What If All Your Prayers Were Answered? - Part 1

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We all know that prayer is our lifeline to God and we are encouraged to cast all our care upon God, because he cares for us. We know God is intimately interested in our everyday lives and he rejoices when we rejoice; he mourns when we mourn. Jesus empathizes with all our weaknesses because he walked this earthly road like you and I do

So, it is normal and wise for us to pray about the circumstances of our lives—to bring all our concerns to God in prayer. As the old hymn says:

Oh, what peace we often forfeit, oh what needless pain we bear

All because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.

But I want us to consider the content of our prayers. If all your prayers were answered, would it make a difference for eternity? That’s the exact question my pastor posed, and I’ve been giving that a lot of thought. Do I pray primarily—not exclusively but primarily—about things that would make a difference for eternity, if my prayers were answered?

For example, how do you pray for your family and friends? Do you primarily pray for their spiritual condition? Do you pray for the believers to walk worthy of their calling? Do you pray that they will use their gifts to glorify God and do the good works he planned for them to do? If they are not yet believers, do you pray mostly that God will do whatever it takes for them to see their need of salvation?

That kind of praying is more important than their health, their financial problems, their success, even their happiness. Sure, we all want our family and friends to be happy, but maybe they need some tough times to bring them back to God. If all your prayers for your family and others were answered, would they maybe just have better grades at school, or better jobs, or more money, or nicer homes? Those are all quite nice and we can pray about them, but more importantly, if all your prayers for your family and friends were answered, would they start to live more wholeheartedly for Jesus?

I have a fairly large extended family; if my count is right, there are about 90 of us counting down from my Mom and Dad, including children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and their mates. Whew, that’s a lot of people. I think of the heritage handed to us by my parents—simple people living lives of integrity and honor to Jesus, a goodly heritage as the Bible describes it. And as I pray for all of this crew—with three more on the way—my first and most consuming prayer is that they will all walk worthy of the teaching and guidance they have received, that they will pass on to their children the lessons passed on to them, the truth handed to them. More than anything else, I pray for their spiritual welfare. That matters for eternity.

I encourage you to examine the content of your prayers for your family. Pray for their physical needs, their success, their health—yes, of course. But make it your habit to pray mostly and primarily for their spiritual condition, for their relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

How do you pray for the world—this huge world we live in? In the Bible, God’s people are urged to engage with the world around them and not to withdraw from it. That means we should always pray for things and people outside of our own personal circle.

Recently I intentionally reviewed the content of my prayers, and I realized that I often pray for health issues for people I know; I pray for increased financial support for this ministry; I pray for pastors at my church and my ministry there. But it became rather clear that my prayers were often limited to my world. How about you? Review what you’ve prayed for the past few days. Have your prayers primarily revolved around you and people you know?

God wants us to pray about the world around us. How do you do that? Well, first you become educated and aware of what’s happening outside your world. A few years ago along with a co-worker in my church, I became aware for the first time of the scourge of sex trafficking in our country and our city. I never knew how many women and girls were trapped in this horrific lifestyle. Once I began to see beyond my world to this tragic situation all around me, I started to pray about it, and that led to doing something about it—establishing a residential home for trafficked women called Naomi’s House.

That led me to start a ministry to women in our County jail, and that takes me into a world I never knew before. It expands my understanding of—and my prayers for—people outside my small world. When you start praying for world needs, I believe God will lead you to become involved in some way to make a difference in the world around you. And believe me, that will change you as much as the people and situations you pray for.

Someone has said to pray through the newspaper each day. Well, not many of us read newspapers anymore, but we should be informed about the world around us, and then pray specifically for that world. We read or hear about tragedies almost daily, don’t we? I think of the recent terrible hurricane in the Bahamas, the fire on a boat in California, the murders that happen in our cities—we should not only be informed but that information should lead us to pray for those situations and those people involved.

Several times when I’ve learned of some nearby tragedy, we have reached out here at The Christian Working Woman to provide some help to someone caught in that tragedy. For example, when Haiti was hit with that horrific earthquake in 2010, I was praying for our missionaries there, and I decided to contact them to see how we might help some woman there. They put us in touch with a single mom and her two daughters, whose very simple home was totally wiped out, and we began to help them rebuild and get their lives back to something normal. Then I learned that the oldest daughter wanted to become a doctor, so ever since 2010 we’ve been raising the funds necessary for Sandra to complete her education, and the good news is, she is serving her internship now and will be ready to take on her role as a doctor within the year.

You see, when you start praying about the world around you—no matter how remote it may seem—God will often put on your heart a way you can be a part of the solution, in the name and to the glory of Jesus.

So I challenge you to examine your prayer boundaries, and start pushing them further and further out into the world. When you hear or read about some tragic situation somewhere in the world, even though you have no personal connection with it, stop and pray about it. When you see evil being promoted in our country—such as abortion and same-sex marriage—pray about it. When you know of corruption in our government, our leaders, instead of complaining, pray about it.

Pray for the world in which you live. It is no accident that God determined you to live at this time in this world. And you can fulfill Jesus’ command to be salt and light in this world through prayer. Just imagine if every true Christ-follower prayed regularly for at least some of the issues we face in this world—from persecution of Christians in many countries, to homeless people, to those being killed in wars around the world—the list goes on and on. Imagine the power that would be unleashed in answer to our prayers. We should pray for the world beyond our worlds.

Then let me ask, what kind of prayers do you pray for yourself? As I look at the prayers of the Apostle Paul for other believers, I note that his prayers focused mostly on spiritual needs not physical needs. For example, here is what Paul prayed for the Christians in Ephesus:

I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people,and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strengthhe exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms (Ephesians 1:17-21).

Just imagine what would change in your life if you prayed this for yourself:

Lord, please give me the Spirit of wisdom and revelation; I want to know you better.
Lord, please open the eyes of my heart to know the great hope to which you have called me.
Lord, help me to understand your incomparable great power for me, the power of the Holy Spirit in me.

If God answered that prayer (which I’m assured he would), you would become wiser, which means you’d make fewer mistakes and better choices. Have you ever thought about the value of wisdom? Look back over your life and ask yourself what difference it would have made if you had prayed for wisdom way back when, and that wisdom from God would have changed some of the choices you made which weren’t so good. Praying for wisdom makes a difference for eternity. James tells us that if we lack wisdom, we should ask God because he gives wisdom generously to all (James 1:5). Do you pray earnestly and regularly for wisdom?

And if you prayed that prayer from Ephesians, you would also have truth revealed to you—revelations that open your eyes to wonderful truth you’ve never seen before. You would know God better and better, and Jesus said that this is eternal life, to know God and his Son, Jesus. You would be filled with great hope, getting rid of despair and discouragement. And you would have the great power of the Holy Spirit to enable you to do God’s will—and who knows where that would take you!

Can you get a glimpse of the power of praying for yourself in totally new ways, far more important than just your earthly or physical needs? You can pray about those, too, for sure, but pray beyond and above that.

So, I ask again, what difference would it make in eternity if all your prayers were answered? I hope you’ll seriously think about this question, and examine how you pray for yourself and others, and ask God to help you expand your prayer world. You know, you don’t have to be alone or in church or in a quiet place in order to pray. You can breathe prayers all day long as you see and hear of things or people who need prayer. You can pray with your eyes wide open and your mouth closed—just sending up quick prayers all through your day. What difference would it make if you prayed all through your day and expanded the world you pray for? I challenge you to do it and I promise you won’t regret it.

What If All Your Prayers Were Answered? – Part 1