Do you wonder why the church is not living the book of Acts? Why are we not seeing prayers answered, the dead raised, and the sick healed every day? Why are you not living the book of Acts, and why are your prayers sometimes not heard and perhaps even ignored? In today’s teaching, we will learn how to pray and get answers to your prayers. Are you ready to see the book of Acts come alive in your life and pray supernatural prayers?
Mark 11:24, John 14:12, Matt 7:7, and 1.John 5:14 gives us the impression our prayers will be heard and answered as long as we ask in Jesus’s name by saying the words “in Jesus name,” believing that Jesus died for our sins believing we have received before we receive it. But what does it mean to “ask in Jesus name,” to ask according to the will of the Father, and to believe we have received before we receive it?
There are two ways to understand the New Testament, the right way or the wrong way.
When we read scriptures about prayer in the New Testament, we often assume we are reading about the Christian Jesus teaching His Christian disciples, who used to be Jews, how they should pray and live like Christians. And because we have been told, time and time again, how Christians have nothing to do with the Old Covenant, the law, and the Old Testament, which Jesus “nailed to the cross,” how to interpret these scriptures get left up to us. This is the wrong way to understand the New Testament, and it gives us a lot of problems.
When we are trying to interpret scripture, and at the same time, we reject the historical context, not allowing the Bible to speak for itself, we get ourselves into a lot of trouble. This is why we have a lot of confusion regarding prayer and many strange, unbiblical doctrines and understandings of Mark 11:24 John 14:12, Matt 7:7, and 1.John 5:14.
On the other hand, if we allow the Bible to speak for itself, we know this is not the Christian Jesus teaching His Christian disciples how to pray. This is the Jewish Jesus teaching His Jewish disciples how to pray using their Jewish Bible, the Old Testament. This is the correct way to read the New Testament. When Jesus spoke those words in Mark, Matthew, and John, and when John wrote 1.John, the New Testament did not exist. There would be another 400 years until the New Testament existed, so the only Bible they had back then was the Old Testament which Paul says is God-breathed and necessary for salvation. (2. Tim 3:15-17) When you reject the Old-Testament, you will not only end up having a lot of weird unbiblical understandings of prayer; you will also end up rejecting Jesus and your salvation. (Matt 7:21-23)
In Prov 15:29 and John 9:31, The Bible says Yehovah our God (the Father of Jesus) would never listen to the prayers of a sinner. He only listens to the prayers of the righteous. Who are the righteous according to the Old Testament? According to Psalm 1 and 1.John 3:7, the one who obeys the Mosaic law is righteous. The one who disobeys the Mosaic law is a sinner. So if you reject the food laws, reject the Shabbat or the other 613 commandments, you violate the Mosaic law. If you break God’s law, Prov 15:29 and John 9:31 say Yehovah will not listen to your prayers. On the other hand, if you obey Moses’s law, you will be righteous, and Yehovah will hear your prayers and respond to them.
In the Old Testament (the Bible Jesus used), the condition for having your prayers heard was your obedience to the law of Moses. If you obeyed the law, you became righteous.
What did Jesus teach us to do? He taught us how to become righteous.
How?
He told us we would be righteous if we obeyed Moses’s law (Matt 23:2, John 9:31, Matt 6:25-34), and we rejected man’s doctrines, traditions, and rules. 1.John 2 says we are one with Jesus and His authority when we are righteous by obeying Moses. If we are one with Him, we are one with His name. Everything we ask of in prayer as righteous men and women, united with Jesus, would then be prayer in Jesus’s name. Now we understand praying in Jesus’s name is not saying out loud “in Jesus’s name.” Instead, it is making sure we are righteous, and we can only be righteous if we obey the law of Moses.
So praying in Jesus’s name is the same way as praying in the Old Testament, praying as obedient women and men of Yehovah always obeying Moses.
What is the will of the Father (1.John 5:4)
We have been told it is to believe in Jesus and what He did for us on the cross. On the other hand, the Bible says it is to do righteousness. As we have just learned, doing righteousness is obeying Moses.
What does it mean to “believe we have received before we receive it”?
The condition for this promise assumes that you are asking in Jesus’s name according to the will of the Father. So it assumes you are obeying the law of Moses to believe you have received it before you receive it.
But how do you believe you have received it before you receive it?
Deut 28:1-14, Matt 6:25-34, says that if we obey Moses’s law, Yehovah promises to heal us, provide for us, fight for us, protect us, and meet all our needs. Matt 21:21, James 1:6-7, James 5:15, Mark 11:23 says when we ask obeying Moses’s law, we have to have faith in Yehovah and what He has promised us. We have to trust that if we obey, He will meet our needs regardless of our circumstances. If we ask obeying the law, but we have no faith, we will not receive anything from Yehovah. Yehovah will see us as disobedient to the law because the law demands we have faith in what Yehovah says. But how do we have this type of faith in Yehovah? By choosing to trust Him even though it might seem weird and even illogical to do. This is why the Bible says we are to walk by faith and not by sight, and why it says those who obey the law of Moses will live by their faith. To do this, we have to keep the law on our minds at all times.
What does this look like in real life?
In Joshua 1, the Bible says we are to keep the law on our minds at all times. In Jeremiah 31, the Bible says if we repent, Yehovah will make sure the law is written on our minds at all times. So if you have repented, it will be straightforward for you to keep the law on your mind.
What does it mean to “keep the law on your mind/have the law written on your mind.”?
Yehovah says if you obey (one of the ways we obey is to keep the law on our minds), He will take care of you. (Matt 6:25-34, Deut 28:1-14).One way to keep the law on your mind is to continually meditate and remind yourself how the law is your guarantee for Yehovah’s help. So when you are sick or in need, do not ignore reality but chose not to have your sickness or your lack written on your mind. Instead, make a choice, despite your circumstances, to write the law on your mind by choosing to believe “Yehovah will heal me/provide for me/rescue me from this situation because I keep the law.” And as we have learned earlier, if you believe this, your faith will show itself in action. So if you believe Yehovah will heal you, provide for you, rescue you because you keep the law, this is the mindset you will face every situation with. No matter the circumstances, your mindset will be, “this to will work out for good, and Yehovah will meet my needs in this situation because I keep the law.” But this is a choice you have to make, a choice that is not easy at times, but it is necessary if you want to be an overcomer.
You need to understand the key to your victory is the law and your obedience to it. The cross is a part of that because the law requires you to sacrifice for your sins. But if you only sacrifice and reject the rest of the law, you are still just as much a sinner as you used to be before you came to Christ. Your adherence to the law is your legal right as a child of Yehovah to His help, just as it was Jesus’s legal argument and right in the desert when the devil tempted him. This was also Daniels’s legal argument and right in Babylon and the only reason why the angel was able to break through the spiritual resistance. This was why the apostles lived the supernatural life we see in the book of Acts because they kept the law. Because Jesus kept the law, the devil had to flee from Him; because Daniel kept the law, the angel reached him with the answer to his prayer, because the Apostles kept the law miraculous things happened, and because we keep the law, the devil has to flee from us. (Rev 12 and 14)
The law is your key to answered prayer and your ticket to living the book of Acts today. Make the step today to adhere to the law and become a true disciple of Christ, living the life of the Apostles in the book of Acts with a supernatural prayer life.
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