Recently, I came across George Müller’s five conditions of prevailing prayer. If ever a man knew about prayer, it was Müller, the founder of five orphanages in Bristol in the 19^th century. After meditating on Psalm 65 (“O Thou that hearest prayer”), Müller got into the habit of writing down definite prayer petitions.

Towards the end of his life, he calcu­lated that he had read the Bible through nearly 200 times, and could find distinct answers to definite prayers in some 50,000 episodes in his life!

Here are his five conditions for prevail­ing prayer:

1. An entire dependence on Christ as mediator. Whatever we ask the Father is to be done in the name of Jesus Christ, His eternal Son (John 14:13-14; 15:16). When Daniel was in exile in Babylon, he would pray to God three times a day. He did this with his windows open towards Jerusalem (Dan. 6:10). It was at Jerusalem that the temple had been built and where the sacrifices for sin were offered. Whenever a Muslim prays, he prays facing Mecca. The pilgrimage to Mecca is one of the five pillars of Islam. At Mecca, Muslims remember the near-sacrifice of Abraham’s son, and conduct animal sacri­fices in the belief that the Kaaba is directly under Allah’s throne.
   
   To the Christian, there is no holy place that can mediate our prayers. Instead, we come to the Father in the name of the Son. We are acceptable to the Father only because the Son has made us acceptable. He has given His life as a ransom for many, and so has clothed His people with right­eousness. God hears us through the medi­atorship of His Son, and only through His Son. Without Christ, we cannot expect to pray to God and our prayers to be heard.
    
2. Separation from all known sin. The Psalmist knew that if he cherished iniq­uity in his heart, the Lord would not listen to him (Ps. 66:18). We can ask and not receive, because we ask wrongly, being driven by our passions (James 4:3). Noah in his drunken state, David in his adultery, and Peter in his denial of Christ can only repent and pray for forgiveness. While sin lords itself over our lives, we cannot pray with any reality. The first prayer of the Christian has to be “Lord, be merciful to me, the sinner”.
    
3. Faith in the promises of God. To draw near to God, we have to believe that He is, and that He rewards those who seek Him (Heb. 11:6). God reassures us that it is impossi­ble for Him to lie; indeed, He even puts Himself on oath for our sakes! (Heb. 6:13-20). Therefore, we are to believe what He says in His Word. We are to believe Him when He says that ‘if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to for­give us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness’ (1 John 1:9).
   
   When He refuses to remove a thorn in the flesh of our lives, it is for good and necessary spiritual reasons (2 Cor. 12:1-10). If we trust the promises of human beings — even advertisers and politicians, to some extent — we have far, far, far more reason to trust the promises of God whose very nature is truth, and who delights to fulfil His Word.
    
4. Asking according to His will. I once listened to the testimony of a Pentecostal girl who told a primary school gathering that “If you want a red Ferrari, God wants you to have a red Ferrari.” I am not sure what Bible she was reading, but the apos­tle John says: “And this is the confidence that we have toward Him, that if we ask anything according to His will He hears us” (1 John 5:14). That is a wonderful promise, but it is not a blank cheque given into the hands of selfish sinners. God blesses His children, which is not to say that He spoils them.
    
5. Importunity in supplication. Jesus told the parable of the importunate widow badgering the unjust judge to encourage us to keep on praying, and not to lose heart (Luke 18:1-8). We are to be patient, just as the farmer is patient in waiting for his crops to grow (James 5:7). If we are serious about something, we will persevere in it. Anybody who quickly gives up on a project was not committed to it in the first place. The skater who sells his skates after falling over a few times obviously does not have the heart — or the balance, perhaps — for skating.

Müller considered that where these conditions were not met, God would dishonour Himself by answering our prayers, and would do spiritual dam­age to the supplicant. Prayer is by no means an easy activity, like talking on the telephone or reading a newspaper. These are crucial principles to grasp in order to prevail in prayer.