There was once a small town which had no liquor stores. Eventually, though, someone built a nightclub right on the main street through town. This so upset the members in one of the churches that they conducted several all-night prayer meetings. They asked the Lord to “burn down that den of iniquity.” A short time later, lightning struck the tavern, and it was completely destroyed by fire.
The owner, knowing how the church people had prayed, sued them for damages. His attorney claimed that their prayers had caused the loss. The congregation, on the other hand, hired a lawyer and fought the charges.
After much deliberation, the judged declared, “It is the opinion of this court that wherever the guilt may lie, the tavern owner is the one who really believes in prayer while the church members do not!” (M. R. DeHaan)
There are a whole lot of Christians like those church members. They don’t really believe in prayer. Oh, they pray, because somebody somewhere told them they ought to, but they don’t really expect their prayers to make much of a difference.
That was certainly not the experience of God’s people in the Bible. When they prayed, things happened. For example, when Moses prayed, the Bible says that God actually “changed His mind.”
Would you like to see how you could change the mind of God? Would you like to see how your prayers could really make a difference? Then I invite you to turn with me in your Bibles to Exodus 32, Exodus 32, where we see how Moses changed the mind of God. He was on Mount Sinai, receiving the Law from God Himself, when terrible things started happening down in the valley below.
Exodus 32:1-4 When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, “Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.” Aaron answered them, “Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.” So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.” (NIV)
That calf was actually a young bull in its first strength, in its day, a symbol of fertility and sexual prowess.
Exodus 32:5 When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, “Tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord” (NIV) – i.e. to YHWH.
Aaron has the audacity to call this bull by God’s personal name, YHWH!
Exodus 32:6 So the next day the people rose early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings. Afterward they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry (NIV) – i.e., in sex play.
This was a drunken orgy in the name of worship. The people of God are involved in gross immorality. And as a result, they have invited the wrath of God. God’s anger is burning against their sin.
Exodus 32:7 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt. (NIV)
God is about to disown his own people. Notice, He says to Moses, they’re YOUR people. God doesn’t want them anymore.
Exodus 32:8-10 They have been quick to turn away from what I commanded them and have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. They have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and have said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.’ “I have seen these people,” the Lord said to Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people. Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.” (NIV)
God wants to destroy them and start all over with Moses. Frankly, these people don’t have a prayer.
And perhaps, some of you find yourselves in a similar situation. Either because of your own doing or someone else’s, you find yourself in dire straits. Your situation is desperate, and you see no way out.
Somebody once said, “You know it’s going to bad day when: You see a “60 Minutes” news team in your office. You call Suicide Prevention and they put you on hold. You turn on the news and they’re showing emergency routes out of the city. Your twin sister forgets your birthday. Your car horn goes off accidentally and remains stuck as you follow a group of Hell’s Angels on the freeway. Your boss tells you not to bother to take off your coat. Your income tax check bounces. You put both contact lenses in the same eye.” (James S. Hewett, Illustrations Unlimited, 1988, p.18)
Maybe you’ve had some bad days like that recently. You’re desperate and you see no way out. You haven’t got a prayer. You’re at the end of your rope, and you don’t know what to do. So how do you pray when you haven’t got a prayer? How do you pray when you’re desperate? How do you pray when the situation seems hopeless?
Well, I suggest you pray like Moses did here in Exodus 32. When God was about to destroy the people of Israel, Moses prayed a prayer that stayed the hand of God and saved the people. Look at his prayer, starting in verse 11
Exodus 32:11 But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God. “O Lord,” he said, “why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? (NIV)
Do you see what Moses is doing here? He is reminding God that they are HIS people. God had told Moses (vs.7), “They’re YOUR people, whom YOU brought up out of Egypt.” And Moses says, “Oh no, they’re not! Lord, they’re YOUR people, whom YOU brought out of Egypt.”
He appeals to God on the basis of their relationship to Him and asks God to remember HIS people. And that’s what we must do if our prayers are going to make a difference. We must…
ASK GOD TO REMEMBER HIS PEOPLE.
We must appeal to God on the basis of our relationship to Him. We must remind God that HIS interests, HIS people, are at stake.
God paid a high price for our redemption. God paid a high price to set us free from slavery to sin and Satan. God paid a high price so He could adopt us into His family. He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16). Now, He certainly didn’t save us at such a high cost just to let us go, just to let us perish. And that’s the basis for our appeal. We have no merit of our own, only that God chose us to be His children.
A man went to the county fair with his children, and he bought a whole roll of tickets for the various rides at the fair. As each child approached a ride, they held out their hand to get a ticket from their father.
At one ride, after all his children had received their tickets, a strange boy, whom the father had never seen, held out his hand expecting a ticket. Do you think that father gave him a ticket?
He could have, but probably not. Why? Because that boy did not belong to the father, so he had no right to expect anything from that father.
In the same way, only those who are children of the Heavenly Father, through faith in His Son, can expect to get anything from Him. Only those who have trusted Christ, and are therefore children of God, have the right to ask and receive things from Him. Others may ask. Others may pray, and God MIGHT answer their prayers. But only those who trust Christ can EXPECT God to respond to their prayers, because only they are His children; only they belong to Him; only they are His people.
The Bible is very clear: “To all who received [Christ], to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12). The rest are simply “the children of this world” (Luke 16:8; 20:34) or “the sons of disobedience” (Colossians 3:6). So when you pray, remind God that HIS interests are at stake. 1st, Ask God to remember HIS people. Then 2nd…
ASK GOD TO REMEMBER HIS PURPOSE.
Ask God to remember His number one priority – and that is to be glorified and honored above everything else. You see, God desires to magnify Himself, not because He is some kind of egomaniac, who needs to have His ego stroked, No! God desires to magnify Himself, because He and He alone is truly worthy of all praise, and He knows that when we magnify anything or anyone else, it distorts our values and messes us up. So when you pray, remind God that His glory is at stake. That’s what Moses did. Look at vs.12.
Exodus 32:12 Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people. (NIV)
Do you see what Moses is doing here? He’s saying, “Lord, if you destroy YOUR people, the Egyptians will think you’re an evil God. You’ll be discredited among them. Lord, YOUR glory is at stake here.”
Moses asks God to remember His purpose, and that’s what we must do if our prayers are going to have any effect on God.
A pastor watched a young boy praying very fervently in church, but when he approached the boy, the pastor was surprised to hear him saying, “Tokyo, Tokyo, Tokyo.”
After the boy finished praying, the pastor spoke to him. “Son,” he said. “I was very pleased to see you praying so fervently, but tell me why did you keep saying, ‘Tokyo, Tokyo, Tokyo?’”
The boy replied, “Well, you see sir, I just took a geography exam, and I have been asking the Lord to make Tokyo the capitol of France.”
We laugh, but how often do our prayers resemble that prayer? James 4:3 says, “When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.” God cannot and will not answer selfish, self-centered prayers. But He can and He will answer prayers that bring Him glory. When God’s glory is our primary motivation, i.e., when we want God’s glory more than anything else in our prayer, then God is pleased to give us what we ask for.
Andrew Murray put it this way: “The essential element in our petitions must be that the glory of the Father be the aim and end, the very soul and life of our prayer… How humbling that so often there is earnest prayer for someone or something in which the thought of our joy or our pleasure was far stronger than any yearning for God’s glory. No wonder there are so many unanswered prayers… “He that seeks God’s glory will see it in answer to prayer, and he alone.” (Andrew Murray, The Believers School of Prayer, pp.115-118).
George Muller, a 19th Century British pastor, understood this principle. On one occasion, he wanted to more than triple the size of his orphanage from 300 to 1,000 orphans. This meant building another house for 700 orphans and coming up with the means to support them.
At that time he wrote in his diary: “The Lord’s honor is the principle point with me in this whole matter; and just because this is the case, if He would be more glorified by not going forward in this business, I should by His grace be perfectly content to give up all thought about another orphan house… My honest purpose is to glorify God. Therefore, I expect to be guided aright… That He may be looked at, magnified, admired, trusted in, relied on at all times is my aim in this service, and so particularly in this intended enlargement” (Andrew Murray, The Believers School of Prayer, p.195-198).
George Muller was convinced that enlarging his orphanage would bring glory to God. So he asked God, and God alone, for the thousands of dollars it would take, and God provided it miraculously!
Why do we ask God for things? Is it for our glory or HIS? Is our major concern GOD’S honor? Do we want people to look to Him, to magnify Him, to trust Him? If that’s the case, then God will be glad to give us what we ask for. But if we’re asking God for stuff simply to make us look good, then forget it. God cannot and will not answer selfish, self-centered prayers.
Let me quote Andrew Murray again. He says, “There is nothing that in our more spiritual desires so effectively hinders God in answering as this: praying for our own pleasure or glory. Prayer to have power and prevail must ask for the glory of God. One can only pray thus as he is living for God’s glory” (Andrew Murray, The Believers School of Prayer, p.197).
So how do you pray when you haven’t got a prayer? How do you pray in such a way that it makes a real difference? You do what Moses did. Remind God that HIS interests are at stake. 1st, Ask God to remember His people. 2nd, Ask God to remember His purpose. And 3rd…
ASK GOD TO REMEMBER HIS PROMISE.
Remind God of what He said and ask Him to keep His Word. That’s what Moses did.
Exodus 32:13-14 Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.’ ” Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened. (NIV)
Literally, God changed His mind. Moses’ prayer changed the course of history and kept God from doing what He told Moses He was going to do.
Do you want your prayers to change the course of history? Then like Moses ask God to remember His people; ask God to remember His purpose; and ask God to remember His promise.
Mark Moring, in the first issue of the Promise Keeper’s magazine, Men of Integrity, talks about a time when he snuck into his boys’ room to say good night. He and his wife had just returned from their Bible study group and it was late. Mark’s young sons, Peter and Paul, had been in bed for at least an hour, but when Mark opened the door, he heard one of them say, “Dad, can I have some ice cream?”
Mark said, “No, Peter, it’s late, way past bedtime.”
“But Dad, you promised,” Peter replied.
Peter had asked for ice cream earlier in the day, but they didn’t have any. So Mark had told him, “I’ll get some for you later, I promise.”
Well, dinner came and went. They cleaned up the kitchen. The boys picked up their toys. The sitter arrived, and Mark and his wife left for Bible study.
They had forgotten all about the ice cream, but Peter hadn’t.
So, even though it was after 10 o’clock, Mark hopped in the car, drove to the convenience store, got a half-gallon, and hurried home to enjoy chocolate-vanilla swirl ice cream with his son. (Mark Moring, Men of Integrity, Vol.1; No.1)
Would our Heavenly Father do no less? No way! So like that little boy, just ask God to keep His promise, and He will!
But somebody says, “That limits my prayers. That reduces what I can ask for.” No it doesn’t. On the contrary, it actually expands your prayers.
A little girl approached her father and said, “Father, I want a nickel.” The father took out his wallet and offered her a clean, crisp, 5-dollar bill. But the little girl, not knowing what it was, refused to take it. “I don’t want that,” she said. “I want a nickel.”
How often do we ask our Heavenly Father for a nickel (like the things on our own prayer lists) when He would give us so much more (hold up a Bible)? How often do we ask God for trinkets when He would give us treasures? Asking God to keep His Word doesn’t limit our prayers. It expands them beyond anything we could ask or think.
Do you want God to answer YOUR prayers? Then pray like Moses did and remind God that HIS interests are at stake. Ask God to remember His people. Ask God to remember His purpose. And ask God to remember His promise. Then watch out! Your prayer just might change the course of history.
