If we want to eliminate hindrances to seeing prayers get answered, we want to create an atmosphere that fosters and promotes
- Forgiveness and Unity
- Faith In God
- Boldness In Prayer
- Obedience
- Putting Our Finances Under God's Lordship
We have already talked about the first three items in previous lessons. This lesson will explore the subject of radical obedience to God.
OBEDIENCE
We know that obedience was very important to Jesus. He was committed to obey His heavenly father. He would say things like, "I love the Father and I do exactly what my Father has commanded Me" (John 14:31, NIV). And He also said, "For I did not speak of my own accord, but the Father who sent Me commanded Me what to say and how to say it. I know that His command leads to eternal life. So whatever I say is just what the Father has told Me to say" (John 12:49-50, NIV). In fact, Jesus stated in John 5:19 that He did not do anything ministry-wise out of His own initiative. Instead, He only did what God lead Him to do -- no more and no less. This is radical obedience. Jesus lived that as part of His lifestyle and He also expects His disciples to live the same way.
He made that very clear in the book of John. Let me share just three verses with you to illustrate this point. In John 14:15, Jesus said, "If you love Me, keep My commandments." That is simple and clear. In John 14:21, He said, "He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him." And in John 15:10, Jesus said, "If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in His love."
So it is very clear that Jesus expects us to obey Him just like He obeyed His father. He was our role model. He lived a lifestyle of radical obedience to God. He expects us to live the same way.
In fact, He tied this obedience to prayer. We already looked at John 14:15, but let's back up a few verses to see how obedience relates to prayer. In John 14:13-14, Jesus promised us great authority in prayer. He said, "And whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in My name, I will do it." Then He continued with verse 15, "If you love Me, keep My commandments." There is a direct tie in this passage between obeying God and seeing Him answer our prayers. If you want authority in prayer, you must be committed to obey Him.
OUR MOTIVATION FOR OBEDIENCE
We don't want to obey God just so that we can ask Him for things. In fact, that won't get us very far. If we are not careful and pray from wrong motivations and lack of intimacy with God, we could end up in the same boat as the folks Jesus discussed in Matthew 7:21-23: "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?' And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!'
Jesus said, "If you love Me, keep My commandments" (John 14:15). Jesus provides our motivation for obedience in the first part of that verse. He said, "If you love Me..." In other words, we obey God because we love Him. We demonstrate to God just how much we love Him by obeying Him. Our motivation is not fear of punishment for disobedience. Our motivation is not to gain authority in prayer, it is not even obedience -- our motivation is love. We obey Him because we love Him and we want to please Him. And it is out of that love relationship, out of our intimacy with God, that our authority in prayer comes.
WALKING OUT OBEDIENCE
God will often test our obedience when we petition Him for something. He will ask us to do (or to stop doing) something. Obeying this may involve dieing to self -- it might not be an easy thing that God asks us to do.
I remember one season where I was praying and crying out to God to change my heart to be after His heart. I asked Him to change my desires to line up with His desires, so I would like the things He liked and dislike the things He disliked. I prayed that prayer daily for months. In the midst of this, God began to speak to me about my reading. I was an avid reader, and I loved science fiction and fantasy, particularly Robert Heinland and Pierres Anthony. I would often read before going to bed at night, and it was not uncommon to read a whole book in one or two evenings. If the book was really good, I would sometimes stay up all night reading it. I just loved to read science fiction and fantasy books. I had an extensive library that I was quite proud of and I even had a few rare edition collectors items in there that were somewhat valuable.
As I cried out to God to change my heart and desires to line of with His, He began to tell me to stop reading these books. In fact He told me to get rid of the books so that I would not be tempted to read them later on. That was a really hard thing for me to do. I loved my books and I did not want to get rid of them. I had been asking God to change my desires and He responded by asking me to change my behaviors before my desires had changed. I thought He should deal with my books by taking away the desire for them and then I could get rid of them. But He did not choose to do it that way. Instead He commanded me to change my behavior to better line up with His desires. I knew He would eventually change my desires to go along with the change in behavior. But at the time, He was asking a very hard thing of me. He was telling me to get rid of something that I loved before He took away my love for it. (God might do that to you someday too.)
I knew what He wanted me to do. I understood clearly what He wanted, there was no doubt in my mind that this direction came from God. He even explained to me why He did not want me reading those books any more; that based on my own past experiences (I had been delivered from a spirit of fantasy) that these books would give that demon a stronghold over me, a foothold to get control of me again. Please note -- I am not saying that God wants all Christians to stop reading science fiction and fantasy books, this was a specific direction for me personally because of my past. It is strictly between you and God about whether or not you read this type of book. But I am not allowed to read them any more.
Once I knew what God wanted, I had a choice. I could obey Him and get rid of my precious library. That was a hard thing for me to do. Or I could choose to ignore His request and disobey. I did choose to obey Him. I think I cried the whole time I packed the books into boxes to give them away. There were a few books that I felt I could not give away because they were ungodly -- I had to burn those ones. (One might ask why I had ungodly books in my possession as a Christian. That is a good question, I don't have a good answer for it. But as I began to pray for God to change my heart to line up with His, He began to address that issue by telling me to get rid of them.)
About a week after I got rid of the books, I did not miss them any more. Why? Because God began to break into my prayer life and meet me in wonderful ways. He began to speak clearly to me. He began to manifest Himself to me and I even had some open visions where I was caught up into the heavenlies before His throne. He began to fill the time I had previously spent reading with His presence and He began to build a deeper intimacy with Him that I'd ever experienced before.
But there was a pivotal act of obedience that I had to perform before all of this opened up to me. God asked me to demonstrate to Him that He was more important to me than these books were. Once I obeyed and demonstrated that to Him, He began to give me more and more of Himself. In other words, He began to change my heart so I did not miss them. He also began breaking into my day, speaking more clearly to me, orchestrating divine appointments and opportunities to do real kingdom stuff with Him. I found that living in this type of relationship with Him was much more exciting and fulfilling than my science fiction and fantasy reading had ever been.
Looking back, I have never regretted obeying Him and getting rid of those books. And I assure you that you won't regret it either when you make a commitment to obey Him because you love Him.
Getting Our Finances In Order
If we want to eliminate hindrances to seeing prayers get answered, we want to create an atmosphere that fosters and promotes
- Forgiveness and Unity
- Faith In God
- Boldness In Prayer
- Obedience
- Putting Our Finances Under God's Lordship
We have already talked about the first four items in previous lessons. This lesson will cover discuss the topic of putting our finances under God's Lordship.
FINANCES AND GOD'S LORDSHIP
When I teach on the subjects of tithing and of giving God Lordship of our finances, there are always some people who are angry or upset at this. They do not like the concept that they need to give a portion of their income back to God. Some people feel strongly that tithing is "Old Testament" and the law. They believe that they are no longer obligated to tithe because Jesus set us free from the law. They do not like anyone telling them how to manage their finances or suggesting they give their first fruits to God.
However, tithing is not part of the law.. the principle of tithing was in place long before the law was given. Chronologically Abraham lived and died over 400 years before Moses was born. The law was given through Moses. So Abraham was not under the law -- but Abraham tithed. God records the story in Genesis 14. Lot was Abraham's nephew. The city, Sodom, that Lot lived in was attacked by an invading army, along with several other cities in that region. The people in those cities, and all of their possessions, were taken captive and carried away by this invading army, including Abraham's nephew. When Abraham heard about this, he took a contingent of his servants that had been trained for battle and went to rescue his nephew and the others. Gen 14:16 records that "He recovered all the goods and brought back his relative Lot and his possessions, together with the women and the other people." While returning from the rescue raid, Abraham stopped by Jerusalem (called Salem in those days) and met with the priest of God.
Gen 14:18-20 picks up that story.
Then Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. He was priest of God Most High, and he blessed Abram, saying,"Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth. And blessed be God Most High, who delivered your enemies into your hand."
Then Abram gave him a tenth of everything. (NIV)
Abraham was grateful to God for granting Him victory on this rescue mission. He ended up recovering far more than what was taken from the people who lived in the valley of Siddim (including Sodom) because the army had raided many other places before it got there. Abraham found himself with a vast supply of resources So he expressed his gratitude to God by tithing a tenth of all the spoils he'd recovered. He gave this to God, but he did it by giving the tithe to God's representative -- the priest. (The modern day equivalent is to give our tithe to our local church.)
Abraham tithed over 400 years before the law was given! Tithing is not a part of the law.. it precedes the law. Jesus' death and resurrection set us free from the law. But it did not remove our financial obligation to God.
In fact Jesus talked about finances and the subject of paying taxes. He said that we are to give to the government what belongs to the government and give to God what belongs to God. (See Matt 22:21, Mark 12:17 and Luke 20:25.)
Jesus seemed to expect that we give some of our finances to God. In fact, Jesus actually paid attention to people's offerings and how much they were giving to God. He sat down at the temple treasury and watched what people brought to God. It was like He checked out who was putting how much into the offering plate. We see the story in Mark 12:41-44:
Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a fraction of a penny. Calling His disciples to Him, Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything--all she had to live on." (NIV)
Jesus did not feel it was inappropriate for people to give tithes and offerings to God -- in fact He paid special attention to what they were doing and to how much they were giving. Think of that next time the offering plate comes by at church -- God is watching to see how much you put into it. He wants you to demonstrate to Him that He is important to you by seeing you give Him something that is important to you, a portion of your hard-earned money.
I believe that God expects us to tithe, to give to Him the first fruits of our finances, just like He commanded in Malachi 3:10, "Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this, says the LORD Almighty, and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it" (NIV). God expects us to tithe. In fact, when we don't tithe, He says that we are robbing Him and He becomes offended when we don't give Him the first fruits of our finances. (See Mal 3:6-11 for the details.)
And yet, you are right when you say that we are not under the law. The law, in regard to tithing, simply enforced the principle of tithe that preceded it. That principle was in effect before the law was given and remains in effect even after Jesus rose from the dead and freed us from being under the law.
God still expects your tithe. But He wants more than just your tithe. He wants Lordship over the other 90% as well. He wants to have the ability to control whatever resources you have whenever He wants to. God expects you to tithe, but He also expects you to obey Him when He tells you to give $500 to a mother who can't afford to feed her children. He expects you to obey Him when He says to give $100 to missions or some other large sum of money (above and beyond your tithe) to whoever He commands you to give it to.
So how does all of this relate to prayer? In two ways. Jesus explained the first one in Luke 16:10-12:
He who is faithful in what is least is faithful also in much; and he who is unjust in what is least is unjust also in much. Therefore if you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? And if you have not been faithful in what is another man's, who will give you what is your own?
Jesus said we have to be faithful in mammon (finances) if we want God to release the true riches (answers to prayers and His power and authority) to us.
The second way is that we demonstrate to God how important He is to us by how willing we are to let Him control the things that are valuable to us. We show Him that we love Him more than we love money. And the power and authority in prayer come out of that love relationship with God. It is out of our intimacy with God that God hears and answers our prayers.
I recently saw a story on the internet that illustrated this point in a graphic sort of way. I don't know the source of the original story to give them credit. But the story is poignant and worth sharing:
A little girl saw an imitation pearl necklace at the store and asked her mother to buy it for her. The mother made the little girl earn the money for the necklace by doing chores for a month. At the end of the month the little girl finally got her necklace. It was her prize, her pride and joy. She wore it everywhere.[Previous Article] [Next Article]One day when her father was tucking her in for bed, he asked her if she loved him. She said, "of course I do, Daddy." Her dad asked her to "Prove it" by giving him her pearl necklace. She could not do that and burst into tears. He told her it was ok, kissed her forehead and gave her a hug. This same scenario repeated another 4 times over the next few weeks.
One day when her father came in to tuck her in to bed, she was in tears. He asked her what was the matter. She handed him her precious pearl necklace and said, "I love it a lot, but I love you more."
The father responded by reaching into his pocket and pulling out a string of real pearls that had been there since the first time he asked her for the necklace. He put it around her neck and told her that he also loved her very much and wanted her to have these pearls as a token of his love for her!