This, in my opinion, is the #1 "secret" for getting your prayers answered by God the Father. Here is the Scripture verse that completely captures this principle.
"If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples." (John 15:7)
Look very, very carefully at this verse to see what Jesus is trying to tell you. He is giving you two main pieces of revelation in which to grasp if you want to be able to get God to answer more of your specific prayers. Here are the 2 main points.
1. Establish a Personal Relationship with God
The first part of the first sentence - "If you abide in Me" - is telling you that the first thing God wants from you in order to be able to properly approach Him for prayer is a personal relationship with Him!
Jesus is using the word "abide." What He wants from us is that we abide in Him, that we live in Him. This denotes a personal, in-depth love relationship with Him. The #1 reason God created humans was for intimate fellowship. He has this incredible love for us humans and He wants more than anything else that we approach Him and enter into this one on one personal relationship with Him.
If you really stop and think about this - what is the greatest joy that a person can have on this earth? What is the one thing that most humans long for? What is the one thing that makes you cry when you see this at the movie screens? It is the longing for a personal love relationship with a person of the opposite sex. The longing for a true soul mate. Why? Because that one person, more than any other person, is the one who can really get to know you. It is the one person who can become your best friend. It is the one person who you can tell anything and everything to.
It is the most unique of all human relationships. Some of you have found this "true love" and others have not. The ones who have this one true love in their lives know exactly what I am talking about. Those of you who do not have this true love in your life know the longing for this one special person.
This same longing that we have to meet that one true soul mate is the same longing that God has for us. Except with God, this longing for us is much more intense. The fact that He would send His one and only Son to physically die on a cross in order to get us back to Himself shows more than anything else how much He really does love us.
The best analogy that I can give you on this is the "best friend analogy." God wants to become your best friend - over your soul mate and over any other best friends you have. He wants to be #1 in your life and will not settle for anything less. The Bible says that God the Father is a "jealous God - a consuming fire." Some Christians believe if they go to church once a week, sing a few songs in church and pay their tithe, that they are "in relationship" with God. God wants more than this. He wants you 7 days of the week - not just one time a week in church. He wants to be able to freely commune with you any day and anytime of the week. He wants you to talk with Him just like you would with your best friend. He wants dynamic, free flowing conversation with you on anything you want to discuss with Him, no matter how small or trivial it may seem to you. And He wants you to be open to listening to anything that He may have to say to you.
What happens to a lot of Christians is that they have not established this kind of personal relationship with God and when a crisis or emergency presents itself, it is already too late to try to get God to answer your prayer.
Notice that Jesus starts the first sentence out with the word "IF." IF you have established a relationship with God, THEN you can approach Him with your prayer requests and THEN He will answer them.
Too many Christians attempt to "use" God. The only time they ever approach God is when they need something. God thus has no natural desire to answer any prayer request you may present before Him because you have not established any type of true personal relationship with Him.
One of the things that I feel like the Holy Spirit has conveyed to me is that if you really want to be able to get God to answer more of your prayers, you have to create a desire in Him to want to answer your prayer. And the #1 way that you create a desire in God for Him to want to answer any prayer request you may have is to establish a good personal one on one love relationship with Him.
The Parent-Child Analogy
The analogy the Holy Spirit gave me to understand all of this was the "Parent-Child Analogy." Imagine you have 2 small children. The one boy really loves you. He has established a true love relationship with you. He wants to "hang out" with you.
He comes and tells you everything that happened to him today. He tells you all the "little things" that may have gone right or wrong during the day. He values your opinion.
When he gets older and more mature, all of sudden he wants to hear about your problems. He wants to know more about you, your past, why you do what you do, why you think the way that you do, etc. This child is truly abiding in you, truly living in you. You feel like you and him are "one in spirit." As a result of this relationship, you can read each other minds and thoughts. As you grow older, the relationship deepens and keeps getting better and better.
Then you have the other child. He could care less about you and your personality. The only time he will ever approach you is when he needs something. He will even go as far as to "act" like he cares about you, but once he gets what he wants from you, he is back to ignoring you until the next time he needs something. As he grows older, you grow farther and farther apart. When he is finally able to leave home on his own, you never hear from him unless he really needs something from you. He hardly ever calls or comes over.
Now if you are the loving father over these 2 children, which of the two will you have a natural desire to help out when they need your help on something? You have no natural desire to help the one who has been "using" you all these years. However, with the child who has established a true love relationship with you, you will bend over backwards to give that child anything and everything that he needs. Why? Because he loves you for you! He doesn't love you for what you can do for him. He loves you for the person that you are and for the friend that you have been for him all those years.
In fact, your love for this "loving son" will be so great, that a lot of times you will give him what he needs before he will even ask you for it. Why? You are so "in tune" with him, you will know what he needs sometimes before he even knows that he will need that something. Then you want to give it to him before he even asks you because your love for him is so great. You have a very strong, natural desire to want to make him happy just because of the personal relationship that he has established with you all these years.
It is the exact same way with God the Father! Establish a true, loving personal relationship with God and see if your whole life doesn't do a complete 180! Nothing will move God the Father to want to work on your behalf as establishing this kind of personal relationship with Him will!
One word of caution. God cannot be tricked or duped. You cannot approach God trying to enter this kind of personal relationship in order to get Him to give you all of your wants and desires. Your motives must be pure! You enter into a relationship with God because you want to get to know Him personally! You don't enter into this kind of a relationship to see how much He can give you. You have to "want God" for who He is - not for what He can do for you. The Bible tells us to seek the face of God - not His hand. For those of you who have truly established this kind of personal relationship with God, I'm sure you can testify that this is truly the greatest experience that a human can have this side of heaven. That this one and only true God in the entire universe can actually make contact with you, commune and talk with you and really establish an intimate relationship with you.
For those of you who have not really established this kind of personal relationship with God, the one thing that I and my friends can tell you is that there is nothing to be afraid of. God will handle and relate to you on the level that you are currently operating at. This personal relationship is not built overnight, but over time.
God can satisfy and meet the deeper longings of your soul and spirit that no human can reach! He can truly love you deeper and better than any human can. You can totally trust Him because He is perfect in all of His ways. He will not hurt you or harm you in any way. God has no dark side to Him so He is completely trustworthy. He is totally incapable of hurting you in any way. A lot of Christians are afraid to go "deeper" with God in this kind of a personal relationship because they have been terribly hurt in other "love" relationships - whether it be with parents or lovers. All humans are imperfect and are thus not capable of "perfect love." Since God is perfect, He and only He, is capable of giving you this kind of perfect love.
2. The Bible
Note the second part of the first sentence says, "My words abide in you." I believe Jesus is telling us two things in that sentence.
His "Words" means literally His Words. If you have established a true love relationship with God, He will talk to you just like you will talk to Him. And if He is talking to you, His words will then be abiding in you! This is the direct result of a free flowing dialogue that you have established with God as a result of having established a personal relationship with Him.
The other meaning to the word "Words" I feel He is referring to is Scripture - the Bible. If you really want to enter into a real relationship with God, you have to spend regular quality time studying the Bible. The Bible is the only true source that we have to really learn about God the Father, His Son Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.
When you enter into a true love relationship with someone, the first natural desire you have is to want to get to know everything about that person. You want to know their likes and dislikes, where they came from, where they have been, etc. And you find that out by asking a lot of questions. With God, the #1 way that you learn about Him is to read the Bible because the Bible tells you everything about Him, His Son and His Spirit. You have to seek out knowledge about God and the Bible is the main source on our earth that can teach us about God and all of His ways.
BOTTOM LINE
To summarize the above Scripture verse in one bottom line statement:
God is looking to establish a one on one personal love relationship with each one of us. This is done in 2 ways: A direct, free flowing and spontaneous best friend relationship with God where you commune with Him on a regular and frequent basis in the exact same way you would with a best friend.
Seeking after God by trying to get to know all you can about Him through study and meditation on what is written in the Holy Bible.
I guarantee you that if you are willing to enter into both of these "realms" with God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit, your life will never be the same again. The personal relationship that you can enter into with God is the "door opener" that will change the course of your entire life. The "journey" is there for all will accept and step into it!
A complete and clean copy of this article can be found at http://www.bible-knowledge.com/Prayer-Secret-1.html
Article written by Michael Bradley, author of over 100 articles which can be found at http://www.bible-knowledge.com.