Answered Prayer and Ascending Confidence

God has given to us the privilege of coming before His throne because of the access given to us through Jesus Christ. Jesus calls on us to place ourselves in agreement with one another, according to Matthew 18:
18 Assuredly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.
19 Again I say to you that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven.
20 For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them."

We can approach the throne of grace with confidence and recognize that there is great power available to believers as we are willing to unite our hearts and see God expressed in our midst.  We can be built up in our faith as we take God at His Word and come into agreement with each other, to see Him do mighty things for His glory.  As we experience answered prayer, it can produce an ascending degree of confidence in our great God.

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Are we confident in God's ability to answer our prayers?  Or are we surprised when we actually see an answer?  There was an incident in the early church in Acts 12, after Peter was supernaturally freed from prison.  The church had been praying for him, and Peter showed up where some believers were meeting. We pick up the story:
12 So, when he had considered this, he came to the house of Mary, the mother of John whose surname was Mark, where many were gathered together praying.
13 And as Peter knocked at the door of the gate, a girl named Rhoda came to answer.
14 When she recognized Peter's voice, because of her gladness she did not open the gate, but ran in and announced that Peter stood before the gate.
15 But they said to her, "You are beside yourself!" Yet she kept insisting that it was so. So they said, "It is his angel."
16 Now Peter continued knocking; and when they opened the door and saw him, they were astonished.
17 But motioning to them with his hand to keep silent, he declared to them how the Lord had brought him out of the prison.

I believe that God wants us to come before Him with confidence in His ability to hear our prayers and to act in accordance to His will.   There was a recent story on the Christian Today website about a former atheist who experienced a surprise when God actually answered one of his prayers.

The story quotes Clay Lein, who had told KHOU Channel 11 News, "I had a very rational mind. It had to be logical. I needed proof. There had to be evidence. And if there wasn't proof then it was just something people made up."

And apparently things were going pretty well with Lein - he had a successful career and a loving wife so he figured that there was no need to believe in God even though many others did.

His wife invited him to come to church. He even ended up volunteering for a youth camp. At the camp, Lein was asked to pray publicly. As the story goes, Clay did pretty well in spite of his inexperience. He even prayed for each child there and he did not stop praying for a whole 15 minutes.

One of those children, a young girl, began crying because she was so moved by Lein's personal prayer for her. Lein recalled, "In between the sobs she begins to share that her uncle was abusing her...And that she hadn't been able to tell anybody else until that moment. That's when I think something clicked for me."

He said that he realized that God was relevant and He really wanted to do amazing things in his life. Lein said, "I became a Christian that day. And I heard a voice, and it wasn't Charleton Heston, it was more a thought that comes up and often times it sounds like Clay's voice but it was definitely God. And it said, 'Try me.'"

He has now been ordained as an Episcopalian minister and leads a parish of some 4000 members. Clay Lein states that, "If God can change me, He can change anybody."

This story can help us to reflect on the faithfulness of God and how He will work in a human heart. In this case, you had a man who had rejected Christ, but God used Clay's wife and the experience of working with young people to draw him to Himself.  Then, through the activity of prayer, God made Himself very real not only to Clay, but to this young lady for whom he prayed.   We can be reminded that through our prayers, we can trust that God is at work in tangible ways, working in the hearts and lives of those for whom we are praying and maybe even doing a work to bring people, including the person praying, into a closer walk with Himself.   So, we never underestimate the potential that comes as we present our requests to God.

We can also examine the degree of confidence with which we come before God.  He desires for us to boldly approach His throne, to call upon Him with an attitude of great reliance on His faithfulness. He wants us to do more than hope that maybe something will happen if we just throw a prayer in His direction - He desires for us to stand in faith and to fervently call upon Him, knowing that He hears our prayers.  He wants us to come before Him with a confidence that produces passionate prayers, born out of a dependence on Almighty God, who desires to express His love and faithfulness toward us.  I would hope that we are not surprised when God answers our prayers, but that we are thankful nonetheless.