How To Get What You Pray For

"If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer." Matthew 21:22


God responds to every prayer, but many times we don't know His response.  The reason is because we don't know what we ourselves are praying.  We ask for things in general with unfocused faith.  You get what you pray for by believing specific promises and asking for specific things.


BELIEVE SPECIFIC PROMISES FROM GOD.
The Bible says God is not a man that he should lie, nor a son of man that he should change his mind.  When he speaks he acts, when he promises he fulfills.  If you have a genuine need or desire, and God has promised in scripture to meet that need, then believe that specific promise when you pray.  If you need wisdom, God promises to give it freely in the book of James.  If you're worried and need peace, God promises this in Paul's letter to the Philippians.  Believe a specific promise from God to meet your specific need.


ASK GOD FOR SPECIFIC THINGS
The specific promise of God must meet the specific need that you have right now.  By specific I mean a real thing, at a real date, by a real time.  You exist in time and space, in a world of solids, liquids, and gases. Jesus knows this, which is why he taught us to pray, "Give us this day our daily bread."  If you need God to take away your headache so that you can go to work, ask God to take your headache away so that by the time you arrive at work, your head ache is gone.  Is it God's will to heal you of a headache?  Of course it is.  He is still "God our Healer," the one Malachi said "does not change."  Jesus "took our infirmities and carried our sicknesses."  Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever.  The Spirit is the one who gives the body of Christ "gifts of healing." James told those who were sick in the church to seek healing through the elders and the prayer of faith.   So this specific need to be healed of  a headache by the time you get to work fits a specific promise of God to heal his children given in the book of James.


You get what you pray for by believing a specific promise and by asking God for specific things.