Power Walk Ministries

Guest (Male): Thanks for joining us for today's installment of Power Walk. Steps to Answered Prayer. That's our current series taught by Pastor Paul Cannings. How can we develop confidence as we approach God in prayer? Our posture, our persistence, and also the spiritual war taking place when we wait for answers to prayer.

Pastor Cannings covers all three of these aspects in this series. Today he takes us to 1 John chapter 3 to challenge us to consider what might be hindering our prayers. Let's listen as he brings this message titled "Assured". Pastor Cannings.

Dr. Paul Cannings: Many times when I come to pray over the years and being a believer for a long time, I've gotten used to the fact that I know the Lord is there, I know He's listening to me. I've seen prayers answered, I've seen difficult situations come and God intervene powerfully. So yes, over years your confidence goes up.

But I've talked with young Christians, young believers, and when they pray it's tough because there's no physical being in front of them. You understand that Jesus Christ sits at the right hand of the Father making intercession for us, and that we pray to God through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit intercedes for us as well in terms of the groans of our heart.

We hear those verses, but communication is with a person sitting in front of us or on the phone or FaceTime live. We get to see a human being and it helps with communication, facial expressions, the voice tones, the level of excitement. We gain all of those things from watching the person's facial expressions, hand movements, etc., so we know that the message is understood, received, and there's a great response or response that interacts with what we're seeking to do.

When we pray we don't have that. So a lot of times when people pray, one of the things that is difficult is to be assured that the prayer is answered and that their persistence in prayer would lead to what the Scriptures teach. One of the examples of that is looking back at the book of Daniel, chapter 9. When Daniel prays in verse 20 on, he's praying and praying and praying and the angel comes and says to him, "Daniel, God has heard your prayer. I just got tied up with the King of Tyre and it took me a while to get from there to you. But your prayer is answered, you could basically move on, your prayer is answered."

The interesting thing is that Daniel kept praying. He didn't give up, like the woman in Luke chapter 18 who keeps pressing that judge to respond, and God is saying, "Yeah, pray like that." So many times when we look at examples like that, we even see Daniel functioning where he is praying but he gets this response of an angel. Many times we don't.

You have Psalm 27 where David would say, "God, why are you deaf to me? Why can't you just say what you need to say to me, or why are you so silent?" So even great men after God's own heart would cry out in this way. So how do we, when we pray, have a level of assurance when we pray, where we are praying but yet there is a level of assurance that God has heard and He responds?

Even though we're not there to see the facial expressions and have a sense of communication took place, we could be assured in this way. That's what John is dealing with because of all the infiltration of false doctrine in the church of Ephesus. He is trying to assure the people that no matter what, God is there.

That's why he starts off in chapter 1 from verse 1 through 4 and he says, "I've touched him, I beheld him, I've heard him speak. I'm not giving you a word that I just dreamed up, that I'm assuming that is right. I'm giving you a word that I've heard." So he's trying to reassure them as they look forward to the return of Jesus Christ, that this prayer life that they want to have is not something that is mystical, it is not something that just vaporizes when they pray, it is something that they could be assured of.

John gets to that in the bottom part of verse 19. This is what he says in verse 19: "Thereby we know that we are of the truth and shall assure our hearts before him." We spent a lot of time on "know" and "hearts" yesterday, but I want to back up into the word "assure". Fundamentally, what does the word "assure" mean? It means that there's no doubt.

In other words, the person is coming and they have no fear. They have no fear or no doubt; fear being that "I'm sinful." He addresses that in chapter 1 where he says, "Confess your sins, he's faithful and just to forgive you and cleanse you from all unrighteousness" in verse 8 through verse 9. "And if we say we have no sin, we are a liar and the truth is not in us."

So he says there's sin there. Then he goes in chapter 3 and talks about the difference between a person who sins that is saved and a person who sins that is not saved, from verse 4 through verse 11. So he's dealing with that sin issue and that's why he comes to say, "Hey, you know what, if you don't help a person that is in need when you know that they have a need and you don't help them," he says you're sinning because the Bible is clear about what you need to do when you find somebody in need.

He says in verse 16: "Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brethren. But whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?"

He's coming back to this whole issue that he's been explaining explicitly in verse 4 through verse 11 about the issue of how sin can interfere with God hearing our prayers. By looking at the word "know" that we talked about yesterday and the word "truth" that we discussed yesterday, because the truth is essential to experiencing life and life abundantly. Jesus is the way—salvation—truth. The Holy Spirit is the segue to this life and life abundantly.

So if I ever come to the truth, I'm saved, but experiencing this life, this fruit of the spirit, this where we live righteously, this life where we no longer live, it is Christ that lives in me. "The life I now live I live by faith in the Son of God." This life that Paul talks about, the resurrection power that we could live in in this life in Philippians chapter 3.

This life that we are talking about is a life where the Spirit of God is now what Paul would say in Ephesians chapter 5:15-18, where we're now drunk with the Spirit of God. Where we no longer walk in the flesh, we walk in the Spirit. Christ dwells in our hearts, the Holy Spirit dwells in us, and we get to comprehend what is the breadth and the length and the height and the magnitude of the meaning of God's word. Because now we are growing up as we serve in the local church, Ephesians chapter 4:13, we grow up into the fullness of God.

So we now no longer walk in the flesh, we walk in the Spirit. This life and life abundantly has to be experienced through the truth. That's why John takes so much time to talk about "know" and "heart", but then he brings up when those two things are engaged, it helps your assurance. You sense the movement of God in your life.

So when you're praying, it's not like you're praying to heaven way up there, because God is every place, all at the same time, fully there. That's what omnipresent means. The same thing with Jesus Christ, same thing with the Holy Spirit. So since I now live in heavenly places, the book of Ephesians will tell us, we then have this assurance that God is listening.

Because we have no reason to fear. Why? Because when I walk in the word, I demonstrate a love for God. Well, guess what, in chapter 4, "Perfect love casteth out fear." So therefore I don't come to God in some terror fear—I'm reverencing God obviously, that's a different kind of fear in the Bible. What he's talking about is no need for me to come trembling before God that he could hurt me and I'm scared to talk to God. No, because my heart is assured because I know Him and my heart is right with Him.

Therefore that fear is removed, and that's why the assurance of my interactions with God is clear. We can come to God with a sense of ease and not worry about God doing anything to me because I'm committed to obey Him so that perfect love removes that fear because I know I'm walking right with God.

Does that mean I'm walking perfect with God? No. He's not looking for a perfect person that gets this right all the time. He's looking for a person who's committed to the function that we talked about in knowing Him, in walking in truth, and then that person lives assured that God is listening to his prayers.

In Psalm 34, the level of assurance that David has had to do with the fact that he is saying, "I bless the Lord at all times." My heart is right, my commitment to God is there, I'm now walking in the truth, and therefore since I've done those things, I know he heard me. I know that God is paying attention, and that's why we could come to God with that assurance. That's why he tells us in Luke 5, he says, "Pray with boldness."

So when we take a quick look at verse 20, it says this: "For if our heart condemn us..." When our heart condemns us, we know we have done some wrong and we need to address that wrong. He talks about hating our brother in chapter 2. He talks about listening to false doctrine. He talks about the fact that a person that chooses not to live in the light will basically condemn themselves in chapter 1:5-9.

So he looks at this process and he talks about needing to be in fellowship with God. A loss of love for God because we're not committed to obey God. When our hearts go a different way, he says when we come to the day of judgment we could have confidence when we walk in a commitment to God because our fearfulness of God has disappeared. We talked about that and he said therefore it leads to answered prayer.

The Bible is saying when our heart convicts us in that way, address it. Don't remove it, don't push it to the side, address it because that is essential in us having our prayers answered and having assurance that they've been heard.

One of the things that I used to do with my sons is that when I look at them and I would say, "I promise." Anytime there's anything going on in their life and they say, "Dad, do you promise?" I learned as they got young age, small kids, they would say, "Dad, do you promise?" Once I look at them and I say, "I promise," it's like they just were confident that it is done. I saw it in their body language and sometimes they would hug me and walk away.

Folks, God promises. That he would never leave us nor forsake us. He promises that Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father. He promises that he will put the Holy Spirit in us if our salvation to him is genuine. We believed in our heart, we had a commitment to obey him to do what he says. He says he will come into our hearts 100 percent and regenerate that spirit that is dead in us and make us a brand new creation. He says that connects us spiritually with the spirit being named God. He assures us, he promises us that he will hear. Don't go to him hoping. Go to him believing.

Guest (Male): Thank you, Pastor Cannings. It's true, sin can interfere with us when we pray, and truth is essential when we're told to pray in spirit and truth.

Dr. Paul Cannings: I am so excited about April the 23rd through the 25th because it is a conference with lots of notes, great teachers, well-educated, well-prepared, doing what they're teaching in their churches. You cannot miss this conference. Come April the 23rd through the 25th at Living Word Fellowship Church at 7350 T.C. Jester Boulevard.

Come and be blessed. The conference is "The Way Forward: How Can We Be Productive Despite the Challenges Ministries Can Experience?" You go to powerwalkministries.org and you will get all the information you need. Looking forward to seeing you.

Guest (Male): Now for other ministry resources, log on to powerwalkministries.org. That's powerwalkministries.org. Or call us at 281-260-7402. That's 281-260-7402. When you contact us, ask about our current sermon series "Steps to Answered Prayer".

Our mailing address is Power Walk Ministries, P.O. Box 920517, Houston, Texas 77209. And we're very excited to announce the release of Pastor Cannings' newest book, "When We Pray". When you contact us, be sure to ask for that. And now as we wrap up, remember, when our hearts are right with God, we can pray with the assurance that He hears us.