Conditions for Prayer, 4

John 15:7, "If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you."

Not only do we need to abide in Christ to have an effective prayer life, but His words should abide in us, should be alive in our lives. That means we need to hide God's word in our hearts and study it carefully to understand what it says, but we also need to be obedient to what we have learned. We are commanded to be doers of the word and not hearers only. The person who isn't obeying what he already knows may need to bring his obedience up to date even more than he needs to acquire new knowledge.

A minister named Ron Dunn began preaching when he was seventeen years old. He said he had been preaching for about a year when he discovered that God intended for him to put into practice what he was preaching. He laughed and said, "Then I became more careful about what I preached!"

I John 3:22 underscores the importance of obedience and gives us another condition for effective prayer. It says, "And whatever we ask we receive of him, because we keep his commandments and do those things that are pleasing in his sight."

My husband expected me to fix his breakfast. This was one of my wifely duties. If I gave him cereal, milk, and a banana for breakfast, I fulfilled his expectation and my responsibility. But, if I fixed fresh orange juice, country ham, grits, red eye gravy, eggs, biscuits, and homemade jelly, I went beyond my duty and did what pleased him. So not only should we obey God's commands, but we have the amazing privilege of going beyond His instructions to please our Heavenly Father who loves us so much and has blessed us so richly.

Father, may I seek to please You in all that I do and think and am. Amen.