Andrew Murray, commenting on Ps. 37:34 and Isa. 64:5, said if you want to meet someone, find out where he goes and meet him there. In the same way, if you expect to meet God, hang around His holy ways. "We may be sure that God is never and nowhere to be found but in His way. Otherwise we can never expect to find Him."
Do you want to see God do wonders in your life and answer your prayers? One of the most repeated requirements God has for us to expect Him to answer our prayers is that we are to sanctify ourselves. No, that’s not right!! THE most repeated requirement God has for us to expect Him to answer our prayers is that we are to purify, sanctify and set ourselves apart in all holiness.
Exemplify God’s Purity. 5 And Joshua said to the people, "Sanctify yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you."
We can only expect the wonders of God when we are in His will. In other words, we are to be examples of God’s purity. I cannot state too clearly or too boldly or too forcefully that the most essential way to expect to move is for us to sanctify ourselves from sin.
“If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me” Ps. 66:18
“If my people who 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.” 2 Chron. 7:13-14
“If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you shall ask what you will and it shall be done for you.” (John 15:7)
Five-hundred-word devotionals like this one cannot communicate this Biblical truth strongly enough. I will quote prayer giants: Andrew Murray wrote Holy In Christ. In the chapter “Holiness and Separation,” he said that separation prepares for holiness and is essential for holiness. “...[H]e could not do until He had them [His people] apart, and had wakened in them the consciousness that they were His peculiar people, wholly and only His, until He had so taught them also to separate themselves to Him.” Murray said we must know the need, the purpose and “above all the power of separation.”
Is there a presence of God in our prayers? Is there a reverence in our prayers? Too much of our time in prayer is saying “My will be done” rather than “Thy will be done.”
How dare we expect God to answer our prayers if we do not sanctify ourselves? Another prayer giant George Mueller wrote, “If we were to forsake Him, the fountain of living waters, and to hew out to ourselves broken cisterns, which cannot hold water, by trusting in an arm of flesh; or if we were to live in sin, we should then have to call upon Him in vain, even though we professed still to trust in Him.”
Even Mueller did not dare to presume on God without sanctifying himself, even though he had the noble ministry of caring for orphans!
A modern clarion caller for holiness is Jim Cymbala, pastor of the Brooklyn Tabernacle. In Breakthrough Prayer, he writes, “Just because God loves the world doesn’t mean He has lost His holy hatred of sin. Let’s pray for a spiritual revival that will clean the church of unholy practices.” Later he writes that nothing could be plainer in Scripture than the truth that God will not be mocked by unholiness.
Do you want to expect God to answer your prayers? Then exemplify God’s purity in your lives.
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