ASK: The Third Step in Effective Prayer (and other devotionals)

ASK: The Third Step in Effective Prayer

So far we have discovered that praise and repentance are the first two steps to effective prayer.  Today I want to show you the very important third step of asking.

Yesterday we talked about how repentance is searching your own heart and asking God to put the spotlight on it, and then repenting of anything that He shows you.  When your heart is clean, you can have confidence before God when you ask.  As 1 John 3:21-22 says,

Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence toward God.  And whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do those things that are pleasing in His sight.

In Matthew 7:7-11, Jesus tells us,

"Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.  Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone?  Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent?  If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!"

Pretty clear, isn't it?  God loves you and wants the very best for you.  Be careful not to water down the words of Jesus, or somehow try and explain them away or complicate them.  He meant just what He said.

But there are some conditions.  And tomorrow we will look at those conditions for receiving what you ask God for.

~Bayless Conley~

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1 John 1:7

The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.

"Cleanseth," says the text-not "shall cleanse." There are multitudes who think that as a dying hope they may look forward to pardon. Oh! how infinitely better to have cleansing now than to depend on the bare possibility of forgiveness when I come to die. Some imagine that a sense of pardon is an attainment only obtainable after many years of Christian experience. But forgiveness of sin is a present thing-a privilege for this day, a joy for this very hour. The moment a sinner trusts Jesus he is fully forgiven. The text, being written in the present tense, also indicates continuance; it was "cleanseth" yesterday, it is "cleanseth" to-day, it will be "cleanseth" tomorrow: it will be always so with you, Christian, until you cross the river; every hour you may come to this fountain, for it cleanseth still. Notice, likewise, the completeness of the cleansing, "The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin"-not only from sin, but "from all sin." Reader, I cannot tell you the exceeding sweetness of this word, but I pray God the Holy Ghost to give you a taste of it. Manifold are our sins against God. Whether the bill be little or great, the same receipt can discharge one as the other. The blood of Jesus Christ is as blessed and divine a payment for the transgressions of blaspheming Peter as for the shortcomings of loving John; our iniquity is gone, all gone at once, and all gone for ever. Blessed completeness! What a sweet theme to dwell upon as one gives himself to sleep.

"Sins against a holy God;

Sins against His righteous laws;

Sins against His love, His blood;

Sins against His name and cause;

Sins immense as is the sea-

From them all He cleanseth me."

~Charles Spurgeon~