We would not pray if we did not have confidence that God answers prayer. And indeed, his Word promises that he does. “This is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him” (1 John 5:14-15).
Because God answers prayer, and because God answers prayer according to his will, we ought to be diligent in looking for the ways he will answer. We must not only labor in prayer but also labor to see God’s response. In Acts 12 we read of the early church praying that Peter would be rescued from his captivity. And as they prayed, God moved, sending an angel to save him. “The angel fetched Peter out of prison,” says Thomas Watson, “but it was prayer that fetched the angel.”
Here, as in the history of the church and the stories of our own lives, God proves that it is his joy, his pleasure, to work through the prayers of his people. It is our duty to pray and then to watch to see how (not if) God will answer those prayers.
