If you’re like most people, you’ve uttered a prayer or two.

  “Oh God, please!!!! Get me out of this mess!”

  Or, “Lord, we desperately need You to…”

  And unless you are in the elite group of 16% of pastors who said they were satisfied with their prayer lives, you are most likely DIS-satisfied with the effectiveness of your prayers.

  Don’t give in to despair, don’t give up, not just yet.

  Just keep reading. I’m about to tell you how you can experience answers to your prayers. I’m going to tell you how you can know that ALL of God’s promises are true, even the most bodacious ones.

  Aren’t you ready to experience answered prayers?!

  If so, start by praying this:

  LORD, I want to learn to pray. I want to experience Your power working in my life. I want to be a witness to Your intimate involvement in the details of my life. I want to be the kind of pray-er that causes all of hell to fall silent when I bend my knees. Oh God, please, teach me to pray. Amen.

PART 1: Prayer De...

I remember hearing,

"You're getting a little too big for your britches, young lady, you'd better settle down."

I was being warned that my actions or words were indicative of an attitude of arrogance. Perhaps I was teetering over into the danger zone of thinking too highly of myself.

 A natural result of getting "too big for your britches" is choosing to step beyond boundaries in your life.

Boundaries are the people and the powers that "hem us in."

They determine the limits of what is and is not our responsibility and what is and is not within our control. It's our nature to want to step beyond God-ordained boundaries in our lives.

In his book Normal Christianity Watchman Nee explains that when Adam chose to eat the fruit from the tree of good and evil, he expanded his experience on earth to reach beyond the boundaries his loving Father and Creator placed on his life. God created us to have a relationship with Him where we depended on Him for our very life. He created us to be rec...

So, if prayer gives you unhindered and bold access to the power of God, (Hebrews 10:19-23) and God desires to demonstrate His power and His love on the platform of your life, (Ephesians 3:20) how then do you experience answered prayer?

  What I’m about to tell you will radically change your life if you let it.

God wants to answer your prayers.

  He does! And better than that…

God WILL answer your prayers.

  Think about that. If you are confident that God wants to answer your prayers and you know He will answer your prayers, the answers to your prayer are only a prayer away. In order to explain the secret of prayer, I will use the parable Jesus used to teach his disciples to pray.

The parable of the reluctant friend:

  “Then, teaching them more about prayer, he used this illustration: ‘Suppose you went to a friend's house at midnight, wanting to borrow three loaves of bread. You would say to him, 'A friend of mine has just arrived for a visit, and I have nothing for him to eat.' ...

 When we were young, our mothers read us Bible stories. Remember the “Bible Hero” books?

 I read dozens of them to my children.

 Don’t you love the Bible stories? Adam and Eve, Noah and the Ark, Abraham and Sarah, Rahab and the spies, Joshua and the Battle of Jericho, Jacob’s Ladder…the list goes on and on.

 But if you asked me to tell you my all time favorite, it would have to be the story of David and Goliath.

  I can’t help but wonder what it might have been like to have been a soldier when one giant could held the entire Israelite army captive in fear! But more amazing than that was the faith of a shepherd boy who took the same giant down with a simple slingshot and stone!  

  But here’s my only problem with children’s Bible “heroes.” Because the stories have been “approved for general audiences” their “G-rated” versions fail to “tell the whole truth.” And without the “whole truth and nothing but the truth” one can unintentionally place the heroic deed on the biblical characte...

  In this article you will learn 6 reasons your prayers aren’t working, and how to fix what’s wrong. If your prayers seem to be hindered, most likely you are dealing with one or more of these issues.  As you read, you might recognize the issue in your own prayer life. When you do, confess and repent of what you were doing wrong  and your prayer life will explode in power.

Why aren’t my prayers working?
  Of course there are barriers to prayer. Here are a few that I have identified in my own life.

1. Unforgiveness.

  This is the barrier Jesus mentioned when he taught his disciples to pray.

“For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” Matthew 6:14-15

  Think about the implication of this verse. Jesus said, that if we forgive others, His Father will forgive us. But, if we do not forgive others, His Father will not forgive us. If God refuses to forgive yo...

I don’t ever tire of this subject.

Can you hear God speak to you specifically or does He only speak in generalities?

Most people have responded to my video on Facebook with this answer: BOTH!

“I’ve had both…”

“Yes, both!”

“I feel He does both…”

 I agree, God does speak to us both specifically and generally. And because most of us have a pretty good grasp on how God speaks to us through His Word, through worship, and through other believers, let’s talk a bit more about how He speaks to us in His still small voice. I’m traveling in Israel as I write this and we just came down from Mt. Carmel where God spoke to Elijah the prophet and Elijah called down fire from heaven that consumed his offering even after he soaked it with water.

  I’d say God spoke to Elijah specifically and Elijah was confident he’d heard God’s voice. I’d like to have a prayer life like Elijah’s! But what happens if you think you’ve heard God speak to you specifically but what you thought you heard doesn’t end u...

The short answer is, “Of course not!”

  But there are times when it certainly feels like he does.

  Like that time when…

  Her daughter decided to marry that guy in spite of their warnings, and then severed her relationship with her family completely (even though she and her mother had been the best of friends for years!).

  Or, the time when…

  She died anyway—even after the entire church prayed believing she would be healed.

  Or what about that time when…

  She just knew God had told her that her baby would live and he defied the doctor’s prediction and was born alive…on Christmas day…but died less than an hour after he took his first breath.

  The list could go on and on and on. I would imagine that if your son has married a girl who won’t let you see your grandchildren or your husband left with his secretary or your doctor told you that you have something terrible that is going to kill you; you know what I mean.

God doesn’t mess with you, but the devil does.

He messes...