The Five Prayers God Always Answers

A preview of this week's sermon in The School of Prayer

During our lessons in the School of Prayer, we’ve been talking about the fact that “calling on the name of the Lord” and praying “in the name of Jesus” are ways of asking God to do what he has promised. That’s Gospel-shaped prayer. The patriarchs, matriarchs, and prophets of the Old Testament prayed to God to do what he promised: to send a Messiah—one of the offspring of Adam, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—to come and crush the serpent’s head and defeat sin and death, setting them and the whole creation free from their slavery.

In the Gospels, we learn that Jesus is, indeed, that promised offspring—a son of Adam and Abraham, but also Son of God. Last week we talked about the fact that in Jesus God took on the limitations of human flesh, being born into a fallen world, and prayed that God’s ultimate promise would come through in his life, death, and resurrection. Jesus’ prayer life was all about the gospel and we said that the context of our prayers should reflect Jesus’ concern for the mission of God. Every prayer we pray should be shaped by the mission.

That’s the way that the early church learned to pray. In fact, the New Testament tells us explicitly what we should be praying for because there are certain prayers that God is always going to answer—prayers that tap into his covenant promises. Like the people of the Bible, we might have to wait or look closely to see where God is moving the needle in response to our prayers, but these are prayers that we can be sure that God will respond to according to his will.

Join us this Sunday as we look at the next installment of The School of Prayer: “The Five Prayers God Always Answers.” Our services at Aldersgate Church are at 8:00, 9:00, or 10:30AM Eastern, and you can livestream our 9:00 or 10:30 services on our website. Check out our YouTube page for past sermons in the series.

Here’s last week’s sermon on praying in the name of Jesus in case you missed it: