How God's Love Empowers Effective Prayer

PRAYER – THE HEART OF IT ALL – P. DOUGLAS SMALL – ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ©
SECTION One
Growing in
Prayer
CHAPTER
THREE
 God is Waiting
 We Should Be Seeking
 What Not Seeking
Says About Us
 Truth Avoidance and
Prayerlessness
 Pursuing God
Seeking Him
God – the Real Goal of Prayer
Believing – Where We Put
Our Faith
Doubting God’s Character –
is Deadly
What
Prayer
Says
About Us!

SECTION One
Growing in
Prayer
CHAPTER
THREE
Chapter 3 continued …
Joining Prayer and
Love
Faith Works by Love
Praying in Love’s
Embrace
Switching Motives for
Prayer Praying for
Answers
Meeting Conditions
Praying Amiss
Inverting Motives in
Prayer
Moving from Answers
to Rewards
What
Prayer
Says
About Us!

“As the deer pants for streams of water, so I
long for you God” (Psalm 42:1).
“Those who seek me find me” (Prov. 8:17).
Jesus said to ask, seek and knock (Mt. 7:7).
“I was ready to respond, but no one asked for
help… ready to be found, but no one was looking
for me. I said, ‘Here I am… to a nation that did not
call on my name” (Isa. 65:1).
“I revealed myself to those who did not ask for
me; I was found by those who did not seek me” (NIV).
“I appeared to those who did not look for me…”(NET).
“I have shown myself…I was near to those who
did not seek me…” (NHEB).
God, contrary to popular views, isn’t hiding.

We Should be Seeking…
Paul: “God is not far from us” (Acts 17:27).
Quite the opposite, it would be impossible to
“live and move” without Him.
God searches the earth, looking for “any who
seek God” (Psalm 14:2).
He is looking for true worshippers (John 4:23).
Proverbs 8:17, declares, “those who diligently
seek me will find me.” That requires searching
“for Him with all your heart and all your soul”
(Dt. 4:29-31).
Jesus promised, “…seek, and you will find”
(Matthew 7:7-8).

What Not Seeking Says About
Us…
 “The wicked,” don’t seek God. Seeking itself,
is an indication of faith; a desire for righteousness.
 Refusing to honor God, men “became futile in
their speculations… their foolish heart was
darkened. Professing to be wise, they became
fools.”
 In the end, discernment becomes so dull that the
distinction between humans and animals is lost.
 What is “evident…” is suppressed. God can be
known, but man doesn’t want to know Him.
What is clear is obscured by self-imposed
blindness.

Truth Avoidance and
Prayerlessness…
God can be known.
God is “evident within…” There are etchings of God on
the walls of the conscience.
Even in his fallen state, there is a witness within.
Creation also shouts, ‘There is a God…”
“Salvation is far from the wicked,” and here is
the reason, “they do not seek Your statutes”
(Psalm 119:155).
Truth avoidance destroys prayer.
Suppression of truth turns the heart-lights
off. Truth is like a light bringing revelation
and insight. It trues, changes, transforms.

Pursuing God…
Hebrews 11:6 is one of the passages that tells us
how we must come to God as we seek Him.
“Without faith,
it is impossible to please God.
He that comes to God
must believe
that He is,
and that He is a rewarder
of those that diligently seek Him.”

Seeking Him…
 “Faith,” the writer asserts “pleases God” and
makes prayer possible.
The goal of prayer here is often missed. Prayer is
not the pursuit of things, but the pursuit of God
Himself – they that “diligently seek Him.”
 Much prayer is driven by personal needs. So
little is driven by a desire for God, Himself, alone,
above and apart from any other prayer outcome.
Prayer’s real goal – “to know Him, and the
power of His resurrection” (Phil. 3:10).

Believing - Where We Put
Our Faith…
The focus on faith in this passage challenges our
conventional thinking.
First, we must believe that “He is,” that God exists.
Prayer is to be addressed to God, personally. It isn’t
talking to the walls or mere therapeutic sounds.
To pray effectively, we must believe that “He is,” that
God is present as we pray, hearing our prayers.
Second, we are told that we must believe that He
is a “rewarder of those who diligently seek Him,”
Faith in God’s existence is explicitly required.
Faith in his ability is implicitly required.
We pray because we believe there is a God, and that
He is able to answer. God hears; God answers.

Believing - Where We Put
Our Faith…
Most of us pass the test of belief in God’s
existence and his ability.
 The more precise need is to believe that God is a
“rewarder.” That’s faith in God’s character.
We must believe that God is a good God, a
benevolent, open-handed God, a “rewarder” –
and that is where we experience difficulty.
We are not sure God will answer ‘our’ prayer, hear ‘us’
and grant us the petition we seek.
We doubt His love for us – He must love others more.
They are holier, stronger, have more and better faith, so
we seek out others to pray for us, confident that God will
hear them when He won’t hear us.

Doubting God’s Character –
is Deadly …
 In Genesis 3, it was the character of God that
the serpent attacked, “Did God say…are you sure
you can trust Him?” On that ground, Adam fell.
The disciples, caught in the storm, with Jesus in
the boat, sleeping, accused God of sleeping on the
job. “Do you not care that we are perishing?”
(Mark 4:38).
The great struggle of faith is to believe in a good
God in a bad and evil world; to believe that
righteousness has a reward and evil has
consequences. To continue to believe when God
does not answer.

Joining Prayer and Love…
Paul suggests that “tribulation, or distress, or
persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or
sword?” must not be interpreted wrongly by us.
Negative forces lined up against us, sometimes
cause us to mistakenly conclude, “we are sheep to
be slaughtered,” sacrificed for some noble but
unknown cause, expendable.
Paul argues, “Nay, in all these things we
overwhelmingly conquer through Him who
loved us.”
Faith in God’s love is the key to victory.

Faith Works by Love…
We don’t have a faith problem, not
precisely, we have a love problem.
Prayer’s goal is intimacy with God, not the
acquisition of things, but laying hold of God.
“Faith,” Paul declared, “works by love” (Gal. 5:6).
 Convinced that God loves you – faith soars; and
doubting God’s love - it languishes.
We work on inflating faith – memorizing
scripture, exercising our faith like we are lifting
weights - but without a sense of God’s love, you
will always end up with a flat tire.

Faith Works by Love…
We enter prayer with a list of frantic ‘God help
me,’ petitionary requests. We are sincere. We
need God’s help – He is present and able.
We pray, passionately, fervently, sincerely, but all
the while, we wonder – does God love me enough
to answer this prayer? We pray with ambivalence.
Push back all the frantic, and faithless ‘God help me
prayers.’
Pray this simple prayer, multiple times – feel it!
“God, I know you love me. I love you with
all my heart, my soul, my strength!”

 Love is catching, transferrable, virulent,
transmittable.
Prayer, as a relational, covenantal connection
with God, is a heart-matter.
When the perception of God’s love is grasp not
only by head, but also, our heart – everything
changes.
With conviction, we say in response to God,
“And I love you, Lord, with all my heart,
and all my soul and all my might.”
We feel such love down to our toes.
The love of God, like a flood, can’t be contained
by the levees of our hearts (Romans 5:5). It
overflows. And it empowers faith.

Praying in Love’s Embrace …
God’s love has a way of steadying us.
It is not that we have laid hold of God – He has
laid hold of us – and when you feel that embrace,
call it a shelter, a rock of defense, a fortress,
whatever metaphor you choose, everything
changes. God’s love inspires confidence.
Praying without a deep sense of God’s love, leaves
faith flat.
The fatal flaw in prayer is asking God to do this or
that, to prove that he loves us!
Love precedes effective prayer.

After Calvary, any arrangement that puts God
in the position of having “to prove” His love is
wrongful manipulation.
Praying that demands that God act to prove his
love is an insult.
 The cross proved that. Having been given the
greatest proof of love…
“He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him
up for us all - how will he not also, along with
him, graciously give us all things?” (Rom. 8:32)
… we now pray with confidence.

The cross says, ‘God will answer; God will
respond with grace.’
Notice Paul’s language:
“How will he not?”
How could He do otherwise?
It would be inconsistent with His character.
He has, in Christ’s crucifixion, invested far too much
in us, not to hear our prayers.
“See what great love the Father has
lavished on us, that we should be called
children of God!” (1 John 3:1).

Jude urged, “…keep yourselves in the love of
God, expecting the mercy of our Lord Jesus
Christ for eternal life” (Jude 1:21).
The ISV says, “Remain in God’s love,” and the NET
Bible, “maintain yourselves in the love of God”
anticipating mercy.
The Greek word means to watch over, to guard. “I
keep, guard, observe, watch over” whether or not I am
centered, kept in and by, the love of God.
It is the idea of being a prisoner of love, of staying
centered, balanced, grounded in and by God’s love.
There is no healthy prayer life apart from God’s
love.

Switching Motives for
Prayer…
Coming to God in faith, we have been taught,
gains answers to prayer.
There is a dynamic in Biblical interpretation that
seems, at times, contradictory.
The truth is often like the sword, two-sided,
double-edged.
In one sense, God does not answer prayer – He
answers people - people who know and love Him.
The purpose of prayer is far beyond acquisition –
it the relationship that really matters. If our
prayer life is about answers, and little more,
about getting, not giving – it is unhealthy.

Praying for Answers…
1. Praying in faith secures an audience with God.
“Let us then approach the throne of grace with
confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace
to help us in our time of need” (Heb. 4:16 NIV).
2. God cares and answers us when we pray in faith.
He somehow feels our pain. Hebrews 4:15 says, he
somehow feels our pain. He is “touched by the feeling of
our infirmities.”
3. Praying in faith, Jesus promised an answer.
“Whatever things you ask in prayer, believing, you will
receive” (Matthew 21:22).
4. We must pray out of our relationship with Christ,
“If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will
ask… and it shall be done.” (John 15:7).

Meeting Conditions …
 There are, however, conditions to our prayers -
doubt forfeits answers.
“But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who
doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the
wind. For let not that man suppose that he will receive
anything from the Lord” (James 1:6-7).
 Instability results from not ‘maintaining,’ ‘keeping
and guarding’ our conviction, that God loves us.
Instability comes when we doubt God’s love.
We maintain when we remain – in God’s love.
Everything falls apart in a relationship when love
fails.

Praying Amiss …
 James points to another problem, “You ask and
do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may
spend it on your pleasures” (James 4:3).
Back to Hebrews: “Without faith,” it is “impossible to
please Him.”
Coming to God having met the typical conditions
– we can expect an answer to our prayer. Agree?
The difference in Hebrews is subtle, but
significant.
Having met certain conditions, and then wrapping
prayer in faith, moves God to answer - agree?
To please us, by granting our request?

Inverting Motives in
Prayer…
Prayer, wrapped in faith, is not the means by
which we get God to please us; rather, good
prayer, is coming to the point at which the driving
force of our lives is to please God.
We have made prayer about us, about God
pleasing us, meeting our needs and answering us.
God answers his people when they pray!
He heals (Gen. 20:17).
He delivers (Psalm 120:1).
He sends rain (1 Kings 8:34; James 5:18).
He intervenes in battles (1 Kings 8:44).
He gives wisdom (Eph. 1:17). And more.

Inverting Motives in
Prayer…
Prayer is transformed as we move from our
attempts to get God to please us, to a growing
desire to please Him.
The great acquisition, is not things – it is God;
And the great transformation is not that He
pleases us, but that we live to please Him.
Are you a God pleaser or a self-pleaser?
Jesus would hear the Father say, twice,
“This is My Beloved Son, with him I am well
pleased” (Mt. 3:17; 17:5; Mark 1:1; 9:7).

Moving from Answers to
Rewards…
We relate prayer to answers; but in Hebrews, the
pairing is between prayer and rewards.
Jesus too, associates prayer with rewards (Mt.
6:6).
Answers and rewards are not the same.
Answers are at one level; and rewards are at another.
God answers people who pray in faith.
Dr. Herbert Lockyer, in his book, All The Prayers of
the Bible, claims the Bible has 650 definite prayers, of
which there are 450 specific answers are recorded.
But the real payoff in prayer is not answers.

Rewards…
At times, we don’t even know what or how to
pray. At other times, we realize later, that God’s
‘No!’ was a blessing.
Rewards come, not from seeking the hand of
God, but the face of God.
Hebrews 11:6, “He is rewarder of those that
diligently seek Him…”
Not merely something from Him, but Him.
God is the great gift – and while he offers
Himself, we are too often satisfied with trinkets.
Getting Him – we get everything we need.

Rewards…
God also “rewards” us just for praying, that is,
just for spending time before Him.
In Mt. 6, Jesus who promised a “reward” for praying.
“When you pray,” he said, assuming that we would
pray, enter your “closet.”
He expected us to maintain a secret place for prayer.
Going to our secret place, God races there ahead of us.
He that “sees in secret” will “reward openly.”
God hides in our prayer closet and then manifest
himself in the public square.
The private moments of surrender translate into
public God-moments punctuated with His Presence.

Rewards…
As we seek…
To please God,
Live in His love,
Refuse to doubt His character,
Wade through the pain of life with resilience from
above –
God rewards us. And the rewards of praying are
greater than the answers to prayer.
Establish a new benchmark for healthy prayer –
“Father, I know that you love me, and I love your with all
my heart, soul and might and I want to please you!”
Meet God in prayer, when your only desire is to
be with Him.

LEGAL USAGE LIMITATIONS
This presentation is designed to be a companion to the copyrighted book, Prayer
– The Heart of It All, by P. Douglas Small, Alive Publications, a division of Alive
Ministries, Inc., in cooperation with Project Pray.
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