#480  IT IS NOT JUST MAYBE 

Excerpt from sermon #302 WE SHALL CALL—GOD WILL ANSWER

“He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honour him,” Psalm 91:15. 

Receiving an answer to our prayers has always been contingent upon an unconditional surrender to God’s will throughout the Old and the New Testaments. You will never come before the Lord successful in prayer while your heart is in rebellion to His revealed truth. The Lord wants you and me in unconditional surrender to His will.

You will see this in 2 Chronicles 7:14, and I want you to see how the verse begins with the word if. It is contingent upon. “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.” 

What does it mean to humble yourself? In Philippians 2:8 Paul writes, speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ: “He humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.”

If you and I really humble ourselves, we become obedient unto death. We can write death on everything of this life. We can write death on the old man of sin, on everything of our pride, on everything of this life. We humble ourselves unto death. Death to the flesh. Death to sin. Death to the world. Death to everything of this life. In other words, the Lord comes in first place.

Our text says he shall call upon Him. If you are one of God’s loved ones, you will humble yourself. It is not a matter of maybe.

I have raised eight children, and just because a child does what I tell him does not make him a child. He was a child already, but because he is a child, his will and his rebellion is going to be broken because I love him. That is the way the Lord deals with His family.

Now we can see the blessedness of Hebrew 12:11: “Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but grievous; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to unto them which are exercised thereby.”

Do you know what that peaceable fruit of righteousness is? It is when that little child has been disciplined and can put her arms around your neck and say, “Daddy, I want love.” It is when they can come and confess that they were wrong and ask Daddy to forgive. That is the peaceable fruit of righteousness. It is the fruit of chastening love.

If you are one of God’s people, it is not a matter of whether or not you are going to humble yourself. If you are one of the Lord’s, you will humble yourself. The Lord will bring you that point, and if it takes much chastening, that is what will happen.

Now the Lord’s family is just like ours. One child needs many stripes to bring them in subjection, and the other one needs only a frown. Some children only need to know that they have done something to displease you, and their heart is broken. All the Lord wants is that you humble yourself. That is what He is saying, and if you humble yourself, then when you pray, He will hear you.

This is synonymous with 1 John 3:22-24: “And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight. And this is his commandment, That we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as he gave us commandment. And he that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him, and he in him. And hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us.” 

I want you to see the blessedness of those who keep that commandment of love. They are in the Spirit of Christ and keep His commandments. We dwell in Christ and He dwells in us. Then if we call, He answers. He says, “Here I am.” That is effectual prayer. Effectual prayer does not take place in a state of rebellion.

That Spirit is a mental disposition. It is the mental attitude we have. We know that He dwells in us because we have that Spirit of Christ. We have His mind. We have His thinking. We have that mental disposition. He has given us that spirit of absolute unconditional surrender to the will of God.  Amen.

How blessed are they who truly see
Their emptiness and poverty;
Whose souls are humbled in the dust,
And who in Jesus only trust!

Gadsby selection, 1838

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