PRAYER SECRETS PT 1

# YOUR PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD

This, in my opinion, is the #1 secret for being able to get more of your personal prayers answered by God the Father. This particular secret is the first step you will need to take before you can expect to have any kind of major success in your prayer life with God the Father.

Here is the Scripture verse that will give us this first major prayer secret:

“IF YOU ABIDE IN ME, AND MY WORDS ABIDE IN YOU, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples.” (John 15:7)

Look very, very carefully at this verse to see exactly what Jesus is trying to tell you. He is giving you two powerful pieces of revelation in which to grasp if you want to be able to get God the Father to answer more of your specific prayers. Here are the two main pieces of revelation.

1. Establish a Personal Relationship With God

The first part of the first sentence – “If you abide in Me” - is telling you that the very first thing that God is wanting from you in order to be able to properly approach Him for prayer is for you to establish a very strong personal relationship with Him!

Jesus is using the word “abide.” The word abide means to “continue in a state or place, to endure.” What Jesus wants from us is that we be willing to abide in Him, that we be willing to live in Him. Being willing to abide in Jesus means that we have established a very good, intimate, personal relationship with Him.

The #1 reason God created the human race was for intimate fellowship. God has this incredible love for the human race, and He wants more than anything else that we approach Him and enter into this one-on-one, intimate, personal relationship with Him.

If you really stop and think about this, what is one of the greatest joys that a person can have this side of heaven? What is the one thing that most people long for? What is the one thing that will make you cry when you see this portrayed at the movie theaters? It is the longing for a personal, intimate, love relationship with a person of the opposite sex, the longing for a true soul mate. Why? Because that one person, more than any other person, is the one person who can really get to know you. It is the one person who can become your best friend. It is the one person who you can tell anything and everything to.

It is the most unique of all human relationships. Some have found this one true love in this life and others have not.

 Those of you who have found this one true love know exactly what I am talking about. Those of you who have not found this one true love at this time know the longing that you have to find this one special person.

This same longing that we have to meet this one true soul mate is the same longing that God has for all us. Except with God, this longing for us is much more intense. The fact that God would send down His one and only Son to our earth in the flesh to physically die on a cross in order to bring us back to Himself shows us more than anything else how much He really does love all of us.

The best analogy that I can give you on this is the “best friend analogy.” God wants to become your best friend, over your soul mate and over any other best friends you may have in this life. He wants to be #1 in your life and He will not settle for anything less. The Bible says that God the Father is a jealous God, a consuming fire.

Some Christians believe that if they go to church once a week, sing a few songs in church, and pay their tithe, that they are “in relationship” with God. However, God wants more than this. He wants you 7 days of the week, not just one time a week in a church service.

He wants to be able to freely communicate with you 24/7. He wants you to talk with Him just like you would talk to your best friend. He wants dynamic, free flowing conversation with you on anything you want to personally discuss with Him, no matter how small or trivial it may seem to you. And He then wants you to be open to listening to anything that He may have to say to you.

What happens to some Christians is that they have not established this kind of personal relationship with God, and then when a crisis or emergency presents itself, it is already too late to try to get God to answer their prayer.

Notice that Jesus starts the first sentence out with the word “IF.” IF you have established a personal relationship with God, THEN you can approach Him with your prayer requests, and THEN He will answer them.

Too many Christians attempt to use God. The only time they ever approach God is when they need something from Him. God thus has no natural desire to answer any prayer request they may have because they have never established any kind of true, personal relationship with Him.

One of the things I felt like the Holy Spirit has conveyed to me is that if you really want to be able to get God to answer more of your prayers, you have to create a desire in God to want to answer more of your prayers. And the #1 way that you create a desire in God to get Him to want to answer more of your prayer requests is by establishing a good, intimate, personal relationship with Him.

The Parent-Child Analogy

The analogy the Holy Spirit gave me to understand all of this was the “Parent-Child Analogy.” Imagine you are the parent and you have two small children. The one boy really loves you. He has established a true, loving, personal relationship with you. He wants to hang out with you. He comes home from school and tells you everything that happened to him that day. He tells you all the little things that may have gone right or wrong during the day. He values your opinion.

When he gets older and more mature, all of sudden he wants to hear more about you, your life and your problems. He wants to know more about you, your past, why you do what you do and why you think the way that you do. This child is truly abiding in you, truly living in you. You feel like you and him are “one in spirit.” As you grow older, your personal relationship deepens and keeps getting better and better.

Then you have the other child. He could care less about you and your personality. The only time he will ever approach you is when he needs something specific from you. He will even go as far as to act like he cares about you, but once he gets what he wants from you, he is back to ignoring you until the next time he needs something from you. As he grows older, you grow farther and farther apart. When he is finally able to leave home on his own, you never hear from him unless he once again needs something specific from you. He hardly ever calls or comes over

Bottom Line

To summarize the revelation in the above Scripture verse in one bottom line statement:

God is looking to establish a close, intimate, personal relationship with each one of us. This is done in two ways:

1. By establishing a direct, free-flowing and spontaneous best friend relationship with God where you commune and talk with Him on a regular and frequent basis in the exact same way you would with a best friend.  

2. And by seeking after the knowledge of God – trying to get to know all you can about Him by studying and meditating on what is written in the Holy Bible.

I guarantee you that if you are willing to enter into both of these realms with the Lord, your life will never be the same again. This close, intimate, personal relationship that you can enter into with the Lord will be the door opener that will change the course of your entire life forever. The journey is there for all who are willing to step into it!

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