This is Pastor Rick Warren’s Daily Hope. If you’re new, we’re so glad you found us. And if you’re a daily, daily hoper, welcome back.
Today, we’re gonna continue with our series called 40 Days of Prayer. Such a great series because Rick is gonna help you cultivate a powerful prayer life so you can experience breakthroughs. Breakthroughs in your relationships, breakthroughs in finances, health, and really every area of your life.
So don’t miss a day of this life-changing series. And now let’s join Pastor Rick for the final part of a message called A Beginner’s Guide to Prayer.
First, God loves for me to talk to him really about anything, whatever I’m interested in. And God listens to prayers that are simple and sincere, sincere and simple. Number three, third pillar, God likes to show his grace by answering prayer.
God is a good God. He’s a good, good father. He’s a gracious father.
He’s a compassionate and loving father. And God loves to answer prayer because he gets to show what he’s really like. Everything in the universe comes from the generosity of God.
No one is more generous than God. And when you pray and you ask for something in prayer, you make a request or a petition, one of the words it’s called, it gives God the opportunity to show what he’s really like. So God loves it when you ask requests.
Over 20 times in the New Testament, we are commanded to ask. Ask and it shall be given. Seek and you’ll find.
Knock and the door will be open. You have not because you ask not. If you ask anything in my name, over 20 times, if you are a child of God, you’re commanded to ask God for things.
Why?
God gets to show how good he is. He gets to show how gracious he is, how loving he is, how generous he is. And with every answer that God gives to your prayer, it shows that he is a good, good God.
Listen, regardless of the answer. You don’t get an answer yes to every prayer you pray. You know that from experience.
But even when the answer is no, even when the answer is not yet, God is a good, good father. Question, do you know any parent in the entire world that gives a child everything that child asks for? Of course not.
They would ruin that child. There are dozens and dozens of reasons why parents do not give their children everything they ask for. And there are dozens and dozens of good reasons why God doesn’t say yes to everything you ask for.
You may not understand why, but you’re not God. And there are dozens of reasons. Sometimes God says no for our protection.
Sometimes God says no for our direction, to direct us in a different way. Sometimes God says no for our correction, to correct us on course. Sometimes God says no for our perfection, to help us grow in our character.
Sometimes God says no for our inspection. He looks inside of us and helps us see what we couldn’t see before. A child that got everything they asked for would be spoiled rotten.
God’s much more interested in your character than he is your comfort. He loves you too much to say yes to everything. God is not a vending machine.
You just put in the prayer and you pull it and if any machine will give you stuff that’s bad for you. And so God says, I don’t, I didn’t say I’d answer it every way you want it, but I will answer. I mean, people say, well, God, you didn’t answer me.
God says, yes I did, I just said no. That was an answer. No.
You see, when you pray, there are always four possible answers to your prayer. Always. Four possible answers to your prayer.
God always answers every prayer. And the four answers he gives are either yes, no, not yet, and you gotta be kidding me. And you have prayed some of those requests, and God’s going, you gotta be kidding me.
You’re asking for that? Come on. A child, a baby doesn’t know the difference between no and yet, not yet.
Maturity is when you realize that God’s delays are not always God’s denials. And a lot of times God says, oh, I have every intention of giving this to you, just not yet. You’re not ready for it.
And before I can give you the solution, you gotta have the growth in character. Because I’m gonna give something far bigger than you’re asking for. There’s a difference between no and not yet, and maturity knows the difference.
But God always answers, and he shows his grace, he shows his goodness, whether the answer is yes or no or not yet. Jeremiah 33.3 says this. God says, call to me, and I will answer you.
And I will show you marvelous and wondrous things that you could never figure out on your own. I love that in the message translation. Never could figure out, sometimes, God’s answer is a bigger perspective.
Sometimes you ask for something, and God goes, you have no idea what you’re asking for. That’s not really what you want. I know what you want more than you what you want.
You want to be happy. That will not make you happy. You think it’s gonna make you happy, but it won’t.
And so I’m gonna give you a bigger perspective. Call to me and I’ll answer you. And my answer will not be the yes.
My answer will be, I will show you things you could never figure out on your own. And you get a bigger perspective. And you’re looking back, you go, oh, now I’m so glad.
As Garth Brooks sang, thank God for unanswered prayers. Some of the prayers, if you had gotten an answer, it would have been a disaster in your life. And so God doesn’t answer.
God will only give you what is good. Vending machine will give you something bad. God will only give you what is good in your life.
Now, Matthew 7, verse 11, Jesus says, if you, being imperfect and sinful parents, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly father give good gifts to those who ask him? That’s kinda obvious. God’s a perfect father.
He’s only gonna give you good things, but he wants to give you stuff you haven’t even imagined. And as the next verse says, James 4, 2, you do not have because you do not ask. That’s gonna be a theme verse that we’re gonna look at for all 40 days in this campaign.
When you don’t pray, there are a lot of things you miss out in life. When you get to heaven, there will be a list of all the things that you missed out on because you never asked for them. You have not because you ask not.
God’s not just gonna give it to you. He wants you to learn to talk to him. He wants you to learn the language of prayer and he wants you to learn to grow up.
Alright, so the foundational pillars about prayer. God loves for me to talk to him about anything that’s on my mind. Doesn’t have to be spiritual.
Conversation, it’s not a ceremony, it’s a conversation. I listen and I speak. It’s a relationship, not a ritual.
And God listens to prayers that are sincere and simple and he loves to show his goodness. By answering his prayer. Now, here’s the fourth truth.
And this is the biggest one of all. This is huge. If you get this, you really understand it, it’s gonna radically change your life.
And I don’t mean just intellectually get it, but you actually feel it. Because when you feel it, it’s gonna change the way you look at everything. Money, sex, time, job, past, present, future.
Number four, the fourth truth on which all prayer is built is this. God longs to be close to me. God longs to be close to me.
He desires it. He wants it deeply. He wants to be close to you.
He wants you to be close to him. You know, if you’re away from somebody that you love for a long, long time, you can’t wait to talk to them. God can’t wait for you to talk to him.
He loves you so, so very much. He longs to be close to you. He’s waiting to talk to you.
He’s waiting for you to talk to him. And he’s not busy. He’s not like, can you hold the phone?
All circuits are busy. Can you call back later? I’ll get back in touch.
No, no, he’s longing to be close to you. It is a privilege to be close to God. He’s got a 24-hour drop-in system.
He’s never offline. You can talk to him any moment of the day, any second of the day. Isaiah 30 verse 18 is a verse you ought to write down on a little white card, put it on your visor and memorize it.
It says this. The Lord waits for you to come to him so he can show you his love and compassion. Did you know that?
Did you know that every day that you go without prayer, without reading God’s word, without spending time with God, God is waiting for you? You were made for this. You were made to know God.
You were made for a relationship, for a fellowship. And he’s waiting. The Lord waits for you to come to him so he can show you his love and compassion.
It’s the whole reason you exist. Some of you are parents, and you know the unique pain of a child that can’t talk to you. And that’s a heartache.
You love that child deeply, but for whatever reason, a physical reason, a brain reason, an emotional reason, they can’t talk to you. And it breaks your heart. Because you love that child so, so very much, but they haven’t learned the language.
They can’t talk to you. You can’t have a conversation with them. And it hurts as a parent when you love them and they can’t talk to you.
And others of you, you’ve been a parent of a child who they can talk to you, but they won’t. And they don’t. And they’ve shut you out of their lives at this point.
And the ache in your heart is great because you long to talk to them and you long to just listen to them. And you long for the phone call. And it hurts you because they can talk, but they won’t.
And they don’t. That’s the way God feels about you. When you don’t talk to him.
When you go a day or days or weeks and you haven’t spent any time alone with God, God, just you and me, a few minutes here, let’s check it in. Here’s what’s on my heart. Here’s what I’m feeling.
Here’s what I need. I love you. I don’t understand this.
And whatever’s on your heart, my doubts, my fears, my gripes, my highs, my lows, it’s like a parent going, why won’t you talk to me? I created you.
I love you.
I want a relationship with you. And your kid turns around and walks away. Don’t do that to God.
Don’t do that to your father in heaven. The God that created you. You see, God designed you for a relationship.
The only reason you’re alive is God made you to love you. If God didn’t want to love you, you wouldn’t exist. You weren’t put on this planet to mark things off your to-do list.
You were put on this planet to be loved by God and to learn to love him back. He made you to love you. You were chosen to be his child.
You were formed for his family. You were created for companionship. He made you to love you.
The Bible is full of examples of people who had a, quote, close relationship to God. The Bible says Enoch, a man, and then Emilia had a close relationship to God. The Bible says Noah had a close relationship to God.
The Bible says Job had a close relationship to God. The Bible says a guy named Hezekiah, who was a king, was closer to God than any king that ever lived. God wants you to be close.
He longs to be close to you. He longs for you to be close to him. Listen to the passion in this next verse.
This is God talkin to you. I don’t want your sacrifices. I want your love.
I don’t want your offerings. I want you to know me. Can you feel that passion?
The longing that God has for you? I just want you to know me. I know everything about you, God says.
Good, bad and ugly. Nothing can make me stop loving you. I want you to know me.
I love you.
No one will ever love you. No man, no woman will ever love you like God does. No one will ever love you like God does.
God wants you to learn to love him back. He wants you to be able to receive his love. He wants to just listen to you, talk about what’s interesting to you.
He wants to have a friendship, and a companionship, and a relationship with you. One of the most amazing verses in the Bible is one that I honestly cannot fathom. I cannot fully understand it.
It’s John 15, 15. And in John 15, 15, Jesus says this. Look up here.
Jesus says, I don’t call you servants. I call you my friends. Are you kidding me?
God wants to be your friend. God wants you to be his friend. Jesus says, I call you my friends.
The creator of the universe, the God who died on the cross says, I want you to be my friend. I made you to be my friend. Are you kidding me?
That’s not about ritual. It’s not about regulation. It’s not about rules.
It’s not about religion. It’s about relationship. It’s about friendship.
God says, I call you my friends.
Wow.
You were formed for a friendship with God. And if you miss that, you miss the purpose of your existence. Sorry, you just blew your life.
Because you were not put on this planet to make money, retire and die. You were put on this planet to have a relationship with God that lasts for eternity. Do not miss the purpose of your existence.
Why are we doing 40 days of prayer? Because there is nothing more important than your life and your life getting in harmony with God’s life and you having the relationship that you were created for, that you were designed for, a close fellowship with God. Job says, in the prime of my life, God was my best friend.
Is God your best friend? You gotta learn the language. You gotta learn how to pray.
He’s waiting, he’s longing, he wants to be close. God says, I love you so much it hurts. You’re gonna just nonchalantly walk away.
You’re gonna be like, oh, that’s nice. Sorry, I gotta go see a movie tonight. I’m hungry, I’m gonna go out to dinner.
That’s nice that God loves me that much, but forget you, God. Really? Friends, what we’re talking about, there’s nothing more important in your life than for you having a fellowship and a friendship and actually having a relationship.
A lot of people know about God, but getting to know God. Jesus Christ is my best friend. I’ve walked with him for 50 years.
I know him better than any better than I know any of you. And I want you to know he wants you to know him like I know him. He wants you to feel his love like I feel it.
He wants you to be able to hear his voice like I hear God’s voice. God wants you to know that’s why we’re doing 40 days. You don’t miss anything in this.
You get in a group. You don’t miss a weekend. You read the devotionals.
You do all the stuff we’ve been preparing a year to help teach you about this. Don’t just walk away casually and say well that’s nice to know. How do I get closer to God?
Well, there’s two ways. Two ways you get closer. You desire it.
You might write this down. How do you get closer to God? Desire it and make time for it.
That’s the only way you’re going to get closer to God. If you feel far from God, guess who moved? God didn’t move.
The only way you get closer to God is desire it and to make time for it. And that’s the next two verses. Psalm 25 verse 14.
Friendship with God. Wow, what a phrase. Would you like friendship with God?
Friendship with God is reserved. In other words, not everybody gets to be a friend of God. Friendship with God is reserved for those who reverence him.
They make time for him. And with them, he shares the secrets of his covenant. God shares secrets with you when you make time for him that he doesn’t share with everybody else.
That’s friendship with God. And James 4.8, you gotta desire it. Draw close to God, and God will draw close to you.
That’s a promise. Now in the days ahead, the next 40 days, we’re gonna learn how to do that. How do you draw close to God?
And God will draw close to you. And you’re gonna learn all the benefits. And I’m gonna go on to all the benefits, but let me just leave you with one, okay?
Just write this down. One benefit, there’s dozens of benefits of getting closer to God, but just give you one. The closer I am to God, the less stressed and more blessed I’ll be.
The closer I am to God, the less stressed and the more blessed I’ll be. So we need to sing and pray, Jesus, draw me close. Closer, Lord, to you.
Let the world around me fade away. Jesus, draw me close. Closer, Lord, to you.
For I desire to worship and obey. Let me pray for you. Father, I pray a simple prayer.
And a sincere prayer. I want the people that are here to know you better. I want them to fall in love with you the way you love them.
I want them to know you the way I know you. And I ask you to take these words to touch their hearts. In Jesus’ name, amen.
I am so grateful for that message by Rick, and I hope you are too. And now here’s Rick to tell you how you can partner with Daily Hope to take the word of God to the world.
There are nearly eight billion people on this planet, and God wants us to reach every one of them with the gospel. Jesus said, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I’ve commanded you. And surely, I’m with you always to the very end of the age.
That’s called the Great Commission. It often seems like mission impossible, but if we’ll work together to fulfill the Great Commission, God will turn it into the Great Completion. You know, the Bible says that in heaven, enormous crowd of people from every race, every tribe, every nation, and every language will one day stand before Jesus Christ to worship him.
That’s in Revelation chapter seven, verse nine. And that’s why I’m asking you, friends, to partner with Daily Hope by becoming a partner in hope. What is a partner in hope?
Well, right now, we’re able to take the good news of Jesus into almost every country of the world, including regions where it’s difficult or dangerous to share the gospel. But thanks to your prayers and your financial support, we reach millions of people around the world every month through radio, the internet, podcasting, TV, and we’re translating Daily Hope into 25 languages that enable us to reach over 80% of the world’s population. That’s because of your faithfulness.
And yet, there are still billions of people that need to hear about the hope we find in Jesus. So please, pray about becoming a partner of hope today. Partners in Hope provide vital monthly support that will help us reach millions more people around the world, including these regions we’re going to that have no Bibles, no believers, and no bodies of Christ.
If God puts it on your heart, then please join us. Become a partner of hope today. With your first monthly donation, we’ll send you a special gift to welcome you to the Partner in Hope family.
Now there’s nothing more important that we can do together than to make sure people all around the world hear the good news of Jesus Christ and have a chance to grow in God’s Word. Join us today as a partner in hope.
It’s easy to become a partner in hope with convenient automated monthly giving. You just go to pastorrick.com or text the word hope to 70309. And when you do, we’ll send you a special welcome gift to say thanks.
Again, that’s pastorrick.com or text the word hope to 70309. And we can’t tell you how much we appreciate your support. Thank you.
We hope you’ll join us next time as we look into God’s Word for our Daily Hope. This program is sponsored by Pastor Rick’s Daily Hope and your generous financial support.
