What does it Mean to Plead God's Promises in Prayer

Tip! The Holy Bible says in (John 5:13) this statement about prayer: 'And this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of Him.'

How can we profit from the Holy Scriptures if we are not taught how to plead God's promises. Prayer must be in faith (Romans 10:14 "How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?"), or God will not hear it.

Now faith has respect to God's promises (Hebrews 4:1 "Therefore, since a promise remains of entering His rest, let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it."..."and being fully convinced that what He had promised He was also able to perform." Romans 4:21); so if, consequently, we do not understand what God stands guaranteed to give, we cannot pray at all.

In the promises of God we find the substance of prayer as well as a description and the amount of the promise. What God has promised, all that He has promised, and nothing else, this is what we are to pray for. Deuteronomy 29:29 says "The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law." Can you see now how the declaration of His will and the revelation of His grace really do belong to us, and is our rule for this life?

There is nothing that we really stand in need of but that God our Father has not already promised to supply it for us, but yet He promised them in such a way and under such limitations that the promises are for our good and helpful to us. And also there is nothing that God has promised but we find ourselves in need of it, or are in some way or other concerned in it as members of the spiritual body of Christ. For this reason, the better we are acquainted with the Divine promises, and the more we are enabled to understand the goodness, grace and mercy prepared and proposed in them, the better equipped are we for acceptable prayer.

Some of God"s promises are general rather than specific; some are conditional, others unconditional; some are fulfilled in this life, others in the world to come. We are not able in ourselves to discern which promise is most suited to our particular case and present emergency and need, or to appropriate by faith and rightly plead it before God. Wherefore we are expressly told in, 1 Corinthians 2:11-12 "For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God."

Tip! If you do not know the Lord Jesus Christ and want to know for sure that you are a child of God, then I would like to invite you to earnestly pray and ask Jesus to come into your heart.

If you are asking me now, "If so much is required to have our prayers acceptable to God our Father, and if we cannot pray to God correctly without much less trouble than you indicate, only a few of us will continue long in this duty." Then I will answer that such a complainer does not know what it is to pray or how, nor do they seem willing to learn.

There are NO shortcuts in learning to pray the prayers that are acceptable to God. Only the Holy Spirit can lead the way and teach you in the way we should go. Which way will you go? As for me and my house we will choose to serve the Lord!