If you wish that you knew how to pray a prayer that would be answered by Heaven 100% in the affirmative, here are a few examples:
"Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief" (Mark 9:24). Read the context of the prayer; the man was absolutely desperate; he confessed the truth of his latent unbelief that he knew was deep in his heart. He was on the verge of losing everything, for Jesus had told him plainly that "if thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth" (vs. 23). The man didn't know how to believe! He felt he couldn't because three-fourths of the pastors and evangelists of his day also were helpless to lead him to genuine faith (it's pathetic even today when a sincere soul seeks the Lord but finds the majority of pastoral leadership simply mocks your heart cries). And yet the distraught man chose to believe when he did not feel like believing and saw no evidence that believing would do any good. That is an inspired pattern of genuine "Christian experience"! Linger on it; it's pregnant with good news.
Another prayer that will surely be answered in the affirmative is this: "God, be merciful to me, the sinner" (Luke 18:13, margin). The article is in the original Greek; the man was saying, Lord, of the two of us praying here, I know that this great man here is more worthy than I am; of the two of us, please answer his prayer. But Lord, I am so unworthy in contrast. All I can pray is, please be merciful to me, the one who is most unworthy, THE sinner.
You have a divinely inspired assurance that the man's prayer was answered in the affirmative for eternity (vs. 14). He could become the happiest man in heaven when he arises in the first resurrection!
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: July 3, 2007.
Copyright © 2011 by Robert J. Wieland.
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