Prayer Secret #1
Your Relationship With God
 his, in my opinion, is the #1
secret for being able to get more of your prayers answered
by God the Father. This particular secret is the first
step you will need to take before you can really expect to
have any kind of major success in your prayer life with
God the Father.
Here is the Scripture verse that will
give us this first major prayer secret:
"IF YOU ABIDE IN ME, AND MY WORDS ABIDE IN YOU, you
will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. By
this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so
you will be My disciples." (John 15:7)
Look very, very carefully at this verse to see exactly what
Jesus is trying to tell you. He is giving you two powerful
pieces of revelation in which to grasp if you want to be able
to get God the Father to answer more of your specific prayers.
Here are the two main pieces of revelation.
1. Establish a Personal Relationship With God
The first part of the first sentence - "If you abide in
Me" - is telling you that the very first thing that God is
wanting from you in order to be able to properly approach Him
for prayer is for you to establish a very strong personal
relationship with Him!
Jesus is using the word "abide." The word
abide means to "continue in a state or place, to
endure." What Jesus wants from us is that we be willing to
abide in Him, that we be willing to live in Him. Being willing
to abide in Jesus means that we have established a very good,
intimate, personal relationship with Him.
The #1 reason God created the human race was for
intimate fellowship. God has this incredible
love for us humans, and He wants more than anything else that
we approach Him and enter into this one-on-one, intimate,
personal relationship with Him.
If you really stop and think about this - what is one of the
greatest joys that a person can have this side of heaven? What
is the one thing that most humans long for? What is the one
thing that will make you cry when you see this portrayed at the
movie theatres?
It is the longing for a personal, intimate, love
relationship with a person of the opposite sex - the longing
for a true soul mate. Why? Because that one person, more than
any other person, is the one person who can really get to know
you. It is the one person who can become your best friend. It
is the one person who you can tell anything and everything
to.
It is the most unique of all human relationships. Some of
you have found this one true love in this life and others of
you have not. Those of you who have found this one true love
know exactly what I am talking about. Those of you who have not
found this one true love know the longing that you have to find
this one special person.
This same longing that we have to meet this one true soul
mate is the same longing that God has for all us. Except with
God, this longing for us is much more intense. The fact that
God would send down His one and only Son to our earth in the
flesh to physically die on a cross in order to bring us back to
Himself shows us more than anything else how much He really
does love all of us.
The best analogy that I can give you on this is the "best
friend analogy." God wants to become your best friend - over
your soul mate and over any other best friends you may have in
this life. He wants to be #1 in your life and He will not
settle for anything less. The Bible says that God the Father is
a jealous God - a consuming fire.
Some Christians believe that if they go to church once a
week, sing a few songs in church and pay their tithe, that they
are "in relationship" with God. However, God wants more than
this. He wants you 7 days of the week - not just one time a
week in your church.
He wants to be able to freely communicate with you 24/7. He
wants you to talk with Him just like you would talk to your
best friend. He wants dynamic, free flowing conversation with
you on anything you want to personally discuss with Him, no
matter how small or trivial it may seem to you. And He then
wants you to be open to listening to anything that He may have
to say to you.
What happens to some Christians is that they have not
established this kind of personal relationship with God, and
then when a crisis or emergency presents itself, it is already
too late to try to get God to answer their prayer.
Notice that Jesus starts the first sentence out
with the word "IF." IF you have established a personal
relationship with God, THEN you can approach Him with your
prayer requests, and THEN He will answer them.
Too many Christians attempt to use God. The only time they
ever approach God is when they need something. God thus has no
natural desire to answer any prayer request they may have
because they have never established any kind of true personal
relationship with Him.
One of the things that I feel like
the Holy Spirit has conveyed to me is that if you really
want to be able to get God to answer more of your prayers,
you have to create a desire in God to want to answer more
of your prayers. And the #1 way that you create a desire in
God to get Him to want to answer more of your prayer
requests is by establishing a good personal relationship
with Him.
The Parent-Child Analogy
The analogy the Holy Spirit gave me to understand all of
this was the "Parent-Child Analogy." Imagine you are the parent
and you have two small children. The one boy really loves you.
He has established a true loving personal relationship with
you. He wants to hang out with you. He comes home from school
and tells you everything that happened to him that day. He
tells you all the little things that may have gone right or
wrong during the day. He values your opinion.
When he gets older and more mature, all of sudden he wants
to hear more about you, your life and your problems. He wants
to know more about you, your past, why you do what you do and
why you think the way that you do. This child is truly abiding
in you, truly living in you. You feel like you and him are "one
in spirit." As a result of this close personal relationship,
you can read each other minds and thoughts. As you grow older,
your personal relationship deepens and keeps getting better and
better.
Then you have the other child. He could care less about you
and your personality. The only time he will ever approach you
is when he needs something. He will even go as far as to act
like he cares about you, but once he gets what he wants from
you, he is back to ignoring you until the next time he needs
something from you.
As he grows older, you grow farther and farther apart. When
he is finally able to leave home on his own, you never hear
from him unless he once again needs something from you. He
hardly ever calls or comes over.
Now if you are the loving father over these two children,
which of the two will you have a strong natural
desire to help out when they may need your help on
something? You will have no natural desire to help the one who
has been using you over all of those years.
However, with the child who has established a true, loving,
personal relationship with you, you will bend over backwards to
give that child anything and everything that he may need. Why?
Because he loves you for you! He doesn't love you for what you
can do for him. He loves you for the person that you are and
for the friend that you have become for him over all those
years.
In fact, your love for this loving son will be so great,
many of the times you will give him what he will need before he
will even ask you for it. Why? Because you are so in tune with
him, you will know what he will need sometimes before he will
even know what he will need. Then you will want to give it to
him before he will even ask you for it because your love for
him is so great. You have a very strong, natural desire to want
to make him happy - all because of the good personal
relationship that he has established with you over all those
years.
It is the exact same way with God the Father! Establish a
true, loving, personal relationship with God the Father and see
if your whole life doesn't do a complete 180! Nothing will move
God to want to move and work on your behalf as establishing
this kind of loving personal relationship with Him will!
However, one word of caution. God cannot be
tricked or duped. You cannot try and enter into this kind
of personal relationship with God in order to try and get
Him to give you all of your wants and desires. Your motives
must be pure!
You enter into a personal relationship with the
Lord because you want to get to know Him personally! You
don't enter into this kind of a personal relationship with
Him to see how much He can give you. You have to want God
for who He is - not for what He can do for you. The Bible
tells us to seek the face of God - not His
hand.
For those of you who have truly established this kind of
personal relationship with God, I'm sure you can testify that
this is truly the greatest experience that anyone of us can
have this side of heaven - that this one and only true God in
the entire universe can actually make direct contact with you,
communicate and talk directly with you, and establish a real
intimate personal relationship with you.
For those of you who have not really established this kind
of personal relationship with God, the one thing that I can
personally tell you is that there is absolutely nothing to be
afraid of. God will handle and relate to you on the level that
you are currently operating at with Him. This kind of intimate
personal relationship with the Lord is not built up overnight,
but over time.
God can satisfy and meet the deeper longings of your
soul and spirit that no human could ever reach! He can
truly give you a perfect, pure, and unconditional love that
no other person will be able to give you in this
life.
He will be able to love you better and deeper
than anyone else in your life - including the good natural
love that you can get from your parents, your children,
your marriage mates and some of your better
friends.
You can totally trust God because He is
completely and totally perfect in all of His ways. He will
not hurt you or harm you in any way. God has no dark side
to His personality, so He is completely trustworthy. He is
totally incapable of hurting you in any way.
Some Christians are afraid to go deeper with God in their
own personal relationship with Him because they have been
terribly hurt in other relationships - whether it be from their
parents, their lovers or some of their friends.
All humans are imperfect and are thus not capable of giving
you any kind of perfect true love. Since God is completely and
totally perfect in His very nature and in all of His ways -
then He, and only He, is the only One that can give you that
perfect, pure, true and unconditional love that you are really
looking for in this life.
2. The Bible
Now we come to the second secret that is in the above verse.
Note the second part of the first sentence then says, "My
words abide in you." I believe Jesus is telling us two
things in this sentence.
His "Words" are literally meaning His Words. If you
have established a good, loving, personal relationship with
God, then He will talk to you just like you will talk to Him.
And if He is talking to you, then His words will be abiding in
you! This will be as a direct result of the free flowing
dialogue that you will have with God as a result of having had
established a close personal relationship with Him.
The other meaning to His words abiding in you is that He is
referring to the Bible. If you really want to enter into a
close personal relationship with God, then you have to be
willing to spend some type of regular quality time in the
Bible. The Bible is the only true source that we have down here
on this earth where we can really learn all about God the
Father, His Son Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.
When you first enter into a true personal love relationship
with someone, the first natural desire you will have is that
you will want to get to know everything you can about this
person. You will want to know about all of their likes, their
dislikes, where they have come from and what they have been
through. And the only way that you can find all of this out
about them is by asking a lot of questions.
With God, the #1 way that you will learn about Him is to
read the Bible, because the Bible will tell you everything that
you will need to know about Him, His Son Jesus Christ and His
Holy Spirit.
You have to seek after knowledge about the Lord - and the
Bible is the #1 main source that we have on this earth that can
teach us about God and all of His ways.
Bottom Line
To summarize the revelation in the above Scripture verse in
one bottom line statement:
God is looking to establish a one-on-one, intimate, personal
love relationship with each one of us. This is done in two
ways:
- By establishing a direct, free-flowing and
spontaneous best friend relationship with God where you
commune and talk with Him on a regular and frequent basis
in the exact same way that you would with a best
friend.
- And by seeking after the knowledge of God - trying
to get to know all you can about Him by studying and
meditating on what is written in the Holy Bible.
I guarantee you that if you are willing to enter into both
of these realms with the Lord, your life will never be the same
again. This close, intimate, personal relationship that you can
enter into with the Lord will be the door opener that will
change the course of your entire life. The journey is there for
all who are willing to step into it!
 Click here for reprint information
Sinners
Prayer
Prayer Secret
#2 - Will of God
Prayer Secret
#3 - Prayers of the Righteous
Michael Bradley
Bible Teaching and
Bible Commentary,
Over 150 Free Bible
Lessons
Scripture taken from New King James
Version.
Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2005-2008 by Michael Bradley.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5
License.
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