Have Faith | Secret of a Prayer Warrior

 

2. Have Faith

In the book of Hebrews we are told that there is one basic unvarying requirement for all who would approach God:

“Without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him” (Hebrews 11:6, niv).

Faith is an essential condition for approaching and being accepted by God. Anyone who comes to Him must believe.

Furthermore, we are required to believe two things: that God exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him. Most people do not have trouble believing that God exists. If that were all, we would meet the condition of faith. But that is not all. We are also required to believe that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him.

Do you believe that? You may say, “Well, I try, but perhaps I am not seeking Him too well. I don’t know much about doctrine or theology.” I have good news for you. Faith of this kind is not primarily concerned with doctrine or theology.

Rather it is about relationship. It involves trust in God as a Person. It is confidence in His character, His reliability. In fact, get away from the thought of theology when you approach God in faith.

This is one of the reasons why this book starts with the importance of having a right picture of God—because that is what generates faith. We believe in God’s goodness. We believe in His faithfulness. We believe in His reliability. This also helps us understand why the Bible teaches that unbelief is sinful. Unbelief casts aspersions on God’s character. It paints a picture of God that is false and unattractive.

This requirement of faith is universal for any way of approaching God, but it is applied particularly to prayer. Look again, for instance, at Matthew 21:22: “All things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive” (nasb). The key word is there in the middle: believing. Further, in 1 John 5:14 we read:

“This is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us” (kjv). If we have confidence in God Himself as a Person, confidence in His goodness, confidence in His character, then we can believe that He hears us.

How can we acquire the kind of faith that approaches God with confidence? Thank God that the New Testament does not merely tell us that we have to have faith; it also tells us how to get it. We find this in Romans 10:17: “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ” (nasb).

This is a key verse for a life of prayer. It is, in fact, the verse that got me out of the hospital after that long year of illness. I really owe my health and my long life and my strength to the

lessons about faith in this verse.

When I submitted myself to the Lord’s will, I knew that His will was for me to be restored to health. I was lying there realizing that if I had faith God would heal me. But every time I came to that realization, my next thought was, I don’t have faith.

Then one day the Holy Spirit directed me to Romans 10:17: “So faith comes from hearing.” Suddenly I laid hold of two words: Faith comes. If you do not have it, you can get it!

How does faith come? Faith comes from hearing. It comes from listening to God. You see, prayer is not just talking to God; prayer is two-way communication with God. It is holding intimate personal conversation with Him. And actually, of the two, what God has to say is much more important than what we have to say.

God led me to Proverbs 4:20–22, what I came to refer to as “God’s medicine bottle.” I purposed to take God’s Word as my medicine three times daily, after meals. After each main meal I would get away by myself, open my Bible, bow my head and say, “God, Your Word tells me that these words of Yours will be health to all my flesh. I take them now as my medicine in Jesus’ name.” In that unhealthy climate of the Sudan, God’s Word brought me perfect permanent health.

Jesus told us that our Father already knows what we need (see Matthew 6:8). When we come to God telling Him we need things, we are not telling Him something that He does not already know. Prayer is getting into that attitude and relationship with God where you know you will receive what you need when you ask Him. That kind of faith comes from hearing what God has to say.

We read in the Bible that God appeared one night to David’s son Solomon in a dream and said, “What do you want? I’ll give it to you.” Solomon gave a wise answer. He said, “Give Your servant a discerning heart.” That is the English translation, but the Hebrew actually says a “hearing heart.” There is nothing more precious than a heart that hears God (see 1 Kings 3–4).

To help tune your heart to hear, I suggest that you pray with your Bible open. In fact, I suggest that you never begin a serious time of prayer without first reading your Bible. Why?

First, because God speaks primarily through His Word. If you want to hear God, that is most often how you will hear Him.

Second, because anything that does not agree with the Bible is not from God. Sometimes deceiving voices represent themselves as the voice of God, but they are not.

The first epistle of John explains this:

This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him.

1 John 5:14–15, NASB

The basis of successful praying is knowing that we are praying according to the will of God. The will of God is revealed primarily in the Bible. Thus, when we hear what God has to say, we grow in faith that our requests will be answered.

3. Pray in the Name of Jesus

Our next condition for answered prayer is very straightforward. The Bible tells us that we must pray in the name of Jesus. Let’s look at just one example. Note also that these verses show how our relationship to God in the name of Jesus works both ways —in our asking and in God’s giving. “Truly, truly, I say to you, if you ask the Father for anything in My name, He will give it to you. Until now you have asked for nothing in My name; ask and you will receive” (John 16:23–24, nasb).

What is implied when we pray in the name of Jesus? I suggest three truths.

First of all, when we pray in the name of Jesus we are coming to God on the basis of what Jesus has done on our behalf. First Peter 3:18 says: “For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God” (nasb). Jesus paid the penalty for our sin when He died in our place. He also took our guilt and our condemnation, which opened the way for us to come to God without feeling guilty or ashamed. We now have the right of access to God.

In Ephesians 2:13, Paul says: “But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ” (nasb). The blood of Christ is the visible, eternal evidence of the sacrifice that Jesus made on our behalf. When we come in the name of Jesus, we come in the merits of the blood that He shed on our behalf.

We will discuss more thoroughly the blood of Jesus in chapter 7. Here let me just refer to Hebrews 12, which says this about the heavenlies: “You have come to . . . the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, . . . and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks better than the blood of Abel” (verses 22, 24, nasb).

This gives a beautiful comparison based on an incident in the Old Testament. You will recall from the story in Genesis that Cain murdered his brother, Abel. God spoke to Cain and said, “What have you done?” And when Cain pleaded ignorance and innocence, God said, “The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to Me from the ground, crying for vengeance and justice” (see Genesis 4).

Here the writer of Hebrews says that the blood of Jesus is sprinkled on our behalf in the heavenlies, and it speaks better things than Abel’s blood. In other words, the blood of Jesus is speaking of reconciliation, mercy, forgiveness, atonement.

When I find it hard to pray, one of my greatest consolations is that even if I do not know what to say, the blood of Jesus is always speaking in heaven on my behalf. That is part of what it means when I pray in the name of Jesus and recognize that I am coming to God on the basis of what Jesus has done for me.

The second truth that is implied when we pray in the name of Jesus is that we come on the basis of who Jesus Himself is, not who we are.

The writer of Hebrews says that we come before the Father with Jesus as our great High Priest:

Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, . . . and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith.

Hebrews 10:19, 21–22, NASB In addition, John wrote: “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1, nasb). The word translated “advocate” means literally “someone called in alongside to help us and to plead our cause for us.”

When we come in the name of Jesus, then we come with Him as our High Priest and our Advocate. As our High Priest, He offers up our prayers to God on our behalf—and because they are offered up by Jesus, we know that they reach God. As our Advocate, He speaks directly to God on our behalf. He pleads our cause better than we could ever do ourselves. When we make mistakes and errors and even sin, we do not need to stay away from God and feel ashamed. We can come to God freely because of Jesus.

The third aspect to praying in the name of Jesus is this: It recognizes the relationship that we have with God through Jesus.

Look at what Paul wrote:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. Ephesians 1:3–6, NASB

God had an eternal purpose in His heart and mind before time ever began or Creation ever took place. God foreknew us and determined that through Jesus Christ He would adopt us into His family as His children. All this was worked out in time and human history when Jesus came and died on our behalf. our behalf.

The New King James Version translates that sixth verse this way: “To the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.” I love that phrase accepted in the Beloved. That is what we are: We are accepted by God as His children when we come to Him in the Beloved, Jesus Christ. We are not accepted because of what we were but because of what Jesus is.

One of the biggest psychological and emotional problems of our contemporary culture is the problem of rejection. So many people go through life feeling rejected, unwanted, second-rate —perhaps because of a wrong attitude of their parents or perhaps because of a wrong attitude of a husband or a wife in a

marriage situation. Probably there is no greater wound than the wound of rejection. But the first step to healing that wound is to realize that when we come to God in Jesus, we are not rejected. God never rejects His children. We are accepted in the Beloved, and that makes all the difference in the way we come to God.

Once we come to God through Jesus on this basis, wonderful benefits are made available to us. First of all: “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us

all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?” (Romans 8:32, nasb). Is that not a marvelous phrase? With Him, with Jesus, God will freely give us all things. But notice that it all depends on being with Him. When we are with Jesus we are entitled to everything as God’s children. Without Him we have no claim upon Him at all.

Then this: “My God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19, nasb). This means that no need of ours will go unsupplied; the supply comes from God’s riches. I believe that God is rich enough to supply the needs of all His children, but the supply is in Christ Jesus.