I hope you are well as I write.  Its been pretty busy, I've been rather swamped I must admit.  Last week I took the decision to move my office and have had some technical problems resulting in no phone connection for over a week.  I haven't written for several weeks and I hope all is well with you in the meanwhile.

A few weeks ago my father came to our church service in Mt Morgan and preached a very good message on how to have your prayers answered.  Dad is a very good speaker and quite well known in Australia.  Whenever Dad speaks He always has something good to say.  This particular day, he used a number of scriptures and I have been meaning to summarise the message for you because I felt it would be quite beneficial.  So I hope that you are blessed with what I have to share today.

Quite often the first hurdle we have is that we don't receive from God because we never make the effort to ask Him for things.  Sometimes we may be simply lazy, or busy, or just worn out, but we neglect to bring our needs to God.  In the Lord's prayer Jesus taught us to pray "Give us our daily bread."  In other words, we should never feel that our needs are not important to God, but bring our requests to Him because He does care and loves to hear from us.  In the same way that distant relatives always like to hear from us, God loves hearing from us even more.

Another hurdle we face is that we often hold unforgiveness, bitterness or hatred in our hearts and it blocks our prayers from being answered.  In one scripture, male believers are encouraged to love their wives otherwise their prayers will not be heard.  Its amazing that the attitude we hold can often hinder or help our prayers from being answered.

One vital thing we must always do is recorded in Mark 11:24.  "When you pray, believe that you have received, and it shall be done for you."   We should ask God for our needs and expect to be answered.  One easy way of doing this is to maintain an attitude of thankfulness.   We can do this by praying as though we have actually already got the thing we are asking for.  Here is an example of what I mean:

Suppose you were praying for a close friend who is sick.  Normally we would pray like this "Dear Jesus, we ask for the healing of our friend.  We ask you would raise her up ,  or something like that.  Instead, pray like this "Dear Jesus, We ask that you would raise our friend up, and we thank you today that you have already heard our prayer and that you have already made provision for this need."  In this way you will be praying with a thankful attitude, and this is the kind which God likes.

I have had many of my own prayers answered over the years, but one example which springs to mind was when I borrowed a friends car back in 1997 and was using it to visit an elderly woman in hospital.  At this particular hospital was a low brick wall garden which I didn't see through the back window and I reversed into it causing damage to the car.  After I obtained a quote to fix the car, the damage bill was to be about $400, and because I was a student at the time, this was a large sum of money for me, and I didn't have the ability to meet this need. 

As I prayed about it, God miraculously heard my prayer and just before the bill was due, I was given an anonymous gift of $400.  God truly does hear our prayers and does meet our needs.  God is truely gracious and kind.

Anyway, I must keep motoring.  May the Lord bless you and guide you.  I pray that all your prayers will be answered and that God will bring you to the place of His choosing.  May the blessing of Heaven be yours and may you be successful in all you put your hands to.

Cheers - have a great week

David