The Action Addendum
God's answered our prayers. So... Now what? How biblical examples and Trump's election victory show us the answers to our prayers are usually just the beginning of the process.
“But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.” James 1:22
“For the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power.” 1 Corinthians 4:20
Two Substacks ago, we explored everything Gene Kaye’s learned from God’s word, the Lord Jesus, Yeshua the Messiah’s example, the Holy Spirit’s guidance and recent experience, about the prayer process in terms of faithfulness, obedience and persistence of trust.
Last week, we looked at the crucial role patience plays in prayer.
In this Substack, we’re going to bookend the set by talking about the final phase of the process: in which our active, working relationship with God manifests in the action we have to take to put the prayers God answers for us to the spiritually fruitful use for which he gives those answers—and the blessings, gifts, powers and opportunities contained in them—to us in the first place.
And about how—after the overwhelming mandate afforded the forces of law and order, stability and sanity, with the resounding landslide victory of President Trump in the 2024 US elections—that translates into the strategy for what’s facing all of us in the difficult task ahead of rebuilding everything that’s been systematically corrupted, denigrated, neglected, perverted and maliciously soiled by 12 of the last 16 years under Deep State dominion.
“It isn’t rocket science, Davey...”
It won’t take a doctoral thesis or a team of theologians to crack this nut for us, because the point is simple and straightforward.
When we become faithful and obedient children and servants of God the Father, through the faith that comes from the hearing of his word, the salvation made possible for us by the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus, and the blessing of the power and presence of God’s Holy Spirit dwelling in us, we also become his servants.
1 Corinthians 3:9: “...we are co-workers in God’s service.”
1 Peter 2:9: “...you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.”
Ephesians 2:10: “...we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
Mark 10:45: “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve.”
John 13:15-17: “I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.”
As his servants, our purpose is to serve: to serve God; his purpose; his will, by doing it in the world with his power guiding us through it and making it possible for us to do it. To serve our neighbor in the Lord’s good and holy name and for their good blessing and benefit.
How?
By doing everything his will has for us to do for his purposes in the world: his general purpose for us to act as his ambassadors representing his name and his faith; as the vessels through which his word and the Gospel of the Lord Yeshua is carried to the rest of the world; as the instruments through which his harvest of souls is effected; as well as in executing the specific purposes he has for each of us.
To get all that done that we can’t do on our own, God gives us the relationship with him in prayer, through which we get the guidance and power to do what he has for us to do; because his faith is all about doing, not just talking and hearing. He’s a living God; and his faith is a living faith designed to guide live action according to his word and will.
In John 4, when the disciples return from the town of Sychar where they went to buy some food while the Lord Yeshua turned the world of the Samaritan woman right-side up at Jacob’s well, they ask him where he could’ve gotten some food while they were gone.
The Lord answers them in verse 34:
“My food... is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.”
So what he’s telling them (and us), is that the fuel that keeps him (and us) going, is the work we do in the world in the name and according to the will of God the Father.
More than the earthly bread that alone isn’t enough to sustain us (Deuteronomy 8:3, Matthew 4:4), it’s the work we do in the world in accordance with God’s word and will that in large part gives us the life we need.
What’s more, in John 14:10-12, during the final supper with his disciples in the upper room before going to his crucifixion, the Lord says:
“...it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves. Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.”
In other words, he’s teaching us it’s not even us doing the work of God that keeps us alive, but the spirit of the Father who’s doing the work through us.
So our job, then, becomes tuning ourselves spiritually in to God and his Holy Spirit so his will can be executed through us in whatever way he has for it to be. And the way in which we tune ourselves in to his will, is through the prayers with which we turn to him and ask him to supply us with what we need from him to do his will.
When we’re faithful, obedient, trusting and patient, he delivers the answers to those prayers to us so we can do what his will has in mind for us.
Psalm 37:3-4: “Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.”
Isaiah 58:11: “The Lord will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.”
1 John 3:21-22: “Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him.”
2 Corinthians 9:8: “And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.”
John 15:7-8: “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.”
We pray so he’ll give us all the wisdom, guidance, strength, resources, fellowship, power and authority we need to do the difficult things he has for us to do in his name in this world in service to him and to others in every moment of our existence; all of which he grants to us through the agency of prayer, and the presence and power of his Holy Spirit dwelling in us.
And none of which we can accomplish on our own.
The answers to our prayers are empowerments, not entitlements; back-breaking work orders and not cake and ice cream for breakfast.
And when we wait faithfully, obediently and patiently for those prayers to be answered, once we get those answers, the last stage that completes the prayer process and gives it its meaning, is action.
The action we take with whatever it is with which God’s blessed us to be able to do his will.
Because all the prayers God answers for us are the way in which God works with us and through us to manifest his will in the world and to demonstrate through the effect of his will—that we execute with the works we do in his name and by the power of the prayers he answers for us with which to do it—that his faith is a faith of action and effect, and not just word and wishful thinking.
In Acts 1:8, the resurrected Lord Jesus tells the gobsmacked disciples:
“[Y]ou will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you.”
In Philippians 4:13 ESV, Paul confidently declares for all of us:
“I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”
And like the half-brother of the Lord Yeshua, Ya’akov, explains in James 1:22-25 ESV:
“But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.”
Because, as James 2:26 truthfully asserts:
“As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.”
The Application Extension
When God does answer our prayers, it’s then up to us to take what he gives us and run with it because our God is the God of the living and not the dead; his faith is a living faith and not a dead one; we’re his servants and he’s not our towel boy on the beach of our all-inclusive vacation life, standing by and waiting to fetch us our next piña colada when we snap our fingers.
When we act faithfully, obediently, immediately and fruitfully with the answers to our prayers with which God equips us for every good work, he’ll keep blessing us, and with more and more, so we can do more and more for him and for others.
So the prayer formula as part of the believer’s faithful and obedient life in and for the Lord, is: need, believe, ask, trust, obey, wait, receive, and then act.
And act in the way God prescribes according to his will, not in any other way of our own; because God doesn’t outfit us to play on his team with the most expensive, state-of-the-spirit equipment, just so we can go hock it all to pay for booze, drugs, prostitutes, those cute new shoes or Pokémon collectibles.
1 Samuel 15 is a great illustration of how God reacts to the way King Saul takes the answer to his prayers and actually abuses the gift he got, using it to satisfy his own personal desires. It doesn’t exactly please God, and his harsh rebuke of Saul is a lesson about what happens when we don’t act with what God gives us according to his will, but go off to do things with his power to satisfy our own selfish desires.
In contrast to the disobedient and selfish King Saul, we have the example of the prophet Elijah in 1 Kings 19, and the completely faithful submission and obedience with which he took the precise action God told him to take in answer to his prayer. Elijah prayed, God answered him, God told him what to do, and Elijah faithfully and obediently took the action with the answer to the prayer God gave him.
That’s the kind of faithfulness and obedience that sets the example for us for how we should all take the resolute action God explicitly commands us to take—or that his Holy Spirit nudges us to take—in response to God’s answers, when we get them.
In answering our prayers and manifesting them in the world, unless it’s a direct act of supernatural manifestation committed by God through the sheer power of his will (like parting seas or bringing dead people back to life), there’s a combination of God’s grace and our own responsibility to take action, at work in the process.
In Nehemiah 1-2, the prophet Nehemiah demonstrates how the process of realizing our prayers works in the cooperation between God—who gives us from his grace—and us—who take the gifts of that grace and take the action those gifts afford us the ability to take, to make what God’s helping us answer, become manifest.
Nehemiah prayed. God answered him with the opportunity to take action to realize the answer to his prayer (which was for saving the beleaguered remnant in Jerusalem). Nehemiah took the action. He went to Jerusalem, and as we know from the account in the rest of the Book of Nehemiah, eventually, despite great difficulties, completed the rebuilding of the walls of the city in an astounding 52 days.
What Nehemiah managed to accomplish (with God behind him and the remnant in Jerusalem all the way, of course), despite an abundance of daunting difficulties, is an illustration of the sad truth that despite the fact God gives us the opportunities by and resources with which we can realize the answers to the prayers he helps us realize, when taking the action God makes possible or commands us to take as part of his answer to our prayers, we have to be prepared for all the opposition the enemy of God and his servants in the world will give us, to try to prevent us from realizing those answered prayers.
Satan hates to see any of us get anything from God, and least of all anything that helps us defeat whatever wickedness Satan has to unleash against us through his proxies on earth. So as it turns out, sometimes, the answers to our prayers aren’t the final result, but just the first step on the way to the final result.
Which means that after our prayers are answered and we have to take the action required to realize them, sometimes we have then to pray more and take additional action just to secure ourselves against all the attacks we’re going to face from the enemy trying to derail our efforts while we’re in the middle of them.
That’s what the example of Nehemiah has to teach us with the account of what he and the remnant in Jerusalem had to contend with in the opposition to their efforts offered by Sanballat, Tobiah and Geshem: three regional governors who were the Joker, Riddler and Penguin of their time. All three were rabidly against the refortification of Jerusalem, stirred up no doubt by Satan to oppose the effort of God’s people.
In Nehemiah 4 and 6, they resorted to every trick in Satan’s playbook to dissuade through trickery, then intimidate and frighten, and finally, to threaten with violence the Jewish remnant trying to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. Nehemiah didn’t fall for any of it; and with the persistence of faith, trust in God’s providence, faithfully and obediently carrying out his instructions, taking the actions necessary to realize the answers to the prayer God was providing them, under Nehemiah’s leadership, Israel completed the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem. All because Nehemiah took the action necessary when God gave him the answer to his prayer.
Which, in actuality, turned out to be Nehemiah himself. He prayed to God to save the returned remnant in Jerusalem, and God answered with: “Okay. Sure. You go do it. Here’s how.”
All this shows us how when we pray to the Lord according to his will, and faithfully, obediently and patiently wait for him to answer us, he always answers us faithfully, because like Psalm 33:4 asserts:
“[T]he word of the Lord is right and true; he is faithful in all he does.”
And when we get our answer, we bear down and faithfully and obediently take whatever action is involved, or that God commands us to take, to realize our prayers, with the answers with which God provides us to them.
Because the answers to our prayers are usually God setting up conditions or providing us with the resources and/or opportunities we need with which to realize our prayers, using whatever God provides us to answer them, with the appropriate action.
Just like that holds true in ancient biblical accounts, it also does for all of us today as individual believers in our individual lives of faith; as well as for us as a collective, when God answers our collective prayers.
Like he did when he provided us with the answer to our prayers to rescue us from the disaster and destruction of the wicked and corrupt authorities under whom we were all languishing until the recent US presidential election, with the complete sweep of all three branches of the US government by President Trump and his allies.
God heard our prayers. He saw enough of us were sincere about our repentance and our return to him. He’s now provided us with the answer for which we were asking.
Now that our prayers have been answered, that’s not the end of the matter. Because just like in the case of Nehemiah, the answer to our prayers is just the first step to the answer to our prayers.
Like the Jewish remnant in ancient Jerusalem returning from the Babylonian exile, there’s a lot of work for us to do to rebuild our own walls (pun so intended). A lot of action we all have to take at this time to make sure the answer to our prayers God gave us doesn’t get wasted.
Because just like Nehemiah had his Sanballats, Tobiahs and Geshems, we all have the spiritually lawless and criminally corrupt enemies of God and man serving the spirit of wickedness right now, hysterically unhinged and desperately determined to undo what the Lord has made possible by the results of the recent US election.
There’s a lot of prayer-powered progress to protect; a lot of damage to be undone; a lot of justice to be served for a lot of heinous lawlessness, criminality and sociopathic cruelty; a lot of things lost to be recovered; a lot of souls lost that need to be found, returned and restored; a lot of pain and suffering that needs to be ministered to; a lot of the God who’s been taken out of the world by the spirit of wickedness and its lawless and criminally corrupt servants in it, to put back into it; a lot of fences that need to be mended and a lot of loving, welcoming arms that need to be extended; a lot of harvest for the Lord to be brought in, and a lot (but not an unlimited) time in which to do it right now.
In short, God answered our prayers, and just like the examples of Elijah and Nehemiah show us, now it’s on us to take the action necessary—supported by our prayers to and reliance on God’s grace and power—to make sure the answer he gave us and the opportunity represented by it right now, aren’t squandered and America doesn’t end up rejected by God like King Saul was.
(Author’s Note: you can listen to an expanded, more substantially detailed and colorfully related version of this discussion on the latest podcast, “Prayers… Answers… Action!” GK.)
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Amen to that!!