When we pray, we can approach God with confidence, for our faith rests upon His character, not upon promises. Promises are as good as the character of the one who made the promise. So when I read my Bible, I have a promise. This is the confidence we have in Him. If you ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if He hears us, we have the petition as a promise from God.
Jesus said, “Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, I will give it” (John 16:23). There’s a promise from God. How good is the promise? It’s as good as the One who made it. How good is that? Faith says God is God, the Holy God who cannot lie. The God who is infinitely rich and can make good on all of His promises. The God who is infinitely honest and never cheated anybody. The God who is infinitely true and never told any lies. That’s how good a promise is that God makes. It’s as good as God is, because God made it. This is the confidence that we have in Him, to glorify God by faith. There’s God, not just the promises.
In the Bible, we learn what God wants to do for us, we learn what to ask for.
We learn what God has willed to us. We learn what we may claim as our heritage. We learn from the promises how we should pray. But faith always rests down upon the character of God. He made heaven and earth and holds the world in His hand a measure the dust of the earth in a balance and the sky He spreads out like a mantel. Remember, the Great God Almighty is not your servant. You’re His servant. He is your Father. You are His child. He sits in heaven. You’re on earth. Angels veil their faces before the God who cannot lie.
I think it would be a wonderful thing that every preacher in American would for one solid year preach about God: who He is, His attributes, His perfection, His being; what kind of God He is, why we dare to trust Him, why we can trust Him, why we should trust Him, why we can love Him, why we should love Him, why we would dare not fall short of loving Him. Keep on preaching God – God, the Triune God – and keep on until He fills the whole horizon and the whole world! Faith would spring up like grass for the watercourse. And let a man get up and preach a promise, and the whole congregation would say, “I can trust that one. Look who made it. Look who made it!”
Confidence may be slow in coming, but you can have confidence in God as you go to Him in the merits of His Son and ask Him and claim His promises. God will lead you. God will help you in your need, whatever it may be.
Excerpted from Approaching the Almighty: 100 Prayers of A.W. Tozer compiled by Phil Shappard (© 2021). Published by Moody Publishers. Used by permission.
