These are my notes/thoughts from John R. Rice’s Prayer: Asking and Receiving
In the last chapter, Mr. Rice emphasized that if it ain’t asking, then it ain’t prayin’ (southern emphasis added).
Adoration, thanksgiving, confession are all necessary, but they are not prayer. Prayer is asking, pure and simple.
In this chapter, his emphasis is if you don’t get what you pray for, then your prayer has not been answered. Prayer gets what it asks for.
Mr. Rice is not the only person that teaches this. Rees Howells, the intercessor who founded the Bible College of Wales, taught the same thing to his students. He said something like, “If you need $10.34, then $10 is not an answer to prayer. Neither is $11. An answer to prayer is $10.34.”
“If prayer is asking, then the answer to prayer must be receiving.”
I’m going to quote extensively from this chapter because what Mr. Rice wrote is so good:
Preachers have a way, when faith grows dim and weak, of making alibis for the fruitlessness of their prayers. For example, preachers sometimes say, “God answers prayer three ways. He may say, ‘Yes,’ or He may say, ‘No,’ or He may say, ‘Wait awhile.’”
Of course that statement is intended to mean that a Christian ought to be content for the will of God to be done and to be satisfied with anything God gives. But actually, it teaches the exact opposite of what the Bible teaches about prayer. It makes us think of prayer as a mystical, indefinite matter, by which one may get what he wants, or may not, as if there were no way to know what is the will of God. It leaves the impression that there is not much use of praying because God will do what pleases Him anyway, without any meddling on our part, so why pray? And anything that makes prayer indefinite, and makes the answer seem uncertain, is contrary to the plain teaching of the Word of God.
He then gives two examples of how “sensible” people would never put up with this “in any other realm of life.” Back in the days of full-service gas stations, how would we react if we said, “Fill’er up,” only to have the attendant say, “You don’t need any gas today. Come back tomorrow.”? Or what if he put soapsuds or alcohol in the car instead of gas?
Or what if a guy asked a girl to marry him? She has given every evidence that she loves him, but when he proposes, she says, “No.” Would the guy be happy with that answer?
Neither should a Christian be content until he can be in such close touch with God that he can get exactly what he asks for, and rejoice in a “yes” from God in answer to his prayers.
And this is evidenced in Scripture. To my knowledge, there only only two times when prayers in the Scriptures were not answered: when David prayed that his son would live, and when Jesus prayed that “this cup” would pass from him. In both instances, they already knew the will of God, and prayed against it.
According to the Bible, a genuine answer to prayer is getting what you ask for.
Now, saying all of this, one must remember that there are conditions to prayer and having those prayers answered. We must be submitted to the will of God. We must pray according to the will of God. And we must pray in the name of Jesus, and all that that means.
In the next post, we’ll look at these more closely.