Ask and It Shall Be Givern

The answer to prayer is the part of prayer which glorifies God.  It is not the act or the attitude of praying which gives efficacy to prayer.  It is not abject prostration of the body before God, the vehement or quiet utterance to God, the exquisite beauty and poetry of the diction of our prayers, which do the deed.  It is not the marvelous array of argument and eloquence in praying which makes prayer effectual.  Not one or all of these are the things which glorify God.  It is the answer which brings glory to His name.

To seek no answer to prayer takes the desire, the aim, and the heart out of prayer.  It makes praying a dead thing, fit only for dumb idols.  It is the answer which brings praying into Bible regions, and makes it a desire realized, a pursuit, an interest, that clothes it with flesh and blood, and makes it a prayer, throbbing with all the true life of prayer, affluent with all the paternal relations of giving and receiving, of asking and answering.

The emphasis in the Scriptures is always given to the answer to prayer.  All things from God are given in answer to prayer.  God himself, His presence, His gifts and His grace, one and all, are secured by prayer. The medium by which God communicates with men is prayer.  The most real thing in prayer, its very essential end, is the answer it secures.  The mere repetition of words in prayer, the counting of beads, the multiplying mere words of prayer,as if there was virtue in the number of prayers to avail, is a vain delusion, and empty thing, a useless service.  Prayer looks directly to securing an answer.

To God and to man, the answer to prayer is the all-important part of our praying.  The answer to prayer, direct and unmistakable, is the evidence of God's being.  It proves that God lives, that there is a God, an intelligent being, who is interested in His creatures, and who listens to them when they approach Him in prayer.  There is no proof so clear and demonstrative that God exists than prayer and its answer.  This was Elijah's plea: "Hear me, O Lord, hear me, that this people may know that thou art the Lord God."

God holds all good in His own hands.  That good comes to us through our Lord Jesus Christ because of His all-atoning merits, by asking it in His name.  The sole command in which all the others of its class belong, is "Ask, seek, knock." And the one and sole promise is its counterpart, its necessary equivalent and results:  "It shall be given  -  ye shall find  -  it shall be opened unto you."

Our Lord JesusChrist is most fully committed to the answer of prayer.  "Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son."  How well assured the answer to prayer is, when that answer is to glorify God the Father!  And how eager Jesus Christ is to glorify His Father in heaven!  So eager is He to answer prayer which always and everywhere brings glory to the Father, that no prayer offered in His name is denied or overlooked by Him.  Says our Lord Jesus Christ again, giving fresh assurance to our faith, "If you shall ask anything in my name, I will do it."

(by E.M. Bounds, A Confederate chaplain, prisoner of war, Methodist pastor, and author)