Did God answer your prayers? Did you know that ALL your prayers can be answered? The secrets to get your prayers answered is to pray God's prayers in Gods way! The Bible clearly teaches us how we must pray in order to get our prayers answered.
Matthew 9:37-38
37 He said to his disciples, “The harvest is great, but the workers are few. 38 So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest; ask him to send more workers into his fields.”
Since Bruce Wilkinson published his book "The Prayer of Jabez" there has been a renewed emphasis on praying prayers from the Bible. These are prayers that God promises to answer. There has been a general focus in published books and magazines on such scriptural prayers that get results.
Wherever Christians are sent into the field, there always seems to be a shortage of helpers. Not everyone is answering the call to work in the field of the lost. As a result, missionaries comes to your church and pleads for more people on the mission field, the evangelist comes to your church pleads for more people to witness for Christ in places like the inner city. They deeply express how many people are needed to help the helpless and and the hungry. The pastor expresses the needs for Sunday school teachers and Saturday workers.
The shortage of workers, of laborers is really a prayer shortage! We need to be praying the "Prayer Of The Harvest ''.
Be sure of one thing, when we pray the "Prayer Of The Harvest"- God answers!
There are many examples out there that can illustrate God’s working in response to prayers for more workers.
In 1999 I was a worker in our church’s effort to feed the people who were homeless and living under bridges. Our leader asked us to pray for this need. Among the things we prayed for was individuals that could take their Saturdays and give them to the effort for our church to work on filling the needs of the homeless. The response was overwhelming. I had almost more workers showing up than we knew what to do with.
We prayed for individuals to consider working more hours , Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays. We almost got more workers than we needed. When we pray God's prayers - we get God's answers!
How did we "do it" and why did it work?
Praying in agreement
Matthew 18:19
19 “I also tell you this: If two of you agree here on earth concerning anything you ask, my Father in heaven will do it for you.
There were "two or three" are praying.
Matthew 18:20
20 For where two or three gather together as my followers, I am there among them.”
Praying by name for specific people
John 10:3
3 The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep recognize his voice and come to him. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.
The prayers prayed were as much as possible, not our own judgment but the Lord's leading.
Romans 8:26
26 And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groaning that cannot be expressed in words.
Persistant Prayers
Luke 18:1-8
Parable of the Persistent Widow.
One day Jesus told his disciples a story to show that they should always pray and never give up. 2 “There was a judge in a certain city,” he said, “who neither feared God nor cared about people. 3 A widow of that city came to him repeatedly, saying, ‘Give me justice in this dispute with my enemy.’ 4 The judge ignored her for a while, but finally he said to himself, ‘I don’t fear God or care about people, 5 but this woman is driving me crazy. I’m going to see that she gets justice, because she is wearing me out with her constant requests!’”
6 Then the Lord said, “Learn a lesson from this unjust judge. 7 Even he rendered a just decision in the end. So don’t you think God will surely give justice to his chosen people who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? 8 I tell you, he will grant justice to them quickly! But when the Son of Man returns, how many will he find on the earth who have faith?”
The prayers that God answers
If you find that you need more help in your Christian ministry/ effort why not pray specific about it each week until the problem is solved? Why not "beseech the Lord of the Harvest" who is eager to see His Harvest come in?
Pray God's prayers - and get God's answers!
Notes
1. The Prayer of Jabez: Breaking Through to the Blessed Life is a book by Bruce Wilkinson published in 2000 by Multnomah Books as the first book in the "BreakThrough" book series. It is based on the Old Testament passage 1 Chronicles 4:9-10. Ref. wikipedia.org
All referances to the Bible is from New Living Translation.