I learned a long time ago that God promises to give us what we pray for if we ask according to His will. But I often stumbled  in knowing what His will was so that I could pray that way.  In my young adult years my prayers were often ended with, ‘IF it is your will.’  Over time, though, my prayers and my heart grew dull and stagnant.  Though I’m sure there are many reasons for this dullness, I believe it was partially due to lack of confidence that I was actually praying according to His will. Ultimately I became cynical about prayer.

In recent years, The one thing that has ignited my passion for prayer is that I can know His will and can pray in confidence that I’m agreeing with His desires. I’ve found it really comes down to knowing His heart.  When I know how He feels concerning something, I can boldly ask for His desire to be fulfilled in that.  Because He has revealed His heart to us through the Bible, I start by praying back to Him what He has written.  Knowing that all scripture is inspired I can pray in agreement with the recorded prayers in scripture since these are His will.  Additionally, 1 Cor 2:10f tells us that the Holy Spirit who resides within us, searches the depths of God, revealing His heart to us.  When I begin to pray, the first thing I do is ask the Holy Spirit to reveal the Father’s desire to me that I would be able to pray according to His heart and desire - His will.

1Jn 5:14-15 And 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.