[Reprint] How to pray and in what way to pray and pray. Pastor Jingli Wang

Brethren and Sisters, back to each of our Christian prayers to tell us this example, the Lord Jesus is trying to tell us through this example, your prayers can be answered has nothing to do with your identity, what kind of identity you are, how many years you have believed in the Lord, what you have done for the Lord, all these things have nothing to do with your prayers can be answered or not today. Whether or not your prayers are answered is most importantly a matter of whether or not your prayers are urgent. Many people, because of their faith in the Lord, because of what they have done for the Lord, often take credit for their status and their accomplishments. They say, "Look how much I love the Lord, look how many things I have done for the Lord, I have been praying for several years, and I am taking this time and this credit to ask God to grant you. This is impossible, and no one can claim any credit before God. The Lord wants to hear our prayers, and the only thing He wants to see is our attitude in praying for this matter. If we think that we have some special relationship with God and that God must hear us, then we are wrong. Everyone is a child of God, and when we do not do well, God has the right not to promise us, and has the right to make us wait. Brothers and sisters, if we pray with words of love, with deeds, and with faith, then this attitude of prayer itself can impress God. So today when you come to God to pray for a certain thing, you have to first understand yourself, is the attitude of prayer in me right, am I praying to the Lord with a full heart, am I asking the Lord to do something for me with a full heart, or am I full of pride, thinking that I am doing right by the Lord, and then letting God do it for me, if it is this kind of mentality, the Lord can reject us, but if we say, say yes or no if you like, if not, forget it, if you don't say yes I'll think of something else. Is this called urgency? It's not even called urgency. The word "urgent" means to pray urgently, fervently, and continually before God in spite of one's own shame, and only this kind of prayer can prove your faith before God and be pleasing to Him. Again I say to you, 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. He who seeks finds. And to him that knocketh it shall be opened. There are three words here, the first is pray, the second is seek, and the third is knock. There is a progressive relationship between these three words. To ask is to tell God what we want, to make known to God what is in our hearts. I tell God what is in my heart, I tell God what I want, I tell God what I don't understand, I want God to tell me what I want, and I make known to God the desires of my heart. Philippians 4:6-7, the Bible also tells us that there are many Christians today who also tell, but he is not telling God, he is telling people. There are many Christians who have difficulties and problems, and they will tell whoever they catch, and if they tell them once, they will tell them twice or even more times. In my church work, I often meet such Christians who come to the pastor and talk to him for two hours, but he doesn't allow me to say a single word, and he tells me everything. He would say one thing over and over again, and after saying it four or five times, he would say that thing again. Whenever I meet a Christian like this, I interrupt her. I would say, "Sister, stop talking and let me ask you one thing: Did you come to me because you wanted to talk to me, or did you want to talk to God? If you want to talk to God, just say it once, and even if you don't say it God will know." And it has been found that there are many Christians for whom such prayers are not called prayers, but confidences. Find a random person, say it to him five times, and then say it until your heart aches and you've said enough. Is this prayer? No, it is venting. Because when something happens to you and you are bored and you want to talk to someone, you will find that unbelievers will also do this kind of thing, and he will take money and go to a psychiatrist, and then he will let the psychiatrist sit in front of him, and listen to him talk once, twice or even ten times. This doctor must listen to him because he has taken his money. Brothers and sisters, you don't need to be like this before God; you only need to say your difficulties to God once by faith, and God will already understand. You have to realize that when you say this, you are saying it to God, not to any one person. People may not remember your difficulty, but God will not forget it. Because God knows, God knows even if you don't say it, not to mention that you have already said it in front of God, and God will definitely find a way to help you. This is the first step in one's prayer. You have to have faith to tell God about your difficulties, not to find someone to talk about them endlessly. The second step in prayer is seeking. Jesus said ask and you will receive, seek and you will find. What does it mean to seek? Seeking means that one seeks the face of God and the will of God in prayer. The first step in a person's prayer is to tell God what he wants and what he wants, and then after he has said that, he has to go on to the next step, to search for the meaning of God, to search for the face of God in his prayer. In Psalm 67 it says that may God have mercy on us, bless us, and shine His face upon us. What does that mean? Brothers and sisters, when you pray, God is in front of you. You don't just finish your prayer, turn around and walk away when you're done with Him. You have to ask what you mean, God, after I have finished praying. I prayed, "Lord, I'm asking you to give me something," and when I'm done, I have to ask, "God, what do you want? Are you willing to give it to me? Is it wrong for me to ask? Is it possible that I'm asking for something that you don't want to give me? You also have to ask God what He wants. Let God illuminate you with His face and reveal your heart with His face. Brothers and sisters, when we come to God in prayer, we do not only tell God our hearts, but more importantly, we also want to understand God's heart through our prayers, and seek God's will in our prayers. Therefore, there are many people who are very wise in prayer. When he prays for a matter, and his heart is very peaceful and secure, he wholeheartedly submits this matter to God, believing that God has already granted it. When he prays for a thing, he asks God to say, "O God, if You are not willing, please move me also, and please tell me also. Then when God moves him so that there is no peace in his heart, and when he reads the Scriptures and God gives him words that forbid him, then he also stops and does not ask for this matter any more. Because he knows that this matter is not in God's mind, this kind of prayers is wise. I have found that there are many Christians who are not wise prayers, who only know how to ask for things, and when they have finished asking, they turn around and walk away, not caring what God means, and then come back to ask for things the next time, and when they have finished asking for things, they still walk away, and they have disappeared without waiting for God to speak to them. Brothers and sisters, such prayers are not wise. The third step is to knock. Brothers and sisters, when a person knocks at the door, his purpose is to let the person inside open the door for him so that he can enter. Prayer is the same way. Prayer is you knocking. Jesus said open the door to the one who knocks, and when you knock, Jesus has to choose the right time to open the door, and you need to walk in before this prayer is over. So if we knock and Jesus says yes inside and says, I'm in there, wait for me to come and open the door for you. We don't wait for Him to open the door and we turn around and leave. Brothers and sisters, has this prayer finally accomplished the purpose of prayer? Of course not. I have found that many Christians pray this kind of halfway prayer. Did they pray? They prayed and asked God for the difficulties in their hearts. Did they search? I have searched, and I know that this thing is promised by God, and that God has promised to give it to me, but before God gives it to me, I have already exhausted my patience and turned away. For example, if you go to a person's house and knock on the door, and you knock a few times, and the person inside shouts out, "Who is it?" and you say, "It's me, I'm here to see you, I've come to give you something. Then the person in the house yells, okay, wait, I'll open the door for you. Would you turn around and leave? No, you wait here until he opens the door and you go in. There are many Christians today who can't wait for the Lord to open the door, so they knock and turn around and leave. This prayer is like knocking on a door, knocking once, not waiting for others to hear, not waiting for them to open the door, but already turning around. This kind of prayer is tentative, I'll try it and see if it works. This kind of knocking is not that the person inside is not willing to open the door for you, but that you don't wait for him to open the door, and you don't know what the purpose of your knocking is. The purpose of your knocking is to walk in, and if the door is not knocked on, if you don't walk in, you can't just walk away. A lot of Christians ask me, when I pray for something, how far do I pray? Should I stop after I have prayed a little? I am praying for my family, asking the Lord to choose him. How long do I pray until I can stop and not pray anymore? When should I stop praying and stop praying? Of course it is to pray for him to believe in the Lord, to pray until Jesus opens this door, to pray until you walk in, and when you enter that place, your prayer will finally reach its goal. Brothers and sisters, today you have to be careful in praying before God, and each of your prayers has to make your whole heart clear to God. Secondly, you should see how God's will is, and not just follow your own will endlessly. In the third step, when you see God's will and understand that God is willing for you to pray for this matter, you have to keep on asking for this matter until Jesus opens the door and you come in, and then this prayer is really finished. Otherwise, all your prayers before God are half-hearted prayers. Brothers and sisters, I want to ask you, from the time of your conversion until now, have you ever prayed halfway? Many people have done so, but gradually they forgot about it and stopped asking for it. Or they have stopped praying because they lost faith and felt hopeless. Jesus is about to open the door, or He has already opened the door, but when He opens the door, He finds that the person is gone. Brothers and sisters, please ask God to strengthen our faith, and let us pray, seek, and knock before God, and wait until Jesus opens the door and we walk in, then we can stop praying for this matter. The last area that Jesus speaks to us about is removing the concern for prayer. I know that many brothers and sisters will say, "Why did I stop in the middle of my prayer? It's because I've been praying for years, and this thing hasn't been answered by God, hasn't been realized. I began to wonder in my heart, "Am I praying the wrong prayer? Is it possible that I am praying for something that God does not want to give me? There are many prayers that are not answered halfway for this reason. He prayed for a long time and did not find the door opened, so he began to wonder in his heart. Is it that God doesn't like my prayers, or is it that I am asking in vain? So I should stop asking, maybe I'm asking for the wrong thing. There are many brothers and sisters who have this kind of concern. So Jesus immediately reminded us with three rhetorical questions. Jesus said, "Who among you, being a father, has a son who asks for bread and is given a stone instead? Who asks for a fish and is given a snake for a fish? Who asks for an egg and is given a scorpion instead? These three statements have the context of the Palestinian region at that time. In the Bible Jesus said who among you has a son who asks for bread and his father gives him a stone? In Palestine at that time, there were two types of bread that people ate in their daily lives. The first type of bread was the bread that was sold in restaurants in the marketplace, which was very large, thin, and fluffy, and this type of bread was sold outside the home. There was also a kind of cake that was commonly eaten at home as a staple food, just as we eat rice and steamed bread today, and their staple food was this kind of cake. This kind of cake was called coarse wheat cake, which was made of coarse wheat and was very small. Because it is coarse wheat, the color is very black. Unlike today, when white flour can be processed to be very white, the coarse wheat bread of that time was very small, very dark, very hard, and dark in color. It was very much like the stones along the coast of Galilee at that time. Brothers and sisters, let me ask you, if the stones are any more like the coarse wheat bread that you eat at home, will there be a day when your sons and daughters come back from school happily and say that they are hungry, bring me a loaf of bread. Will a father make a mistake and pick up the stone on the ground that looks very similar to this loaf and give it to his son, will such a mistake be made? There are many Christians here who are parents. Let me ask you, in all these years since your child was a child, have you ever made a mistake and given him a stone as a bun? Not even once. Why not? It's very similar, especially in Palestine, where the bread is so hard and so dark that it resembles a stone, so how is it that you haven't made a mistake once? And then Jesus tells a second parable, who has a son or daughter who asks for a fish and is able to bring him a serpent? This snake in the original text is not the kind of snake we think of, the kind of long worm that crawls on the ground, no. This snake can be translated as an eel, the round, unscaled, spineless kind that is sold in the marketplace and is said to be highly nutritious, only to find out later that it has carcinogens. It was bad and inedible. That kind of eel was in the Palestinian area at that time, in the faith of the Israelites, it was an unclean thing in the law of God, not to be eaten, to be tainted with uncleanness if you ate it, and God was going to be blamed for it. At that time, God gave the Israelites regulations, all kinds of food, what kind of food can be eaten, what kind of food can not be eaten, about fish, what can be eaten, what can not be eaten, the Old Testament era God stipulated that if a kind of fish has no scales, no thorns, and looks like a snake, then you can not eat it. If you ate it you would be defiled in your faith, so it was forbidden to eat it. If a child eats it, he or she is not poisoned or sick, but you are unclean in your faith, and you have gotten the most out of God, and God is displeased with you. Brothers and sisters, we are also like this in our faith, if your children don't understand in their faith, and say, "Mom and dad, you believe in God," then I want to ask you, if I do something that offends God today, is it okay? For example, we in Christianity do not allow the burning of paper and incense. We can remember our dead relatives, but we can't burn paper, we can't burn incense, we can't kneel down, we can't worship him because he's not a god, there's only one true God. The dead person is just our relative, just our loved one, we can honor and remember him, but we cannot worship him as a god. If your children do not understand and come to you and ask you, saying that my father or mother has died, ask another person, can I give a burning anniversary? Does this matter offend God? Would you be sloppy and get it wrong and say it seems okay, burn it. Brothers and sisters, would you? Of course not. Because you know that this is a big thing that offends God, and I can't let my children make mistakes in their faith. I can't let my children make mistakes in their faith, because they will be punished by God. I go to God to enjoy the blessings in heaven, and my son or daughter goes down to the depths to be punished by God because I told him he was wrong, how can this be? Can you make a mistake? Will you forget to say the wrong thing, no. The Israelites were the same way, and Jesus also gave this example, your children come back to eat fish, will you make a mistake, and say forget it, it's all the same fish, let's just eat the eel, forget it. God doesn't like it, but it's okay, just eat it. No, I wouldn't. You will be very serious in your faith, and you will not be wrong at all. So there are a lot of Christians who may not put much effort into evangelizing others, but they pray for their own children with weeping and tears for a year, two years or even longer, and the one they pray for the longest is their son or daughter. The third example, Jesus said who among you wants an egg for his scorpion? The word egg is our Chinese translation, the word willing is not egg, it is egg. Who has a child that asks for an egg to give him a scorpion? This egg refers not to an egg, but to a bird's egg. There is a scorpion in Palestine that is flesh-colored, and this scorpion grows very small. When he coils his poisonous hook on his head and rolls it into a circle, he resembles a bird's egg in shape. When a scorpion and an egg are put together, who has a child who asks for an egg will give him the scorpion? When we read this passage of Scripture, we think it can't be, a scorpion is nothing like an egg. The egg referred to here is not an egg, it is a bird's egg, and that scorpion is a special kind of local scorpion. Usually scorpions are black and gray, that kind of scorpion is flesh-colored, much like the color of a bird's egg. When it coils up its poisonous hook, it looks very similar to a bird's egg. Could there be a parent who makes a mistake and when his son or daughter asks for an egg, it picks up that scorpion and gives it to his son or daughter. Nowadays, there are many parents who have to pick and choose when they buy things for their children, including groceries, which ones are nutritious for their children, and which ones are not nutritious, and don't eat junk food. Brothers and sisters, would a parent ever give a scorpion, which is very much like an egg, to his son or daughter by mistake? Not even once. What did Jesus mean by these three examples? You can't give a child bread that looks like a stone, you can't give a child fish that is also a fish, but God doesn't allow you to eat it, and you can't give a child a scorpion that looks like a poisoned egg. Even if all three of these things were alike, you couldn't mistake them. So Jesus' three examples are meant to be a message to every Christian that you don't need to be afraid when you pray, even if you ask for something that looks like what God wants to give, but isn't, you don't need to worry about it. Even if you ask for something that looks like what God wants to give, but it doesn't, you don't have to worry about it. Because even if you ask for something wrong, God will never give it wrong. This is what God means. Even if he is like a parent, he will not make a mistake, just as God will not make a mistake even if what we need is similar to what the world can give us. God will definitely leave us the most correct, the most right, and the most beneficial thing for us. Therefore, brothers and sisters, there is no need to have fear of personality when praying. I once encountered such a brother who came to me and said something that seemed to make sense. He said, "Pastor Wang, I work inside the organization, and when I talk to the leader, he gives me small shoes to wear. He said that God is the King of kings and the Lord of lords, and if I say the wrong thing or ask for the wrong thing in front of Him, if I ask for the wrong thing and God is not pleased, then I will be finished. That's why he told me that he doesn't pray, he's afraid he'll say the wrong thing. This was the first time I met such a person in the church, not because he was lazy, but because he didn't dare to pray. I told him that God has promised us that even if we say or ask wrongly, we don't know whether it's good or bad, we can just say whatever we want. That son or daughter will come back and ask for bread, that son or daughter will come back and ask for fish, that son or daughter will come back and ask for food, even if you don't know how to tell the difference, and these two things in your family are very close and similar, but your parents will never give you the wrong one. Christians are the same way, ask boldly and don't worry. What if I ask for the wrong thing, you say? What if I ask in vain? It doesn't matter, even if you ask the wrong thing, God will never give you the wrong thing. The last sentence of the Bible says that no matter what you ask for, whether you are asking for grace, whether you are asking for power, whether you are asking for faith, no matter what you ask for, God will give you the best first, which is the Holy Spirit. After the Holy Spirit dwells in you, he will teach you to pray, and he will help you to pray. If you don't say it out loud, He will intercede for you before God, and the heavenly Father is like that to us. When we kneel before Him in prayer, as long as we sincerely and earnestly ask, He will first give us the Holy Spirit, and after the Holy Spirit comes into us, He will help us to pray, and if there is something wrong in our prayers, if there is something that we haven't asked for, the Holy Spirit will add to it for us. Brothers and sisters, since you have believed in the Lord, have you ever encountered a situation where you had a difficulty, a need, or a disease, and before you even had time to ask for it, God healed you, and before you even had time to ask for it, God solved the problem? There was an old sister who came to me one day and said, "How can God be so good? Before I believed in the Lord, I was full of sicknesses, but after I believed in the Lord, I prayed for my major illnesses, and I didn't pray for the minor ones that I didn't think of, and God solved them before I even had a chance to ask Him, and before I knew it, I had already been healed. Have you ever encountered such a time? Why? It is because your prayers are answered by God, and your problems are solved by God, not entirely on whether you prayed well or not, not entirely on whether you asked rightly or not, and not entirely on whether you said beautifully or not, but the Holy Spirit has already interceded for you every day with inexpressible sighs, and no matter whether you can say it or not, no matter whether you said it well or not, the Holy Spirit has already offered complete intercession for you in front of God. Brothers and sisters, don't worry and ask boldly, even if you ask wrongly, God will not give wrongly, because He is our Father in heaven. I would like every brother and sister to tell God frankly what is in your heart, earnestly seek God's face, God's heart, and finally strengthen your faith, boldly rely on God, and believe that God will always put the best in us. Prayer: Thank you, dear Heavenly Father, for putting this kind of truth in each one of us in the morning of prayer. Pray that we will take your words on our necks and engrave them on our hearts, and that they will be the strength for our next steps in pursuit and prayer. In our faith, there are many things that we pray for halfway, many things that we pray for in doubt, and some things that we pray for in our own selfish desires. Lord, you have enlightened us with your word today, asking you to remove our selfish desires, our doubts, and our half-heartedness, so that we may persistently and perseveringly pray before you without ceasing. Lord, grant us the prayers that are in line with your heart, so that we may see the power of prayer, and believe that prayer can bring us revival of faith. We would also like to pray to You for this church. Dear Heavenly Father, when I came here this morning, I saw so many brothers and sisters coming to this church, and I saw that many brothers and sisters were sitting in the yard and meeting under the sun. Dear Lord, I believe that you will bring revival to this church, and I believe that you will solve the difficulties of this church, and I believe that you will build us a bigger house of worship because of our prayers. In the name of the Lord we pray. Amen!