Asking confidently

Yesterday while preparing for the prayer meeting, I went through all the scriptures I could find on the will of God.

The reason was that I had been so moved by this Bible verse that I had read during one of my devotions. 1 John 5:14-15 "Now this is the confidence we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us..." Wow! Just reading this gave me such an assurance that my prayers are being heard. But the condition is: my prayers have to be in accordance with His will. I really wanted to learn how to pray prayers that would be heard by God, with full assurance in my heart!

I searched the scriptures as to what I can ask in prayer that would be in accordance with His will. O the beauty of scriptures, one explains the other so clearly! I like 2 Peter 3:9 which states that God is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. Asking for souls is certainly according to God's will!

The church has been praying for souls for the past few months in preparation for Christmas. We have written the names of our friends and family members and put them into a transparent vase. During our prayer meetings, we actually took out the names and covered them with prayer over and over again!

The truth is come every Christmas, I feel kind of "pressured" to invite friends for the evangelistic events. I have already exhausted invitations to all my office friends. More often than not they have turned me down. As for my family members, they are either outstation or overseas.

However God is really good to me. He heard my prayers for an opportunity to be able to invite someone for the Christmas events. During one of the public holiday, while exercising with my husband, I got to know a young lady with a small child. She happened to stay in my neighbourhood. I memorized her address and dropped a flyer in her post box later in the day. Praise the Lord, she called me a few weeks later to inform me that she would like to attend the Children's Church party with her daughter!

Truly, if we ask anything according to His will, we know that He hears us and if we know that He hears us, we have the petitions that we have asked of Him!