Join our mailing list! Enter your email address below, then click the 'Join List' button: Powered by ListBot   Believers know that God is their Heavenly Father, that they are His dear children. Therefore, they go to Him expecting a loving, sympathetic and helpful response. But they must never forget from where they came and who they are in themselves outside of their Savior Jesus Christ. Believers must never forget that the Bible pictures them before they were saved as beggars who sit along side of a road in the dust with an empty cup (Luke 16:20, 18:35-42). The spiritual situation of unsaved sinners is no different than that of a beggar who must cry out for help and who has no right to be heard or receive anything from Him to whom he cries. Believers must never have the presumption that before they were saved, their prayers obligated God to hear and bless them. Believers must keep in mind the principle that if God wills, He can answer a sinner's prayer, but only if He wills. The only obligation God has is one in which He obligates Himself. If He condescends to answer someone who calls upon Him, it is because He has decided to do that according to His own counsel. Believers must rememeber that they were once unsaved sinners who, as beggars with empty hands, cried out to God for whatever mercy He cared to extend. This is a heritage that should remind all believers, as they go to God in prayer, of their inadequacy to fill their needs and their great abiding dependancy upon God's sustaining grace. This is also a heritage that should remind all believers who pray that, in themselves, they are unworthy of God's attention and are heard only for the sake of their Savior Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, a person's honest awareness of his inadequacy must not demotivate him from coming to God in prayer. People who stay away from God, because they say they feel unworthy, are demonstrating rebellion based upon enormous pride. Such people wish that they were more worthy than they have shown themselves to be and are embarrassed and chagrined that they do not measure up to a standard they have set for themselves. Rather than come to God with broken and humble hearts, some lament that they have not attained in their own power the level of holiness to which they aspire. On the other hand, a person who is truly humble will submit to God's call to come in the name of Jesus Christ. He will recognize that he is not worthy in himself but that Jesus is, and that Jesus has cleared the way to the heavenly Father by His own sacrifice (Heb. 4:15,16). A believer rejoices in the amazing facts that God wills to hear his prayers and that He delights to bestow the riches of the gospel upon all who come to Him with a broken heart (John 6:37). We ought to mention that although the Bible describes prayer as a sacrifice (Psalm 141:1,2, Hebrews 13:15), that does not mean people can congratulate themselves after they pray, as if they accomplished a great deed. Nor should they feel sorry for themselves, as if they practiced great self-denial, expending time and energy which they could have spent in their own pursuits. There is no room for pride or self-pity in prayer (James 4:6, I Peter 5:6,7). In fact, those are sinful attitudes that will break the conversation between a man and God (Psalm 66:18).