The Lord appeared to him at night. He said to him, “I have heard your prayer, and I accept this Temple as the place where sacrifices are to be offered to me. Whenever I hold back the rain or send locusts to eat up the crops or send an epidemic on my people, if they pray to me and repent and turn away from the evil they have been doing, then I will hear them in heaven, forgive their sins, and make their land prosperous again. I will watch over this Temple and be ready to hear all the prayers that are offered here, because I have chosen it and consecrated it as the place where I will be worshiped forever. I will watch over it and protect it for all time. – 2 Chronicles 7:12-16 GNT

No matter how great I think I have prayed, it means nothing unless God has heard it. The true measure of my prayer is if God answers them.

“It is to be a house of prayer and a (literal) ‘house of sacrifice’… This combination of the temple’s functions is striking, and is one of the several indications in 2 Chronicles 5-7 that prayer and sacrifice are to be understood as ‘two sides of the same coin.’” – Selman

“By presenting the temple as a place where right sacrifice and prayer could be accepted, an opening was being provided to exchange Israel’s present bleak circumstances for a more positive future. It offered an opportunity to change the course of Israel’s history.” – Selman

God made a special promise that I believe applies to me today – when I humble myself and pray, looking for a relationship with God, He will answer my prayer. There is a connection between humility and true prayer coming from humble, praying people.

“Although God’s invitation is initially given to my people (2 Chronicles 7:14), 2 Chronicles 6:32-33 has made clear that anyone who acknowledges God’s name and authority may pray with the same confidence of a hearing. This passage is therefore consistent with others where the invitation is explicitly extended to ‘all who call upon the name of the LORD…’” – Selman

It usually means that I lead with repentance.

“These expressions are best understood as four facets of one attitude, that sinners should seek God himself in humble repentance, rather than four separate steps on a long road to forgiveness.” – Selman

While the promise had much to do with the connection to the temple – my prayers are offered in the name of Jesus – a much better access to God than the temple was.

Habakkuk leads me to real prayer too. He complained and in his complaining he expected God to hear it and respond to it.

I will climb my watchtower and wait to see what the Lord will tell me to say and what answer he^[a] will give to my complaint. – Habakkuk 2:1 GNT

In other words, God’s time is the right time and I am smiling when I write this.

I am smiling because I know that when I pray I have pretty much a picture in my head on how exactly I want or expect God to answer my prayer. I may even be convinced on the time frame that is required for an answer to come. I am reminded in those times by God’s gracious hand that I need to wait for His time, be prepared for it, and accept it.

Learning this lesson can be hard and I can be easily discouraged – that is where my faith is open to be assaulted and the evil one could have an open door to exploit it.

The times of immediate answer to prayer fill me with praise and thankfulness, however, I need to remind myself that I am praying according to God’s will.

As I remember all of God’s answers to the prayers I have already prayed, I can praise and thank Him regardless if I see the prayer answered or not – because I know He will answer them.

If, then, we would pray aright, the first thing that we should do is to see to it that we really get an audience with God, that we really get into His very presence. Before a word of petition is offered, we should have the definite and vivid consciousness that we are talking to God, and should believe that He is listening to our petition and is going to grant the thing that we ask of Him. This is only possible by the Holy Spirit’s power, so we should look to the Holy Spirit to really lead us into the presence of God, and should not be hasty in words until He has actually brought us there.

One night a very active Christian man dropped into a little prayer-meeting that I was leading. Before we knelt to pray, I said something like the above, telling all the friends to be sure before they prayed, and while they were praying, that they really were in God’s presence, that they had the thought of Him definitely in mind, and to be more taken up with Him than with their petition. A few days after I met this same gentleman, and he said that this simple thought was entirely new to him, that it had made prayer an entirely new experience to him. – R.A. Torrey