5 Attitudes Of Effective Prayer

Zechariah doubted because he was a very old man, and his wife was a very old woman. In the Scripture, it says he told the angel, ‘I am an old man, and my wife is well along in years.’ Now, that man had diplomacy! You see, a man should never think of his wife as ‘old’.

As I said a moment ago, we need to let God work in His time. In verse 13, it says that the angel told Zechariah that his prayer ‘has been heard’. That is a past-tense word. God had already heard the prayers Zechariah prayed. But, it wasn’t until now that God had everything in place for the baby to be born. See, in His time, we find the perfect time.

Someone once said that they had tried prayer. They said they prayed regularly for two weeks and having received no answer at all, they said they then lost their faith in prayer. I say they did not lose their faith in prayer, but rather they lost their patience for prayer!

My son used to ask me if he could drive the car. I would tell him ‘not yet’, because he was only 7 years old. He had to grow and be prepared before he could properly handle a car. We need to grow and get prepared sometimes before we can handle the answer to the prayers we have already prayed.

Many times, we pray for something and then get aggravated at God, wanting Him to hurry up and do what we want. We have to understand that God wants very much to give us what we need and what we want, but because we are the sinners, He sometimes has to change us first, and that takes time. God is more interested in making you a solid Christian than He is making your life comfy and cozy.

For instance, if you are having financial difficulty, God may be telling you that He wants you to learn the right attitude about money before he makes more money available to you.

Okay, now what happens when you pray and pray and pray again, and you still see no answer in sight? What do you do then? You have faith that God is preparing the answer for you, and you just keep on praying. Pray with the knowledge that God will answer your prayers, and He will answer them in the best way for you.

In MARK 11, we are told to pray with the belief that we have already received the answer. It is all a matter of how solid your faith in God is. And remember that when God says, ‘Not yet’, that doesn’t necessarily mean ‘No’.

3. LET GOD ANSWER PRAYERS IN HIS WAY.

We talked about letting God answer your prayers in His time, not yours, but we must also realize that we must let Him answer them in His way, not your way.

In ISAIAH 55:8, God says,

‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways.’

Sometimes, God wants to answer your prayer in a much bigger way than you prayed for. Go back to Zechariah for a moment. What would have happened if God had answered their requests for a baby immediately? They would have had a little Jewish and they would have loved that baby dearly, but that would have been it. We see in this case that God had something else in mind.

He waited until the time came for Jesus Christ to be born, and then he let Zechariah and Elizabeth give birth to Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptist. That fulfilled Old Testament prophecy saying one would come before the Messiah, exalting His name. This is what I mean by letting God do things in His way. His ways are so much better than our ways.