The Steps to Answered Prayer

Many of us think that prayer was invented by man. We think that when man had a lot of needs, he went to God and asked Him for help and that is how prayer came about. But the Bible clearly says that God is the author of prayer. Jesus taught in Matt 7: 7, 8 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened”. It was God’s idea that man should pray to Him and ask for his needs to be met.

Step 1: We should ask God because He wants to supply our needs
We need to recognize that prayer is indeed God’s idea. When we have a clear understanding about that, we will no longer hesitate to go to Him for help because it was He that said “Ask and it will be given unto you”. If He had not said so, then prayer would be a difficult endeavor. But since He has instituted prayer and paved a way for us to go to Him for all our needs, we can boldly approach God knowing that we are welcome.

Step 2: God should hear us
Although God has asked us to pray, we need to understand that God is not obligated to listen to all kinds of prayer. We read in 1 John 5:14 “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us”. Notice very carefully the phrase “according to His will”. God has never promised to give us anything outside of His will, but when we ask according to His will, we can be sure of receiving it.

Now many Christians do not have any clue as to what the will of God is. They are of the opinion that God’s will might be one thing today and another thing tomorrow. They feel that we can never know what God’s will really is at a given point of time. But again the Bible reveals just the opposite. In fact the will of God is laid bare, in black and white across the pages of the Bible. In Psalm 23, we see His will to lead us through a good life. In Phil 4:19 we see His will to supply all our needs. In Psalm 128 we see His will to bless our family. In 3 John 1:2 we see His desire for us to prosper and be in good health. Throughout the pages of the Bible, we see His will being revealed in a crystal clear form, but sadly it means nothing to a lot of Christians. To them these are just words in a book, and have nothing to do with their lives.

If we only knew that the will of God has already been revealed clearly in the pages of the Bible, we can start using Bible verses to frame our prayer. We can now base our prayer on the very words and promises of God. When we do that, we can be certain that it is according to the will of God. When we have a financial need, we can confidently ask God to supply our need because Phil 4:19 promises that He will supply our needs. We can ask God for a life partner confidently because we see His will for us to have a good family in Psalm 128. We can ask God to heal our body because He wants us well according to 3 John 1:2. So the second step in prayer is to know the will of God through the Bible and base our prayer on His Word, so that God will hear our prayer.

Step 3: We should believe that we have received the answer
We have already seen in 1 John 5:14 that if we ask anything according to His will, we will hear us. The very next verse says “And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him”. This verse says that if God has heard us, then we can be confident that He has granted our petition already. We may not see the answer right then, but in heaven the work has been done and it is just a matter of time before it manifests on earth in the physical realm. Many Christians miss it big time here. They think that God has answered only when they can see a physical manifestation of the answer. They don’t realize the fact that God could answer their prayer and it might take some time for it to manifest in the physical realm. The key here is to believe that God has already answered our prayer in spite of the lack of physical evidence. This is where 1 John 5:15 comes in handy. It says that once we know God has heard our prayer, we can be absolutely confident that He has also answered our petition. We may not see the answer immediately, but as far as He is concerned, it is already done. We just need to wait for the manifestation of the answer in the physical realm.

Jesus taught about this very same thing on His way to Jerusalem. He said in Mark 11: 24 “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours”. We need to believe that we have already received it, even though we don’t see any physical proof. We just need to take God’s word for it and believe that since we have asked according to His will, and since we know He has heard our petition, He has answered our prayer and the manifestation is on its way. Jesus said that if we believe that we have already received the answer, then it will eventually manifest in the physical realm. The time that it takes to manifest might vary from one prayer to another and from one person to another, but the one thing that we can be absolutely sure about is that God has already answered our prayer.

So these are the three vital steps to answered prayer. We need to ask God knowing that He wants us to. Then we need to ask according to His will so that He will hear us. Then we need to believe that since He has heard us, He has also answered our petitions and then hold on to that belief until the day we see the physical evidence of the answer in the physical realm.