When You Pray Believing, You Will Receive

There is an old saying that goes something like, “If you’re praying for rain, you better bring an umbrella!” It means that we should always pray believing that we will receive what we’re praying for. But believing with your head is one thing. Believing with your life is quite another. Recently, God convicted me of praying prayers and then acting as if I didn’t believe He would answer. He showed me how fervently I prayed and yet how I was still gripped by uncertainty in that area. The Bible calls it being “double-minded.” It was an eye-opening experience and one that made me take an inventory of just exactly what I was praying and how I was living in light of my prayers.

Set Times for Prayers

“Evening, and morning, and at noon, will I pray, and cry aloud. And He shall hear my voice.”

Psalm 55:17

People are creatures of habit. 1 Thessalonians 5:16 tells us to “pray without ceasing,” but it is both biblical and helpful to carve out specific times in our day when we allow nothing else into our minds but attention to God. Every person is different, though. And every child of God has a specific walk based on his/her position and calling in the kingdom. Some are called to pray more than others, but we are all expected to commune with our Father every single day.

For me, I pray fasting prayers between 3-6 AM, morning prayers in the shower, drive-time prayers in the morning (and afternoon on work days), and evening prayers. The prayer that God was convicting me about was my morning drive-time prayer. That’s the time when I always pray on the armor of God. I take time with each piece to ask God to help me in those areas (truth and protection from deception, aligning my will to His, walking as a witness, faith and help with unbelief, and keeping my thoughts aright). At the end, I finish with specific Bible verses that are statements of my belief and requests for things I desire that God will do for me in my life. 

My Prayers in Question

“But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord. A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.”

James 1:6-8

Here are the verses I was praying that God called me out for. 

• Psalm 139:23-24 ^“Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts. And see if there be any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.”
• Psalm 5:7-8 “But I, by your great love, can come into your house; in reverence I bow down toward your holy temple. Lead me, Lord, in your righteousness because of my enemies — make your way straight before me.”
• Psalm 119:132-133 “Look thou upon me, and be merciful unto me, as thou usest to do unto those that love thy name. Order my steps in thy word: and let not any iniquity have dominion over me.”

Virtually every singly day, I pray three different scriptures for God to lead me. But I was still having trouble stepping forward in faith. I would feel a prompting to do something and then I would question it. “Was that God speaking or just my own thoughts?” “Should I do it or not do it?” (Insert worry here.) When God brought the situation to my attention, I determined that I was going to decide immediately whose voice I was hearing and move forward based on that. After all, if I’m praying for God to lead me, I must believe that God will do it. I just have to trust Him to make His voice clear to me every time.

My Right-Track Testimony

Then the Lord let me know I was on the right track. My Sunday morning ministry is called “Taste of Church to You.” I make up a set of about 30 snacks with Bible verses and messages in English and Spanish. I take them first to the men who wait for day jobs. Then I go to a convenience store and a laundromat. These are all on the way to my church. It’s a “taste” because it’s something to eat and because it is just a little message “from church” on a Sunday morning.

This past Sunday, when I finished passing out snacks at the mostly empty laundromat, I still had several brownies with messages in my basket. As I stopped at the next light, I looked ahead to the Waffle House parking lot on the other side of the street. There was a family taking a minute to get a handicapped man into a van. I felt the prompting to stop and give the family the snacks. 

Confirmation I Heard Him Correctly

Now, the Lord gave me this evangelism ministry about three years ago, so I’m used to going to the three places I always go. Stopping at an additional location and catching people in the parking lot was a step even further out of my comfort zone. But I had the definite feeling that it was the Lord prompting me to stop. He has really been working with me on boldness in that area. (You can read about that here: Even When We Aren’t, God Is Able.) I made a conscious effort not to question it and pulled in to give snacks to the family. When I was done, I saw there was also a group of people talking just outside the door of the restaurant.

I counted the number of people and the number of brownies and thought I had just enough. But when I started handing them out, I found that I was one short. Then the second-to-last lady said, “I’m Keto.” (That means that she doesn’t eat sugar.) It turned out that I had exactly the right number. I believe God was letting me know that I heard Him correctly and did the right thing by moving forward in faith.

God is Sovereign

Don’t get me wrong, though. God has His own purposes and timing, and we can’t just get whatever we want because we believe that God will give it to us. Belief doesn’t answer prayers – God does. And He obviously isn’t going to say “yes” to every request. We can’t, for example, pray to win the lottery and then quit our jobs in expectation of taking home millions of dollars. Likewise, when we don’t get what we pray for, it isn’t necessarily that we don’t have the “faith” to receive it. Sometimes God says “Yes,” sometimes it’s “No,” and sometimes it’s “wait.” 

In fact, taking belief to the extreme is one of the very dangerous end-time deceptions. There is something called the “Word of Faith movement” that would seek to “decree and declare” things into existence. Leader Kenneth Hagin once said, “You can have whatever you say…You always get in your life what you believe for and what you say.” For example, someone might say, “I decree and declare God’s blessings on this road trip that my car will remain mechanically sound for the duration of the trip.” But this isn’t a prayer at all. In fact, it’s more like an end run around God. Plus, there are a lot of similarities to a magical incantation. If you want more information about this movement or why it isn’t biblical, Got Questions has a great article on it here. 

God does, however, promise to answer every prayer prayed in His will. 1 John 5:14-15 says, “And this is the confidence that we have in Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, he heareth us. And if we know that He hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of Him.” When we ask for things that we know that He wants for us, such as prayers prayed straight from the Bible (like the verses above), we can be sure that He will answer when we believe.

The Bible Is Clear: Pray Believing

• Matthew 21:22: “And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.”
• Mark 11:24: ” Therefore I say unto you, ‘What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.’”

Until the day when we meet the Lord face to face, we must continue to pray believing. Hebrews 11:6 says, “But without faith it is impossible to please Him: for he that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.” When we seek the Lord, pray in His will, and believe that we have our petitions, we can step out in faith to receive the reward of our prayers.

Blogs About Prayer

In the four years since the Lord has given me this blog, I have written several blogs about prayer. Here is a list you can skim to see if any might appeal or apply to you.

Lessons About Prayer

9 Reasons God Doesn’t Hear Our Prayers (and the one reason He does) – Explores the Bible verses that explicitly state when God will and won’t hear our prayers and what His qualifications are for answering them. 

3 Lessons from Those Who Didn’t Pray Believing – Chronicles three different Bible characters who prayed without belief: Balaam (the guy with the talking donkey), King Saul, and the Disciples.

3 Lessons from a Prayer that Changed Everything – King Jehoshaphat of Judah prayed a prayer that was answered mightily by God. There are three distinct characteristics from his prayer that we can learn for our own prayers today. 

What My Dog Taught Me About God’s Timing – My German Shepherd taught me a lesson about perseverance in prayer. 

Psalm 107: God Hears the Cries of the Desperate – A closer look at Psalm 107. There are four categories of people the Psalm lists as desperate enough to cry out to the Lord. Sometimes, we can’t fix things for ourselves. We have to get desperate and give Him the glory as the only one who can help.  

Specific Prayers You Can Pray

A New Prayer for Wisdom and Three Impressions from God – How to pray for wisdom and 3 pieces of advice about how to deal wisely with the things of God. 

A New Way to Pray: Show Me How to Move the Match – We often don’t know what we don’t know. Sometimes, we may have to ask God to open our eyes to the truth in a given situation. 

“Make My Will Thy Will” – A New Way to Pray – A God-wink story about the time God taught me a new way to pray to get what I want more of the time. 

Hope for Lost Loved Ones: God’s Mercy in Trials – The story of King Manasseh of Judah. It’s also a new way to pray for lost loved ones. We can pray they have a “Manasseh moment.”

In Evangelism, Pray for Holy Spirit Fire – An analogy about fire and evangelism. No one comes to the Father except the Spirit draws him/her.  

Redeeming the Time: Pray for a Cookie Pan Life – God dealt with me about the way I viewed time. He also gave me a prayer to pray to do better. 

Prayer Testimonies

God Answered the Prayer I Didn’t Pray – The time I prayed very specifically for strength. God showed me that there is more than one way that God can answer the prayers of our hearts. 

A Testimony of Healing After a Prayer in Faith – The Lord encouraged me to ask for prayer for an injury. Then He had me gather all the Bible verses about healing and pray them in faith.

God Knows Even When You Don’t, So Pray – A time when I felt helpless to fix a big problem at work. Then God dealt with my heart to pray, and everything changed from there. 

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