From His Heart

Dr. Jeff Schreve: Elijah was a guy who knew how to pray. He knew how to get his prayers answered. He knew the secret of answered prayer. So let me ask you a question. When's the last time you asked God for something very specific and God answered your specific request with His specific answer to that request and showed you that He hears you and He is a God who answers prayer?

Guest (Male): Do you know the secret to answered prayer? Well, the Old Testament prophet Elijah certainly did. His heart being right and his life aligned with God and His word, he saw answers to his prayers. And we can, too.

This is From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Schreve. We want to thank you for joining us today as this month we're in the series Holy Boldness: Lessons from Elijah, the Prophet of Fire. Today we're going to learn how to experience answered prayer in our own lives.

This powerful and practical series is our special thank-you gift for supporting From His Heart this month with a gift of any amount. You can find out more information at fromhisheart.org. Also, with that gift, we're going to send you the booklet, Unveiling the Mystery of Prayer. That'll be helpful after you hear this message. Open your Bible to 1 Kings chapter 18 as Pastor Jeff reveals how you can enjoy the benefits of answered prayer.

Dr. Jeff Schreve: Elijah knew how to pray, how to connect with God, how to get his prayers answered. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain, and it did not rain on the earth for three years and six months. He prayed again, no doubt earnestly, and the sky poured rain and the earth produced its fruit.

Now, notice this about Elijah. He's not Superman; he's just a man. Elijah was a guy who knew how to pray, how to get his prayers answered. He knew the secret of answered prayer. I'm convinced many people don't understand this secret of answered prayer. They don't know how to get their prayers answered, and because they don't really know how to get their prayers answered, they don't really pray very much.

They don't pray with earnestness as Elijah prayed. They don't pray with confidence as Elijah prayed. They don't pray with power, and they don't pray with much effectiveness. So let me ask you a question. When's the last time you asked God for something very specific? "Lord, bless me" is not a specific prayer. You wouldn't know if He did or not, really, because it's just so general.

When's the last time you asked God for something very specific, and God answered your specific request with His specific answer to that request and showed you that He hears you and He is a God who answers prayer? For some, it's been a long time. For some in this room, you'd have to say, "I don't think I've ever had that happen." All that can change today as we study the prayer life of Elijah and see the secret to answered prayer.

1 Kings chapter 18, just to bring everyone up to speed. Elijah comes on the scene in 1 Kings chapter 17. He goes up against wicked King Ahab and says to King Ahab, who's trying along with his wife, Jezebel—his wicked wife Jezebel—who's trying to eradicate the worship of Yahweh, Jehovah God, and replace Jehovah God with Baal.

So she has the false prophets of Baal and Baal's female consort, the Asherah. She has 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of the Asherah, and they daily eat at Jezebel's table. They're invited into the White House, so to speak, and they take over spiritually, and all of Israel is hesitating between two opinions. "We want to worship Baal because that's what Ahab says to do, but then we were told from our forefathers we need to worship Yahweh." So they're riding the fence.

God sends Elijah to Ahab and says, "Go tell him no more rain." Elijah said, "There's not going to be any more rain except by my word because of the sin that you're bringing upon Israel." He called him a troubler of Israel. The Lord takes Elijah away and hides him away for three and a half years. There's no rain for three and a half years. Serious, serious problem when there's no rain for that long.

Then God says to him in 1 Kings chapter 18, "Go show yourself to Ahab, and I'm going to send rain on the earth." He shows himself to Ahab. There's the big showdown on Mount Carmel. "Who is God?" The one that answers by fire, He is God. Baal's prophets, they are a big goose egg. They can't get Baal to do anything because Baal's not God. When Elijah calls on the name of the Lord, He answers with fire, and the people respond and they say, "The Lord, He is God! The Lord, He is God!"

Then Elijah says, "Gather up the prophets of Baal," and they seized them, and Elijah slew them there at the brook Kishon. Then it says this in verse 41: "Now Elijah said to Ahab, 'Go up, eat and drink, for there is the sound of the roar of a heavy shower.'" So Ahab went up to eat and drink. But Elijah went up to the top of Mount Carmel, and he crouched down on the earth, and he put his face between his knees.

He said to his servant, "Go up now, look toward the sea." So he went up and looked and said, "There is nothing." He said, "Go back" seven times. It came about at the seventh time that he said, "Behold, a cloud as small as a man's hand is coming up from the sea." He said, "Go up, say to Ahab, 'Prepare your chariot and go down so that the heavy shower does not stop you.'"

It came about in a little while, the sky grew black with clouds and wind, and there was a heavy shower, and Ahab rode and went to Jezreel. Then the hand of the Lord was on Elijah, and he girded up his loins and outran Ahab to Jezreel. What's the secret to answered prayer? I want you to notice with me three steps to getting your prayers answered.

Step number one: Answered prayer comes when we get our hearts right with God. That's the very first step. If I'm going to see God answer my prayers, I've got to make sure my heart's right with Him. So I have to take that first step to get my heart right with the Lord. Psalm 66:18, the scripture says this: "If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me."

If I have a regard for sin, if I have a place in my heart that I have a little secluded spot for some iniquity, some transgression, some sin, some idol, if I have it there in my heart, the Bible says, "Forget it, you're not going to get your prayers answered. God's not going to hear you." It says in Isaiah 59:1-2, "Behold, the Lord's hand is not so short that it cannot save; neither is His ear so dull that it cannot hear. But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear." He will not hear when you have sin in your heart and you have a regard for sin.

Now, very interesting, the drought came as a result of God's word. God's word in Deuteronomy chapter 11. The Lord had said through Moses—Deuteronomy is just Moses' last three sermons to the people before the Lord was going to take him to heaven—and he said to the people, "Listen, thus says the Lord: If you forget Me when you go into the land of promise and you start to worship other gods, let me tell you what's going to happen. I'm going to shut up heaven, and there's not going to be any rain for you until you get things right because if you go after the false gods and the idols that are there in Canaan, it's not going to go well for you, and this will be the sign—there's not going to be any rain."

Elijah knew what the Lord had said, and Elijah came to Ahab, and he just claimed the word of God and says, "This is what's going to happen. No more rain." So there wasn't any rain for three and a half years. Then in 1 Kings chapter 18, the Lord says, "Go show yourself to Ahab. I'm going to bring rain." But before God was going to bring rain, they had to deal with the idolatry.

They had to take care of the prophets of Baal. They had to get the people off the fence. "How long will you hesitate between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him; if Baal, follow him." But get off the fence of compromise, get off the fence of non-commitment. The people did, and they said, "The Lord, He is God! The Lord, He is God!" Then they slew the prophets of Baal, the 450 prophets of Baal.

What's the first step in getting your prayers answered? You've got to get your heart right with God. You've got to put to death the idols in your life. You have to deal with any idolatry before the rain can fall. The rain is obviously God's blessing upon His people, and all of us want the rain to fall. The old song says, "Mercy drops round us are falling, but for the showers we plead." God, we want You to pour it out upon us.

God says, "Well, you've got to get yourself on blessing ground. If you have a regard for iniquity in your heart, you're not on blessing ground. I'm not going to hear your prayer; I'm not going to do for you. You have to deal with the idolatry." Now, Old Testament idolatry was some kind of a statue, something that you could see that people would bow down to. We don't have that really in America today. They have it in other parts of the world, but we don't have that in America. But we have our idols.

What's an idol? An idol is anything that you love more than God, anything you fear more than God, anything you desire more than God. The very first commandment of the Ten Commandments says, "I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before Me."

When we have idolatry that hits our heart, it's when something—as Tony Evans said, an idol is a noun: it's a person, place, or thing—it's something that takes priority over God. The Lord says in Revelation chapter 2 to the church in Ephesus, "I have this against you, that you've left your first love." You used to love Me with all your heart, but now other things are more important than I am. That's a terrible sin, and we have to deal with the idols that get into our heart.

Guest (Male): Pastor Jeff Schreve is in his series Holy Boldness: Lessons from Elijah, the Prophet of Fire, and today's fourth message in this series is entitled Answered Prayer. He'll expand more on this vital part of our walk with God in just a moment. But here's an honest question for you to answer today. Now, be honest. How is your prayer life?

You see, prayer is essential. Why? Because it links our weakness to God's almighty power. It steadies our anxious hearts and so much more. When circumstances feel overwhelming and devastating, prayer is not our last resort but our greatest response. God answers prayer. Today Pastor Jeff is in the eight-message series we're sharing this month called Holy Boldness, and we're offering this series as our gift of thanks to you for your support of any amount.

We're also offering this empowering booklet called Unveiling the Mystery of Prayer this month for your gift of any amount. All you give goes to help us in getting these programs on the air here and around the world. To get the eight-message series Holy Boldness and the booklet Unveiling the Mystery of Prayer, make your gift today when you call 866-40-BIBLE, 866-402-4253, or go online to fromhisheart.org. Make that gift today, and we are so thankful for your support and trust in this ministry. Now, let's get back to the message Answered Prayer. Here again is Pastor Jeff.

Dr. Jeff Schreve: We have to deal with the idols that get into our heart. That idol could be a husband or a wife. That idol could be a son or a daughter. That idol could be football or golf or money. For many, it's money. That's why Jesus said no man can serve two masters: either he will hate the one and love the other, he'll hold to the one and despise the other. You can't serve God and riches.

That tends to be the American idol in our country. We deal with that, and so the Lord says, "If you want to hear from Me, if you want to see Me answer your prayer, that's the very first step: You've got to get rid of the idols." You've got to deal with that stuff. And listen, when you deal with the idols that are in your life, we like to kind of manage those idols. We like to kind of coddle those idols. We like to think we can control those idols, so we don't get rid of them entirely. We just say, "Well, I'm going to put them over to the side, Lord, and then I can pull them out if I want to play with them."

The Lord says, "No, you don't do that. You don't manage them, you mortify them. You don't coddle them, you crucify them." Those who belong to Christ Jesus, the Bible says, have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. You take the idols and you smash them, and you take the prophets of Baal and you slay them, and you get serious about the Lord.

James 4:4 says this: "You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore, whoever wishes to make himself a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God." Enemies of God don't get in on the blessings of God. So that's the very first step.

Good news is this: If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Bible says in Proverbs chapter 28 verse 13, "He who conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will find compassion from the Lord." So they had to deal with the idolatry. You and I have to deal with the idolatry if we're going to get in on this thing called answered prayer.

Second step toward answered prayer: Answered prayer comes when we not only get our hearts right but when we hear and align ourselves with God and His plan. 1 Kings chapter 18, it says the word of the Lord came to Elijah in the third year, saying, "Go, show yourself to Ahab, and I will send rain on the earth." Clear word from the Lord to Elijah.

Now, when we read how God spoke to the Old Testament prophets, doesn't say how He did it. Doesn't say did Elijah hear a voice from heaven? Was it like Moses at the burning bush where the Lord spoke from the bush? Could have been. We don't know. It was God communicating. The word of the Lord came to him. Could have been came to him in his heart.

I have never heard the Lord speak audibly to my ears, but I've heard Him speak into my heart. I've heard Him impress something on my heart. When He speaks inside like that, that can be a louder voice than if He speaks to your ears. So the God of the universe, He communicated with Elijah, and the word was clear.

How does God do that to us today? Well, God speaks primarily through His word and always in agreement with His word. God's word is His mind in print. God's word is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword. The Bible is alive, and the Bible is not like other books. You read other books, but the Bible reads you. When you spend time in this book, you'll find that the words just kind of leap off the page and there's something different about the Bible than any other book because it's God-breathed and the breath of God is on this book.

As you read the Bible, you hear from God because God speaks primarily through His word and always in agreement with His word. What does that mean? It means that God is never going to impress upon you something to do that's opposite from what His word says. Sometimes you hear people say, "Well, you know, I think God told me to leave my spouse and marry this other person at work." I can guarantee He didn't tell you to do that.

So how do you know that? Because God says He hates divorce, that's why. Because God doesn't want to see families torn apart, that's why. And so anytime you say, "Well, I think God's telling me to do this," and this doesn't match up with the word, then you know that's not God telling you to do that. It's the enemy telling you to do that. It's your flesh that's matching up with that saying, "Yeah, that's what I want to do," but you're not hearing from God.

God speaks through His word and in agreement with His word, always. And then God answers prayer—keep that in mind, that's how He speaks—He answers prayer that is rooted in His word and rooted in His will. Why do we not see more things happen that we pray for? Because so much of the time we pray for our will. And you know what? God's not interested in your will or my will; He's interested in His will.

Here's the prayer promise from 1 John chapter 5: "And this is the confidence which we have before Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him." But we have to ask according to His will. Now, His word and His will, they're linked together. They're linked together.

How do I know the will of God? By spending time in the word of God, because the word of God is God's mind in print, God's will in print, God's desires in print. And so I can find out what His will is as I spend time in His word. Sometimes we think prayer is one of these things that we have to do to somehow overcome God's reluctance to answer our prayer. So many of us think like that.

It's like, "Well, you got to pray and pray and pray and pray and pray, and the Lord says, 'Well, you know, if you pray about that for three more years, I might think about it.'" And somehow we're trying to get God to do something He doesn't want to do, kind of like when you were a little kid or your little kids can do that to you. If they whine long enough about something, you're like, "Fine, I'll buy you candy. Just be quiet."

Listen, don't ever get the idea that prayer's like that, that we badger God to get Him to do something He doesn't want to do just so He gets us off His back. That's not the God of the Bible. That's not what prayer is. Prayer is not overcoming God's reluctance; it's getting in on God's willingness. God's willingness is in His word, it's in His will. He says, "If you'll pray according to My will, you can have tremendous confidence as you pray, and you can know that I'm going to do what I said I wanted to do."

George Mueller was born in the early 1800s. He was from Bristol, England. He's known as a man of prayer. Tremendous faith and prayer—those work together. The things that he did, just amazing. He started an orphanage with 50 cents, and just on the sheer power of prayer, 50 cents became 7.5 million dollars. He just asked the Lord. He saw God do amazing things as he prayed.

I love what he said concerning prayer. He said for him, prayer was always a matter of finding a promise in the word of God. He said if there was something on my heart, I looked through the word of God till I found a promise in the word of God that matched up with this need that I could say, "Lord, I feel this is impressed on my heart, and this is what You say in Your word." He said, "I would put my finger on the verse and read that back to God and say, 'God, this is what You have said, and Lord, I'm claiming Your word.'"

You know, we have people today, they talk about "name it and claim it." Listen, that is not biblical to name it and claim it. God names it, and when God names it, then you can claim it. When you can find a promise where the Lord says, "This is what I will do," then you can put your finger on that and say, "God, this is what You said, and God, I'm trusting what You said, and I'm praying according to Your will." God answers prayers that are rooted in His word and in His will.

You say, "Well, what about if there's something like, 'Lord, I want a spouse'? Where do I find that promise?" One of the greatest promises that I've found is Psalm 37:4. It says this: "Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart. Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart."

Now, what does it mean to delight yourself in the Lord? The word delight literally means to make yourself soft, to make yourself pliable. I always think of the picture of the potter and the clay. God is the potter—Thou art the potter, I am the clay. And so the job of the clay is to be soft and pliable in the hands of the master.

And if I will be soft and pliable in the hands of the master, and I will say, "Lord, I want to go Your way wherever Your way is," then God says, "If you'll delight in Me, I'll give you the desires of your heart" because your desires and God's desires will then match up. God doesn't just blow past if you have a desire in your heart to be married, to have a family. God doesn't say, "Well, I'm not concerned about that." God loves you. God's a good God. So God says, "You just continue to make yourself soft and pliable in My hands, and I'll give you the desires of your heart. You can trust Me with that." He doesn't say when; He just says that He's going to do that.

Guest (Male): You're listening to From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Schreve today and the lesson entitled Answered Prayer. Isn't that good news? That is great news. The Creator of the entire universe loves us enough to answer our prayers. God is good, and God is willing to give you and me the desires of our hearts within His good and perfect will for our lives.

Today's message is one of eight in this dynamic and practical series Holy Boldness: Lessons from Elijah, the Prophet of Fire. This series and the companion booklet Unveiling the Mystery of Prayer are our gifts to you for your support this month of any amount. Thank you for supporting this outreach, and together we are making an impact on lives around the world.

Speaking of prayer, we invite you to join us online in our prayer section where you can leave a prayer request and people all over the world will see it and they'll have an opportunity to pray for you. And if you select the option to be notified when they do, then you'll receive an email notification—anonymously, of course—letting you know that someone has prayed for you. Again, go to the prayer link at fromhisheart.org.

Well, time has gone for part one of the lesson Answered Prayer from the Holy Boldness series. We thank you for joining us today, and we trust that you'll be back here tomorrow for part two of this lesson Answered Prayer. Join Pastor Jeff Schreve then when he'll open up God's word and share real truth, real love, and real hope from God's heart here on From His Heart.