Imperial Valley Christian Center

Here's a little blurb I liked from a little book I've been working on called, God Wants To Answer Your Prayers:

“Ask and it shall be given unto you… for everyone that asketh receiveth.” Here’s how I like to think about it. I imagine myself going before the throne of God to make a request, to submit my prayer. I’m in an antechamber outside the throne room, and there’s a doorway leading in to God’s throne room. As I look through the doorway I can see the throne of God a ways off. Above the doorway to the throne room of God are written these words, “Ask and it shall be given you, for everyone that asketh receiveth.” Well that gives you an entirely different attitude as you approach the throne of God.

That scenario isn’t too hard for me to imagine because we operate under as similar principle at our house. We have a rule that we say, “Yes” to any kid, teenager, whatever, who comes to our door with a school fundraiser. Sometimes I have to go searching for quarters so I can buy the candy bar, but we always say "Yes." Everyone who asks receives. Anyone who knows us could tell their friends, who are fundraising for school, “Go to pastor Greg’s house, they always says yes, everyone who asks receives.” That’s what Jesus is telling us about God. That’s what Jesus is telling us about when we come to God’s house, asking, seeking and knocking.

And that’s how the Bible always talks about prayer, like getting your prayers answered is a sure thing. Here’s some more examples. Now there’s a lot I could say about each one of these scriptures, but for right now I just want to focus on what they tell us about the likelihood of God saying yes to our prayers.

I love this quote about prayer from Charles Finney, American Evangelist of the mid 1800s. Maybe I love it because he too was a lawyer before he was a preacher. I love it so much I'm sure I must have posted it before, but here it goes again.

I do not recollect to have ever attended a prayer-meeting until after I began the study of law. Then, for the first time, I lived in a neighborhood where there was a prayer-meeting weekly. I had neither known, heard, nor seen much of religion; hence I had no settled opinions about it. Partly from curiosity and partly from an uneasiness of mind upon the subject, which I could not well define, I began to attend that prayer-meeting. About the same time I bought the first Bible that I ever owned, and began to read it. I listened to the prayers which I heard offered in those prayer-meetings, with all the attention that I could give to prayers so cold and formal. In every prayer they prayed for the gift and outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Both in their prayers and in their remarks, which were occasionally interspersed, they acknowledged that they did not prevail with God. This was most evident, and had almost made me a skeptic.

Seeing me so frequently in their prayer-meeting, the leader, on one occasion, asked me if I did not wish them to pray for me. I replied: "No." I said: "I suppose that I need to be prayed for, but your prayers are not answered. You confess it yourselves." I then expressed my astonishment at this fact, in view of what the Bible said about the prevalence of prayer. Indeed, for some time my mind was much perplexed and in doubt in view of Christ's teaching on the subject of prayer and the manifest facts before me, from week to week, in this prayer-meeting. Was Christ a divine teacher? Did he actually teach what the Gospels attributed to him? Did he mean what he said? Did prayer really avail to secure blessings from God? If so, what was I to make of what I witnessed from week to week and month to month in that prayer-meeting? Were they real Christians? Was that which I heard real prayer, in the Bible sense? Was it such prayer as Christ had promised to answer? Here I found the solution.

I became convinced that they were under a delusion; that they did not prevail because they had no right to prevail. They did not comply with the conditions upon which God had promised to hear prayer. Their prayers were just such as God had promised not to answer. That they were overlooking the fact that they were in danger of praying themselves into skepticism in regard to the value of prayer, was evident.

I like this passage from George Foot Moore's, Judaism In The First Centuries of the Christian Era, The Age of the Tannaim, from Chapter 7 of Volume 2, Public and Private Charity. He's dealing with the Jewish understanding of God's laws of charity, which are quite extensive.

When I first started studying the Jewish background of the New Testament, (Jesus was Jewish, attended synagogue, taught from the Hebrew Bible, was called rabbi by his disciples, spoke Hebrew.), the most surprising thing was the importance of charity in Judaism. I'd had the impression that caring for others was one of the distinguishing characteristics of Christianity, but Christianity's care for the needy, at least as Christianity has come down to us, is a weak, diluted, version of Judaism's. When Jesus says, as Moore quotes below, "42 Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you." (Matthew 5:42 NIV) he's quoting a requirement of the Jewish law. Jews were to lend to fellow Jews when asked, at zero interest. It's my understanding that even today, at least some synagogues, have interest free lending facilities for their members. Hallelujah. Jesus wasn't making a suggestion, this was a commandment. Well… but that wouldn't be practical. Exactly. So that lets us off.

Anyway, read the the passage below, but here's the part that I liked, "The donor, who owes God all he has, becomes a creditor of God — if it was not so written in Scripture, no one would venture to say such a thing!"

The promise of God's blessing on the benevolent (vs. 10) in­cludes not only the man who gives for the relief of the poor but one who solicits others to give; and if, unable to give anything else, he expresses his sympathy in words, that too has its reward.2 On the other hand, warning is given that the poor man refused an alms may cry to the Lord against him who refused him, * and it will be sin in thee.' Sin it is in any case, but God will be quicker to punish when the unfortunate cries to him.

It will no doubt have occurred to the reader that most of this fine doctrine about charity is interpreted into the text, not out of it. And that is precisely the thing to be observed about it. The fundamentals of Jewish teaching on the subject from a far earlier time are here ingeniously worked into a single passage only a few verses long.

Parallels to them all can be adduced in multitude.3 When Jesus said: 'Give to him who begs of thee, and do not turn away him who wants to borrow from thee' (Matt. 5, 42), it is not, like the preceding injunctions of non-resistance, what the Jews called conduct that keeps "inside the line,"4 but an exact summary of what they laid down as prescribed by divine law.

To lend to a would-be borrower is not optional but obligatory,5 and no less obligatory to give to the poor according to the meas­ure of his need and to the ability of the giver.6 One should not withhold the needed relief out of apprehension that if he dis­tributes all his property to others he may himself be reduced to want and come to be a charge on the community; he should trust the promise of Deut. 15, 10b — if he does his part, God will do His. He has the best of security, for 'he who befriends the poor lends to the Lord, and He will repay him for his good deed' (Prov. 19, 17).1 The donor, who owes God all he has,2 becomes a creditor of God — if it was not so written in Scripture, no one would venture to say such a thing!3 God says to Israel: "My sons, whenever you give food to the poor, I impute it to you as though you gave me food, as it is said, 'my offering, even my food for my fire sacrifice' (Num. 28, 2). Does God eat and drink! Nay, but whenever you give food to the poor I impute it to you as though you gave me food." 4