Royal Priesthood, Holy Nation Acts
1:14
One Key to Answered Prayer
by
Robert T. Cooper
There was this
person in the community. His whole attitude toward God had to do with God being
there for him. There was this woman who felt like she just couldn’t get God to
give her answers to her prayers. Then there was this other fellow on social
media who was upset with God because God didn’t ever do what he wanted; he felt
that God was never there for him. There are lots of people like these I have
mentioned.
Perhaps you
can identify with these acquaintances of mine. Yet do you realize there are
some keys to answered prayer? If you applied these keys to your prayer life,
you just might find you had more answers to prayer. Even when your prayers
seemed to be unanswered, use of these keys would perhaps allow you to better understand
what was going on and why things were the way they seemed.
So, what can
we learn from Acts 1:14?
The verse
begins with the word “they”. The people who were praying in this verse were
disciples of Jesus. They had been following Jesus for as long as 3½ years. And
it wasn’t casual following. These were people who were known by the fact that
if Jesus told them to do something, they did it. Lesson for us: To have your prayers answered, you must be a long-term committed
follower of Christ who will do whatever He says, even when you don’t
understand, even when no one understands.
The next word
in the verse is “all”. We aren’t talking about one person praying. We are
talking about a group of people praying. Lesson for us: Find you a dozen or more people who are praying people. Be part of a
group like that.
The verse says
they were joined together. The notes say that a literal rendition would be that
they were continuing with one mind. This group of praying committed followers
of Christ had agreed as to what they should pray and they stuck with their
agreement. That way everyone in the group was praying the same thing, not
necessarily with the same words, but essentially the same request. And this
agreement as to what to pray went on over an extended period of time. Lesson
for us: Get with your prayer group; agree what
everyone in the group is going to pray; then stick with that agreement for an
extended period of time.
The verse says
they were constantly in prayer. Most people pray a little here and a little
there. Not this group of committed Christ followers. They were together
frequently and often. In this case, the prayer meeting was 24/7 for 10 days.
They had to sacrifice certain other things in order to pray like that, but they
were intent on getting an answer from the Lord. Lesson for us: Be with your prayer group as frequently and often as you can. Pray in
such a way that your group prayer would be termed “constant” by an outsider.
Leave a comment now about which
of these “Lessons for us” you are already employing and which you intend to
adopt. If you also want to share your object of prayer, feel free.
Come back in a few days and share
what has resulted from your change in prayer strategy. Remember, prayer doesn’t
work; our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ works. He is the One Who answers prayer.
