Truth #6 – By Faith I Already Have the Answers to My Prayers

Living by faith requires that you have a dual perspective.

Suppose you go online and purchase new tennis shoes. You give your credit card number and receive an email confirming the purchase and projecting that in five days the shoes will arrive at your door.

You see a friend later that day and announce, “I got some new tennis shoes this morning.” Even though you have not yet received the shoes, it is normal to speak this way. You have completed the purchase and paid your money. Those shoes are yours. Even from the perspective of the company those shoes are yours from the moment money moves from your account to theirs. That would be true even if delivery would not occur for three months or three years.

Living by faith means speaking in the perfect tense

Scripture clearly teaches God wants us to understand faith and prayer in a similar way. Once we pray with faith, God wants us to believe we have the answer to our request.

Jesus taught this in Mark 11:22–24:

“Have faith in God. ²³ Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. ²⁴ Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”

Notice in verse 24 that Jesus uses the perfect tense in, “believe that you have received it,” and the future tense in, “and it will be yours.” In biblical Greek, people used the perfect tense to describe something that happened in the past that had an ongoing effect. “It emphasizes the present, or ongoing result of a completed action.”¹ “The perfect tense in Greek is used to describe a completed action which produced results which are still in effect all the way up to the present.”²

Living by faith means you know what you already have

The apostle John makes the same point in 1 John 5:14–15:

 “¹⁴ And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. ¹⁵ 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.”

John is not saying we have the manifested answers to our prayers already; rather, he is saying we have the answers by faith, not by sight. Nevertheless, he emphasizes that we have them in a real sense. You would be speaking the truth if you said, “I have the answer,” even though you had the answer only by faith.

Because you “have asked” (perfect tense), you “have the requests” (present tense). The prayer you made in the past did something; it changed something—something unseen but real. Something happened in the eternal counsels of God, which are impossible for us to fully understand, but I will say it simply in a human way of speaking: when you asked, God answered. God wants you to use our human perspective on time, which is certainly different from his, and receive by faith that when we asked, that is when his answer was given.

Living by faith means having a dual perspective

This dual perspective—reality as God sees it and reality as earth sees it—comes into clear focus in the life of Abraham. For the first 99 years of his life his name was Abram, which means exalted father. In the providence of God, Abram had a name that did not agree with earthly reality, for his wife Sarai was barren and so he was childless. The man whose name meant exalted father was not a father.

But God had promised to give him descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky. And now God gives 99-year-old Abram a new name that only heightened the disparity between God’s reality and earthly reality. He changed Abram’s name to Abraham, which meant father of a multitude. (See Genesis 17.)

Whenever Abraham used his own name, he was announcing God’s perspective on his life, not his current, earthly perspective. Both perspectives were real and true, but Abraham was supposed to declare God’s perspective by faith.

Living by faith means recognizing a done deal

A similar way of speaking occurred when Israel went into battle against its enemies. For example, as Israel prepared to go to war against the five kings of the Amorites, God told Joshua, “Do not fear them, for I have given them into your hands. Not a man of them shall stand before you.” (Joshua 10:8)

Here again we see God speak in the perfect tense (“have given”) to describe an event that has not yet happened on earth. Because God has already determined what will happen, he can say with certainty what will happen in the future: “Not a man of them shall stand before you.”

Not only did God speak this way to Joshua, Joshua spoke this way to his troops. Later in chapter 10, we read that as the battle proceeded Joshua commanded his men, “Pursue your enemies; attack their rear guard. Do not let them enter their cities, for the LORD your God has given them into your hand” (Joshua 10:19).

By faith Joshua spoke about something that had not yet been accomplished as though it was already accomplished.

Living by faith means waiting for the appointed time

When do we receive the answer to our prayers and faith?

In a spiritual sense, by faith we already have the answers to our prayers. In the mind of God, it is done; he has made the decision. However, the manifestation of the answer on earth awaits the appointed time.

Sometimes the answer simply awaits us doing our part. Joshua and Israel had to go to battle against the five kings to actually take what God had given.

Takeaway

There is a spiritual, divine reality in the heart of God and a manifested, fulfilled reality here on earth. This is a dual reality.

So at the same time we already have, and do not yet have, the answer to our faith and prayers. We should live according to both those realities. To the extent we can, we should live as though we have the answer (2 Corinthians 5:7). And to the extent we cannot, we should live as one waiting for the answer (Hebrews 11:35–40).

What we can do is talk like we have the answer and prepare for the answer (see for example 1 Samuel 17:45–47 and Hebrews 11:7). What we should not do is something reckless apart from a command from God (see for example Matthew 4:5–7. Compare with Numbers 13–14.).

We should pray for wisdom how to live in both realities in a way that pleases God, expressing both faith and wisdom.

1. http://www.ntgreek.net/lesson23.htm.

2. https://ezraproject.com/greek-tenses-explained/#:~:text=5.,%3A%20%E2%80%9CI%20have%20believed.%E2%80%9D.

Jeremiah 9:23–24: “Thus says the LORD: ‘Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.’” (ESV)