Answered Prayer…#2 Fly by your Believe-O-Meter and ignore your senses.
December 09, 2009
Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them. (Mark 11:24)We must believe that we received the thing when we prayed. Believing that you received isn’t just something you do for 5 seconds at the moment of prayer and then forget, it’s a process. That’s why I like to compare it to growing a garden. Sometimes this process happens so quickly you don’t even realize a process is involved, but other times the process may take place over weeks, or months and often years, just like growing a garden. If we want to receive we need to learn to stick with the process until the answer comes. This process involves believing before, during and after our prayer.
Before you pray, believe you will receive.
Before we pray, as we come before God to ask for something, we must believe that we will receive. We must expect God’s answer to be yes. We must be confident that God will give us what we ask. Can you see how that would make it easier to believe that you receive the thing when you pray?
Most people think the key to prayer is figuring out how to convince God to give us the thing. So we cry, or bargain, or nag, or get a million people to help us beg hoping that somehow we’ll hit on the combination that unlocks God’s penny-pinching, tight wad fist. But Jesus taught that God wants to answer our prayers. Jesus taught that God’s “Yes.” to our prayer is preordained and that as a result we should be overflowing with confidence when we pray. Jesus said,
7 Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: 8 For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. (Matthew 7:7, 8,).and:
23 And in that day ye shall ask me nothing. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you. 24 Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full. (John 16:23, 24,).So as we come before God in prayer we should be expecting to receive.
When you pray, believe you receive.
Then, when we pray, we must believe that we receive the thing. If I ask God for a job, Jesus says, “Believe that you got the job when you prayed and you shall have the job.” If I ask God for healing I must believe, before there is any change in my body, that I am healed and Jesus says I shall have my healing. As the Apostle John put it, we should know that we have the things we asked for.
14 And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: 15 And if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him. (1 John 5:14, 15,).I don’t mean this in a figurative sense. I mean you must really “know” that you have the thing before you see any change in your circumstances or in your body. How to get to the place where you know that is what I’m showing you in this series of lessons.
Keep believing you got the thing when you prayed.
Finally as we look back on our prayer we need to keep believing that we got the thing when we prayed. As the book of Hebrews put’s it:
35 Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompence of reward. 36 For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise. (Hebrews 10:35, 36,).So I must continue to believe that I got my healing when I prayed, even though I feel no better, until I am actually healed. Can you see that this is what it means to believe you received? Can you see that this is what it means to walk by faith?
But how do I do this believing stuff?
But how do I do this? How do I do all this believing stuff? First off, when Jesus tells us to “believe” we received the thing, he’s letting us know that our senses will be saying we didn’t receive it. If our eyes agreed that we had the bicycle we would, in fact, have the bicycle and there’d be no need to believe. So, while my eyes are saying, “Where is it?”, while my touch is telling me that I did not receive, while my reason assures me that nothing has changed, I must believe that I have the thing.
How can I believe this? How can I possibly believe I have something while my eyes are saying I don’t have it? What grounds do I have for believing I have something my senses insist I don’t have? What is telling me I do have it? Where does the belief, ‘I have the thing!’ come from? To believe this I obviously need some source of information other than my eyes. I need some source of information that allows me to know I have the thing even though my eyes say I don’t have it. Where does this information come from?
Maybe this illustration that Ken Copeland uses will help explain what I am saying. Airplane pilots sometimes experience what is called spatial disorientation. This usually happens in clouds or at night when the pilot can’t see the horizon, and it can result in pilots crashing their planes into the ground while thinking they are flying straight and level. Sometimes pilots will even fly upside down thinking they are flying right side up. This disorientation occurs because the pilot receives conflicting information from different senses. The eyes are saying one thing but the vestibular organs inside the ear, which give you information about your position and movement are saying something else. The rule for pilots flying in clouds or at night is to ignore their senses and fly by their instruments. Put differently, pilots are supposed to ignore what their eyes are saying and believe what their instruments are saying about their situation. Pilots are supposed to go by what they know from their instruments not what they know from their eyes.Ignore your senses and fly by your instruments.
That’s what Jesus is telling us to do, ignore your senses and believe your instruments. That’s what he means by believe that you received them when you prayed. To receive answers to prayer we need to ignore our eye-o-meter, our ear-o-meter, and our touch-o-meter and fly by our believe-o-meter. My believe-o-meter tells me I received the thing when I prayed, even while my eyes are saying I don’t have it. My eyes say I don’t have a job but I check my believe-o-meter and it says I got the job when I prayed. My doctor says I’m not any better but I check my believe-o-meter and it says I was healed when I prayed. Great! Now all I need is a believe-o-meter. If I had a believe-o-meter I could do what Jesus says, I could determine to fly by it instead of by sight. The only problem Greg is, I DON'T HAVE A BELIEVE-O-METER!
Your heart is your believe-o-meter.
Your heart, your spirit is your believe-o-meter. When Jesus says believe that you received it he means know in your heart that you received it. In the Bible “believing” means something more like what we would ordinarily call knowing. When I see something with my physical eyes I know it. When I see something with my spiritual eyes the Bible calls that believing. From the point of view of our senses it is believing, it is faith, but from the point of view of our spirit it is something we know to be true. I don’t believe Jesus Christ rose from the dead, I know he rose from the dead but this knowing is not based on any thing I perceived with my senses, it is based on something I perceive in my heart, my spirit. When I “see” something with my spiritual eyes the Bible calls that believing. When I know something in my heart that is what the Bible means by believing. The Bible uses seeing, hearing, knowing, revelation, wisdom, light, enlightenment as metaphors or synonyms for believing. Here’s a scripture that illustrates that:
39 Therefore they could not believe, because that Esaias said again, 40 He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart; that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them. (John 12:39, 40, ).Why couldn’t the people believe? Because, “…he hath blinded their eyes…” I’m pretty sure most of the people Jesus was talking to had physical eyes and they hadn’t been blinded. You can tell he means something other than physical eyes because he pairs blind eyes with hardened heart. He’s repeating the same idea with different words, so he’s not talking about our physical eyes but the eyes of our heart. John says they couldn’t believe because they couldn’t see with the eyes of their heart. John says they couldn’t believe because they couldn’t understand with their heart. So believing is seeing with the eyes of your heart. Believing is understanding with your heart. The thing we believe with, the source of our believing, the organ we believe with, our sense for believing, our believe-o-meter is our heart, our spirit.
How do I read my Believe-o-meter?
But if my believe-o-meter is my heart how do I read it? How do I know what my heart is saying? How do I know what my heart says about my prayer? First, if you want to be able to read your believe-o-meter, your heart, your spirit, you need to STOP IGNORING IT.
Looking back at what John said about the people who could not believe Jesus, why couldn’t they believe? Because their hearts were hardened. You could say they couldn’t read their believe-o-meter because their hearts were hardened. Our hearts can be hardened too. Every time God speaks to us and we ignore him we are hardening our heart. When we disobey the voice of our conscience we are hardening our heart.
It’s impossible to believe while ignoring your heart. It’s impossible to believe God answered your prayer while hardening your heart to God. You won’t be able to hear God’s “Yes” to your prayer if you close your spiritual ears to everything else God says. That’s why most Christians don’t receive what they ask for when they pray. They can’t believe because they have hardened their hearts. Most Christians can’t believe they received when they prayed because they choose to ignore their heart, their believe-o-meter, their spirit, in every other area of their life. To receive answers to prayer you have to learn to walk in the spirit, to live a spirit directed life, to be spiritual. Well, you can’t expect to be a spiritual giant when you need answers to prayer if you’ve worked hard to keep from being a spiritual giant everywhen else.
But here’s the good news, at least now you know you have a believe-o-meter. Now you know where to look to determine what happened with your prayer. The same spirit that tells you, “Read your Bible.” is the same spirit that tells you, “You’ve got the thing.” That voice that says, “Go to church.” is the voice that will tell you, “The job is yours.” The same heart that urges you not to lie, is the same heart that lets you know, the finances are yours. The same believe-o-meter that tells you, “Love your mother-in-law.” is the believe-o-meter that tells you, “You’ve got the finances.” The same voice that tells you “Be patient and kind.” when somebody cuts you off in traffic … What you never hear that voice? Well then, unstop the ears of you heart and start listening for it. If you want to learn to fly by your believe-o-meter instead of your senses, STOP IGNORING IT!
Next time I want to show you how to tune in to the voice of your spirit, how to turn up the volume of your heart, how to hear your spirit more clearly when it comes to prayer, how to get to that place where you know in your heart you have the thing, but before we get to that let me leave you with this.
When Becky and I were first married she came home one day with a bite on the front of her neck. It looked like a mosquito bite but larger. It itched and so she scratched it and it turned into a sore. After that it began to grow. As it grew it looked more like a circle and the circle kept getting bigger and bigger.Well, we attended a church that taught that God answered prayer and that God healed so Becky prayed and asked God to heal her. This incident started in October. Well, the thing kept getting bigger and as it grew it became thicker as well. It got so bad at one point that the circle reached from the middle of her neck to the top of her head passing over part of her face. It was so thick that a grocery store clerk asked Becky if she’d gotten that scar from a surgery. She was embarrassed that anybody would see it on her face.
Becky kept trying to believe that she had received her healing when she prayed but nothing changed. She kept thanking God that she was healed but the thing just got bigger.Finally about June of the next year, after school was out she said to herself, “I’d better do something about this.” She began by listening to a healing tape of Papa Hagin’s and reading Dodie Osteen’s book, Healed of Cancer. Dodie had included a list of scriptures at the back of her book that she had meditated on every morning and every night on her way to being healed of cancer. Becky took that list and began meditating on those scriptures every morning and every night and she’d listen to the tape of Papa Hagin’s healing message every day.
Becky puts it this way. When she first started meditating on those scriptures and listening to that tape she would look at that thing in the mirror and the mirror would say, “You’re ugly.” After meditating on those scriptures and listening to that tape for a couple of weeks, one day she looked in the mirror and the mirror still said “You’re ugly.” but her heart, her believe-o-meter said, “You’re healed.” Becky said it didn’t matter to her anymore what the mirror said she knew she was healed. She knew her skin was smooth and normal, even though nothing had changed. Within a week or so of that moment the thing was completely gone.
Believe that you received the thing when you prayed and you shall have the thing. Believing is knowing in your heart that you have the thing.