Pray so much that your mind is like the mind of Jesus, for He lives in you and you in Him…for these are prayers that God answers.

After I delivered my sermon on the 15th of February 2009 of this month, someone asked me why I’d left out of my talk the way that God responds to prayer. I replied that I’d left it out because there is only so much that can fit in 1200 words; true, but I also left out the discussion of God and His response to our prayer because it is difficult… but when you do sort it out in your mind, you get back to where I was in that sermon on the 15th of February 2009.

When you first begin to think about it, you say to yourself “God is in charge of everything, and so He can answer any prayer without any problem.” And so he can, of course. But does He?

Then you say to yourself, “Of course He does not answer all prayers… only the ones that meet whatever criteria He uses to decide which prayers to answer.”

We think, as soon as we’ve said that, do we not, that we have a bit of an idea what those criteria may be?

Perhaps we are thinking of praying for something that is in a way selfish… “Oh Lord, please stop this nasty weather that is making life difficult for me…” Does God answer prayers like that? I know a story of a sailing ship caught in frightful weather, in danger from the wind as it was, with nearby another ship that would suffer terribly if there was a wind-shift, that vessel clearly visible to the captain of the first ship. He refused to pray for a wind-shift, for if his prayer were to be answered, sailors on the other ship would probably drown.

OK then, perhaps we have stumbled upon one of God’s criteria. What about: this as a possible criterion to be used by God in His selection process?

Draft rule 1:

No prayers of a selfish kind that are for oneself likely to be answered.

Let us think about the implications of that idea. When we stop and think, most prayers are selfish… in one way or another… because we are praying about something we want. Like for a son not to be killed on a motorbike, or for a mother to give birth safely, or for a bush fire not to destroy a home, or for an end to strife, or even for God to pour out His blessings on someone.

The Bible is quite clear: some ‘selfish’ prayers… that is to say, prayers by someone for what they personally need… do get answered. So ‘Draft rule’ 1 probably ought to be modified, into something like:

New Draft rule 1:

Occasionaly, a selfish prayer will be answered, but most will not be.

That is probably not the most useful of rules if you want to work out how to get prayer answered.

Then we all have the idea that the likelihood of a prayer being answered has somehow to do with the amount of faith we have: Jesus certainly commends faithful prayer… and answers it.

Draft rule 2:

Prayers with enough faith behind them get answered.

The trouble with that rule is the corollary: prayers without enough faith behind them do not get answered. Now that just will not do. We have come across family members distraught and full of guilt because their prayers for a child or a parent’s healing were not answered…

But if the corollary is not true, then probably the rule itself is suspect.

So, if the faith of one individual is only enough to move God to answer prayer occasionally, perhaps we ought to mobilize thousands? Is that not a part of the thinking behind ‘prayer chains’? To mobilize dozens of people to pray? We’ve done that, when kids were seriously ill, and all that prayer support was almost tangible, wonderful. I know I’m prayed for by many, and very much appreciate it. So can we elevate that idea to another draft rule?

Draft rule 3:

Prayers with enough people behind them get answered.

Well, no. I’m sure God does not look at the ‘hit counter’ of the celestial prayer web site and say ‘Pity, only 973 prayers in the last 24 hours, if it had been 983 I’d have answered it…” It is clearly a wonderful thing to have a lot of prayer for somebody for something, but it is not a numbers game… two or three are enough, so we are told.

It looks as though it is at the least very difficult to deduce what rules God uses for answering prayer or not answering it. Try this one:

Draft rule 4:

God decides for himself on every occasion how to answer prayer.

If that is the rule, then it is one that we cannot manipulate. Maybe that is why this seems to be the answer: God does not like to be manipulated, He’ll do what He does, and that is all there is to it. If that is true, then our job is to trust and obey: to pray because that is what we are told to do, and after that to accept that we leave the decision making about prayer entirely up to God.

Now that matches with the experience of thousands of Christians, who report that when they stop urging God to do something, and instead say ‘Thy will be done’; then they experience peace and the certainty of God’s love, in whatever ghastly situation they are in.

Now this is the point that we come to: it is much easier to see how prayer changes the person praying than it is to organize prayer so that ‘it works’. In fact, God being God, He’ll not submit to any system that manipulates Him into doing what we want. Unless of course, what we want is what He wants. To get into that situation requires a heck of a lot of change in the mind of the person doing the praying.

Now I think we are getting somewhere: try this one

Draft rule 5:

Pray so much that your mind is like the mind of Jesus, for He lives in you and you in Him…for these are prayers that God answers.

Then pray, and your prayers will be answered, for you have faith, and you are seeking what Jesus wants.

So really what we need to concentrate upon is the changes in the mind of the person who is doing the praying, and the rest will follow. There is no magic system, no way to organize prayer so that ‘it works’. The thing that matters is that we do pray, and as we pray so we alter the kind of mind we have, and as that happens, so we become better able to pray; these are all the things I was talking about in that sermon on the 15th of February 2009.

Now, God pours out blessings… He loves to do that… and His blessings include answered prayer. Sometimes His blessings are in the form of technical advances, He gives us Penicillin (it was always there, in the mould on the fruit)… and sometimes His blessings are simply miracles. And sometimes his blessings are the certainty of His love for us, something in our mind.

Blessings get poured out on good communities… and on bad too, they all get the rain in season. (Blessings are not necessarily bestowed predictably on individuals, for individuals are very variable in their nature and in their external circumstances at the best of times: that is a part of what the book of Job is about).

I am absolutely certain that blessings are poured out on societies where many people are praying with the mind of Jesus… people whose prayers are answered. Those blessing include plenty of jobs, happy families, peace and prosperity… and full churches. Every ‘revival I’ve read about has had its small groups of people praying for revival for years and years before suddenly revival is there.