Gen 25:21, And Isaac prayed to the Lord on behalf of his wife, because she was barren; and the Lord answered him and Rebekah his wife conceived. 
	I hope that you will bear with me for one more week in terms of effective prayer. I just could not end without spending a few moments in the following scriptures. They have been on my heart in relation to what the Lord expects from His people when we pray. Admittedly, we can not deal fully with this entire realm of prayer. Eternity will not be sufficient to detail all that God has invested of Himself in the communion of prayer. 
	The first passage is found in 2 Chron 33:12+13 regarding the effect that prayer had on Manasseh, King of Judah. And when he was in distress, he entreated the Lord his God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers. When he prayed to Him, He was moved by his entreaty and heard his supplication, and brought him again to Jerusalem to his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord was God. 
	When we read the whole account of King Manasseh over Judah, we find that he was an awful king who did terrible things. He misled Judah and offered sacrifices, including child sacrifices to idols of his own making. Then, when God used the Assyrians to capture him, he did humble himself before God and he cried out in his distress unto the God of his fathers. Despite all that he had done in his wickedness before the people, in direct defiance and desecration of the things of God, when he humbled himself and prayed earnestly for God to save him, God did so. It caused the latter days of Manasseh’s reign to be marked with a turning again unto God. This was so because we are told that after he prayed and God responded, Manasseh knew that the Lord was God. 
	This is the key point that is imperative in each one of our lives. When we pray, as God deals with us in the humbleness of our hearts, we will know that the Lord is God. Prayer will always reveal the very heart of God to us and to anyone who sincerely and humbly seeks after the Lord with all the heart and mind and being. Many of us can give witness to this in our lives. We have experienced God’s unending response in our direst of circumstances with His lovingkindness and tender mercy after we have cried out to Him in prayer. This is the manner in which we are ever more certain of Who He is and what He has done and continues to do. 
Sadly, however, many times, we will not give others the same avenue of coming into the wholehearted knowledge of God. We tend to be very critical and judgmental of people and approach them with the concept that they are doomed to an eternity of hell. No matter how much the Lord does in our lives, we are audacious enough to count others as impossible candidates for salvation. We think that such horrible people can never come to know the True and Living God other than as the Judge of all Who will sentence them to eternal damnation for all the harm that they have done. 
However, King Manasseh, who forsook his evil ways, is but one example of a man who, in his distress, called upon the name of the Lord and was heard and came to serve God in truth and reality. Our Lord had something very profound to tell us concerning our manner of prayers on the behalf of those whom we judge to be lost and despised in our mind’s eye. Matt 5:44+45, "But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you in order that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 
Our Lord leaves no wiggle room for our doubts or insincerity. We are to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. There is no greater manner of expressing love for anyone than to take them into our hearts and lay down our lives for them in a sacrifice of prayer on their behalf. To truly pray for someone is to put ourselves in their place before the throne of God and beseech His mercy and His grace to be poured out in overabundance upon them. When we can so treat our enemies and those who are our worst bullies and sources of anguish, without judgment or condemnation in our hearts, we will find that we are changed in our attitude, demeanor, thoughts, and behavior toward them. We will discover that God has manifested His heart in us unto them. 
This is a great principle of prayer for the sake of others, especially those with whom we have the greatest difficulties. God does not necessarily change them, but He absolutely changes us. He brings us into His very heart of love as expressed in John 3:16, "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. 
Christ further delineates this reality of prayer in our hearts for those with whom we struggle in Mark 11:24-26. "Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they shall be granted you. "And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone; so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your transgressions. ["But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father who is in heaven forgive your transgressions."] 
This pronouncement incorporates all that we have seen to this point. First is the fact of the faith that we have instilled into us by our living relationship with Jesus through the Holy Spirit. He gives us the faith required to believe that God does answer every prayer. John 14:12-17, "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go to the Father. "And whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. "If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it. "If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. "And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not behold Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you, and will be in you. 
Then, we saw that our prayers are to be in absolute line with God’s will. We are taught, by the Holy Spirit what the will of God is and how to pray in line with His will. We no longer center our prayers on ourselves and our wants, but on what serves to bring God ever increasing glory on this earth, no matter what the cost in terms of this earthly life. This is reinforced in James 4:3, You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures. 
The last aspect of this declaration in Mark 11:24-26 is the fact that we are to forgive every single time that we come to the Lord in prayer. This is not a ritualistic course of action; it is the very heart with which we even dare to enter into the courts of God Almighty. We cannot utter a single word of an effective prayer if we cannot forgive! No prayer, clothed in unforgiveness will be accepted into the heart of God. It is an utter impossibility. To come before Him, wringing our minds and hearts with attitudes and judgments of anger, filled with resentment and frustration and unforgiveness against another will only serve to cause us deeper anxiety and anguish and aggravation. This is what the Lord has to delve deeply into us to eliminate and to cause us to change at the deepest core of our essence and character. We will find that we are putting ourselves into the greatest pit of depression and anguish when we try to pray with anything other than humbleness of being and desire after the best for others in our hearts.
We find this absolutely proclaimed in what we call the Lord’s Prayer as recorded in Matt 6:5-13. Please read along with me. Matt 6:5-13, "And when you pray, you are not to be as the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners, in order to be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. "But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will repay you. "And when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition, as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words. "Therefore do not be like them; for your Father knows what you need, before you ask Him. "Pray, then, in this way: 'Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name. 'Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, On earth as it is in heaven. 'Give us this day our daily bread. 'And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 'And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. [For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.]' 
Prayer is a most personal matter in which we, individually and corporately take the time to give reverence to the Lord God Almighty. It is never a time to promote ourselves or our agendas with the semblance of God’s blessing upon them. Each and every prayer is to be forthcoming with the sincerity of gratitude given to God for all that He has done and is doing, extending far beyond the meager aspects of our lives. He is to be glorified as the only source of all life and truth and every provision of being. As the Creator of all, He is to be honored. As the Giver of life, He is to be glorified. As the Majestic Lord of heaven and earth, He is to be praised. As the Holy and Righteous One, He is to be reverenced. And, as Our Savior and Heavenly Father, He is to be thanked and extolled and adored and exalted. 
Nothing in this allows for any prayer in which we promote ourselves or our self-interests in any manner whatsoever. Every aspect of prayer is centered on all that would further promote greater recognition of Who God is and What He has done. 
Therefore, we can never think that God will accept or act upon those prayers in which we try to bend Him to our will or make Him subject Himself to our course of corrupted and selfish understandings. In everything, therefore, as we approach God, we must do so in the unqualified knowledge that since He has so freely forgiven us in the giving of His Only Begotten Son, we must freely forgive every single one who has, in any measure, caused us grief or anguish or hurt. We dare not allow unforgiveness to fester and take root within our hearts and minds because to do so becomes an idolatrous act of self-exaltation. We place ourselves above God in deciding whether or not someone deserves our forgiveness, and that will never find any standing before the Lord God Almighty.  
We are emphasizing this truth with great exertion because so many of us tend to harbor such ill will toward others. We have a tendency to think of them, as we saw at the very beginning of this morning’s message as lost and without hope. Certainly, there were many in Judah who felt that the evil King Manasseh was beyond any hope of changing. But when he prayed, in the depth of his despair and torment, God heard him and changed his heart and restored his kingship. No, things were not perfect after that and his son carried on the evil legacy that he had sewn, but Manasseh did come to know that the Lord was God and he did make as many changes within Judah as he could until his death.
So must we ever consider those whom we feel to be so beyond hope and salvation and change. God, Alone, knows the hearts and the minds. He, Alone, knows how to best effect the change required for the establishment of His kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. We are not the ones who decide who is saved and who is lost. That is a burden that, thank the Lord, none of us have to carry, even though some feel so inclined to pronounce such a judgment upon others. 
And the truth is that when we refuse to forgive all, we do a much similar disservice to others, to God, and to ourselves. We stop our communication with God by virtue of the fact that we lose the necessary guidance of the Holy Spirit in our prayers. Rather than seeking the further glory and recognition of God, as we ought, the Holy Spirit will be centered upon teaching us what it means to forgive. 
We will be caught up in the disciplinary realm of constant struggle to make our voices heard before the throne, and yet never being enabled to enter within His sanctuary of peace and grace and mercy. We will be on the outside shouting and wailing and crying to be heard. We will know a sense of frustration and isolation, not from God’s part, but from the partition that we have thrown up in our self-righteous indignation. We will wallow in out utter refusal to ask the Lord to change our hearts and our minds and our thoughts with regard to those who are the recipients of our wrath and indignation.  
We may be at worship, we may be in the prayer session, we may mouth the words that we have been taught, but we will not know the peace and the presence and the compassion and the joy of what it means to truly pray and to truly worship. We will be here in our physical bodies, but our true beings will never be able to enter into prayer and fellowship with God and with each other. This will be the case until we have asked the Lord, in all humbleness and earnestness to teach us what it means to pray after the heart of Our Lord Christ Jesus. To pray in that manner requires that we freely and fully forgive all as He has so forgiven us. 
We conclude this intensive deliberation on prayer with the following encouragement written to the Philippian Church. May it be our heartfelt guide into all the truth of what it means to pray, individually and as the Corporate Body of Christ Jesus. Phil 4:6+7, Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, shall guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.

This morning’s benediction is Ps 145:3-7. Great is the Lord, and highly to be praised; And His greatness is unsearchable. One generation shall praise Thy works to another, And shall declare Thy mighty acts. On the glorious splendor of Thy majesty, And on Thy wonderful works, I will meditate. And men shall speak of the power of Thine awesome acts; And I will tell of Thy greatness. They shall eagerly utter the memory of Thine abundant goodness, And shall shout joyfully of Thy righteousness. Amen.