You Will Be Heard: Pray Big, Pray Confidently

Do you pray?  Okay, good.  Now let me ask you this:  How do you pray?  Do you pray with the firm confidence that the Lord will certainly hear and answer your prayers?

I want you to pray, and I want you to pray OUTRAGEOUS prayers.  When I say outrageous, I mean prayers that would seem to be completely absurd and virtually impossible.  World impacting, life changing, kingdom exploding type prayers.

Because you will be heard and God will answer!

How do I know?  Because God challenges us to pray.  In Psalm 27:8 he says, "Seek my face." This is what I call a 'promissory command.'  God commands you to seek his face.  It is an obligation that put us under a mandate.  But the command implies a promise:  God will answer.  

God commands us to seek him because he is ready to be found.  He will answer our prayer and bring his power and grace to bear on our situation.

The New Testament provides the echo and extended commentary on this verse: Ask, seek, knock.  For whoever asks will receive, whoever seeks will find, and whoever knocks, to him the door will be opened.

This command (and implied promise) gives warrant to our prayers.  We can be encoruaged to pray.  And we can be encouraged to pray for spectacular things.

So be absurd. Ask for the outrageous. 

• Ask that Hopewell will swell to 300 godly saints. 
• Pray that abortion will be ended.
• Beseech Him for revival
• Make a request that persecution will stop in North Korea and China
• Pray that missionaries would be funded and whole nations be transformed.

Don't be bashful.  God tells us to seek his face.

John Knox was known to pray, "Lord, Give me Scotland or I'll die."  He wanted the whole nation to be taken over by the Reformational ideas he was preaching.  Was that ludicrous?  Absolutely!  And God was happy to answer in asounding ways.

Bloody Mary (i.e. Mary, Queen of Scots) said, "I fear the prayers of Knox more than all the armies of England."  She feared that protestantism would roll through England and that she'd be unseated by the finger of God simply because a man was passionately pleading with God for the transformation of the nation.

The Heidelberg Catechism cites Psalm 27:8 in its 116th Q&A.  It says that we should"

"be firmly assured that, notwithstanding how unworthy we are of it, God will, for the sake of Christ our Lord, certainly hear our prayer, as he has promised us in His Word."

I pray that you may pray with the confidence that no prayer bounces off the ceiling.  May this also increase and enrich your prayer life.

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