Ramon Ross

Are You Keeping His Commandments when You Pray?



Posted: Sunday, December 19, 2010

by Ramon Ross
By Faith Enterprise

One of the most significant verses in the Bible on prayer is 1 John 3:22. John says, “And whatsoever we ask, we receive of Him, because we keep His commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in His sight.”

What an astounding statement! John says in so many words, that everything he asked for he got. How many of us can say this: “Whatsoever I ask I receive”? But John explains why this was so, “Because we keep His commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in His sight.”

In other words, if we expect God to do what we ask Him to do, then we must do our part as well. That is to DO WHATEVER GOD BIDS US TO DO. If we give a listening ear to all of God’s commands to us, He will give a listening ear to all our requests to Him. If, on the other hand, we turn a deaf ear to His Word the Holy Bible, He will be likely to turn a deaf ear to our prayers. Here is where we can find the secret for many of our unanswered prayers. We are not listening to God’s Word, and therefore He is not listening to our prayers.

I was once speaking to a woman who had been a professed Christian, but had given it all up. I asked her why she was not a Christian still. She replied, because she did not believe the Bible. I asked her why she did not believe the Bible.

“Because I have tried its promises and found them untrue.”

“Which promises?”

“The promises about prayer.”

“Which promises about prayer?”

“Does it not say in the Bible, ‘Whatsoever ye ask believing ye shall receive’?”

“It says something nearly like that.”

“Well, I asked fully expecting to get and did not receive, so the promise failed.”

“Was the promise made to you?”

“Why, certainly, it is made to all Christians, is it not?”

“No, God carefully defines who the ‘ye’s’ are, whose believing prayers He agrees to answer.”

I then turned her to 1 John 3:22, and read the description of those whose prayers had power with God.

“Now,” I said, “were you keeping His commandments and doing those things which are pleasing in His sight?”

She frankly confessed that she was not, and soon came to see that the real difficulty was not with God’s promises, but with herself. That is the difficulty with many an unanswered prayer to-day: the one who offers it is not obedient to God’s commandments that are in His Word the Holy Bible.

If we would have power in prayer, we must be earnest students of His Word to find out what His will regarding us is, and then when we have found it, DO IT. One un-confessed act of disobedience on our part will shut the ear of God against many of our prayers.

But this verse goes beyond the mere keeping of God’s commandments. John tells us that we must DO THOSE THINGS THAT ARE PLEASING IN HIS SIGHT.
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