Praying while Abiding

There are many conditions for answered prayer given in the New Testament. I'm not going to pretend that we will cover them all in this series. But hopefully the ones we do cover will be an encouragement to you in your prayer life.


John 15:7 If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.



This is an interesting condition for prayer. In John 15 Jesus tells us that just like a branch abides in a vine in order to bear fruit, we as Jesus' followers should abide in Him.  He is the source of our life. As He said in this passage, "Without me you can do nothing."



So in this verse He is telling us that in order for our prayers to be answered, we need to be abiding in Him. Our life and His life need to be vitally connected. Without that connection we are not truly in Him. Secondly He tells us that His words need to abide in us. That means that we need to be taking in the Word of God and paying attention to what it says. We must believe what He said and let His words be the foundation of our thinking and our behavior. If we are just doing our own thing, we are not really letting His words abide in us.



Now notice in this promise as in many of the other promises I mention in this series, there is the key word it. If we do such and such then it will be done or given. I am far from an expert on prayer, but I do understand language. Often times I don't get what I ask for in prayer. I am convinced that it is not because God is fudging on His promises or that He didn't really say what He means. I think we don't see answers because we don't meet the conditions.