that we ever get a chance to even trust God. Because basically, if God died tomorrow, which is obviously impossible, a lot of Christians wouldn't know it for months.

Wouldn't. Because God doesn't have to do anything supernatural in your life to come through for you. And until you put yourself in a situation for Him to do that, you don't get to exercise faith and trust.

Well, let me ask you here, what then do you do? Those are promises and that's how you know to pray according to God's will. But as we wrap it up, what do you do if you don't have a promise from God? How can you pray if, you know, you've got a sick friend or a sick, give me another example, child or a sick spouse. And look at Romans 8, 26 through 27. This is what God says.

It's incredible. He says, in the same way the Spirit helps us in our weakness. Well, what kind of weakness? Well, when we don't know what we ought to pray for. But the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And He who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit. Because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in how? Accordance with God's will.

What did our passage in 1 John teach us? If you pray according to God's will, He hears us. If He hears us, we know for certain what?

We're going to get what we ask. So there's times where you don't have a promise and you sit quietly and you ask and it depends upon the Holy Spirit. Show me how to pray here. We don't always have a promise to pray and so what we need to do is depend on the Holy Spirit.

How about some of you that are praying for kids or people that you love or people that work and you don't know how to pray? For one of my older sons, those of you parents that are going through rough times in teens, I have been there. I mean, the name of the game in our home was Sparks, Sparks and then Heavy Sparks. And this kid is so much like me that we knock heads all the time. And I'm glad that he moved out of this stage and has matured and grown. But I remember, you know, I said black, he said white. And he just had this rebellious chip on his shoulder and out in public with other people.

Great kid. At home he's testing me all the time. And I'm saying, God, you know, and you know, I'm communicating, you know, that rebellious spirit we're going to deal with. And I remember at my wit's end, literally crying, doing, quote, what I know is right and going to the bedroom and telling all the trees. Am I being too hard?

Am I being an idiot? What's, I mean, I think I'm doing God's will, I hope, I think, maybe. You've been there as a parent? I remember praying. I remember as I was praying, I said, Lord, will you show me how to pray for my son? Because I was praying, Lord, will you break his spirit?

That's the problem I saw when I prayed directly, right? And I said, God, will you transform this kid's attitude? And as I prayed, you know what the Holy Spirit showed me?

I didn't get any audible voice, but I just sat there. And what I realized, the Spirit of God began to reveal and, you know, the best time of praying sometimes is shut up and let him speak. And God just said, you know, it's not rebellion, it's not the issue, it's hurt and it's woundedness. And he doesn't feel good about himself, and he feels inadequate, and boy, I started to pray differently. God, help him see himself the way you made him.

God, shore up the wounds and the hurts that he has inside, because that's where it was spewing from. And I kept the boundaries, and then my wife and I, like absolute lunatics, looked for opportunities and time, saying, hey, let's go out for a Coke, let's go talk, any common ground to just communicate to my son, regardless of his performance, that we love you and you'll never do anything that'll keep us from loving you. You're listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram and the message you just heard, How to Pray with Absolute Confidence, is from our series, The Power of Prayer.

Chip will join us in studio to share some insights from today's talk in just a minute. Prayer is an absolutely essential part of our relationship with God. It's how we talk with him, and as his children, we have free access to him anytime, anywhere.

But how does it actually work? What do we say? Well, in the series, we learned what a dynamic, consistent prayer life looks like. Chip also explained how to remove the barriers that hinder our prayers, and why we can approach our Heavenly Father with confidence that he'll hear us and act. So whether you're a new Christian or a seasoned follower of Jesus, we hope you learned a lot from Chip's teaching. Let me encourage you to go back and revisit any part of this series at livingontheedge.org or through the Chip Ingram app. Well, Chip joins me in studio now, and Chip, you know, we've gotten a lot of responses to a resource we've developed here at Living on the Edge called Daily Discipleship with Chip. Tell us how this tool came about, and maybe share where your heart for discipling others came from. I'd be glad to, Dave.

I say this a lot, but I'll keep saying it a lot. A bricklayer named Dave Marshall met with me individually, and he taught me how to study the Bible. He taught me how to hear God's voice. He taught me how to pray. And so during the pandemic, we just literally tried an experiment.

I said, I will meet with people one on one. And I set up a couple cameras and literally just got a cup of coffee and opened my Bible and walked people through passages of Scripture, not so much just to teach them what it says, but way more about how to study the Bible for themselves. And so we started with one that was really applicable, kind of overcoming difficult circumstances. It's called Growing Deeper with God. And I went through the first couple chapters of Philippians and helped people understand our circumstances can't define us. And then we went to the book of Ephesians, and we talked about, yes, you can really change. And we walked verse by verse through Ephesians chapter 4, learning what it says and how to study it. And then we went back to Ephesians 1, 2, and 3 in a series called Discovering Your True Self. And we just, I mean, literally, paragraph by paragraph slowly went through learning our identity in Christ. And then we went through Romans chapter 12, which everyone knows is a big favorite of mine about what true spirituality is and what it means to be a disciple.

And our latest series was in the book of James as we understood the art of survival. And whatever study you pick, I think you'll really grow from it. Let me encourage you to check them out, choose one, and then join me one on one and let me mentor you the way Dave Marshall mentored me. Here's how it works. For each series, I begin with a short teaching video, no longer the 10 minutes. And then there's a little assignment that I'm going to ask you to take 10 minutes on your own and do some study.

And here's what I know. People that have done this with me, who make it a habit just to spend 20 minutes with me day after day for somewhere between 10 days to a couple weeks, they learn to hear God's voice. They learn to discern the Spirit. God begins to change them from the inside out.

This is a habit that you cannot afford not to develop. Thanks, Chip. So if you're looking for a practical way to deepen your faith, let me encourage you to sign up for Daily Discipleship with Chip. This free video resource will help you learn more about God and His Word. To sign up for our Daily Discipleship series, visit LivingOnTheEdge.org.

That's LivingOnTheEdge.org. App listeners, tap Discipleship. Well, with that, here's Chip with a few final words to share. As we close today's program and wrap up this entire series on prayer, you know, it's one of those topics that on the one hand we need to step into and have confidence and pray boldly. And yet it's so easy to start thinking that if I do certain things, God is obligated in an unhealthy sense to do these things.

And it really becomes very subtly about, again, my performance. I'm going to do this, this, this, this, X, Y, Z, and then God's going to do this, and I'm going to come boldly. And I share that story about my son at the very end because I just want to remind you of something. The goal at the heart of conversation with your Heavenly Father is that you would both feel and experience His Fatherhood and His love for you. That as a daughter of the living God, as a son of the living God, He's for you. He understands. He gets your struggle. Just as I could see, it took me a while that my son was on a journey and a process, and some of the things those many years ago that we were dealing with was really about a wound in his heart.

What I really wanted to do is help him with that so we could be close, more than his behavior at the time getting, you know, right or better or some other expectation that I had. So what I want you to recognize is that you have a Heavenly Father who wants you to come in confidence because you're coming in Jesus' name. You're coming boldly as a son or a daughter because Jesus blazed the trail. You come before the throne of grace. You have every right to be there because He looks at you as the righteous son, the righteous daughter. You are justified before Him.

You have been set apart. You have been adopted. His Spirit lives inside of you, and He is for you. And so He is complimented, if you will, when you come with an absolute confidence to say, Lord, I want to pray your will. I want to be your son.

I want to be your daughter. I believe you're going to interact, not because I'm wonderful, but because I come in the name and the power of Jesus, and this is for you and your glory, and you promise this, and so I'm standing on that promise. When you begin to come to God like that, it brings Him great delight. You will experience great power, and the transformation that will occur may be far more in you than even all the circumstances you're praying about. So take God up on His offer. Experience His power in prayer. Great word to close out this series, Chip.

Thanks. As we close, would you stop for a minute and pray for Living on the Edge today? We've never seen a greater need for God's truth to go out than right now. And by God's grace, Living on the Edge has provided encouragement, teaching, and personal discipleship resources to more people than ever. So thank you to those who support us in prayer. God is doing amazing things. Well, from all of us here, I'm Dave Drouie, thanking you for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge, and I hope you'll join us next time. .
Whisper: medium.en / 2024-10-04 05:46:01 / 2024-10-04 05:56:26 / 10

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