Luke 11:13 – So if you, despite being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?

God hears and answers prayer. Have you ever thought how radical that statement is? Now here is another pretty radical thought, He only hears and answers the prayers of those that are His. Having God as your Father is the greatest privelege imaginable. We have been brought into a spiritual fellowship with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit that defies our imagination. Because God is our Father He hears and answers our prayer. He has not left us abandoned as fatherless orphans, He has brought us in to His family and given us access to His promises. He is our Father, let me say it again, He hears and answers our prayers. Here is how Andrew Murray describes this, he calls it God’s arithmetic.

“This is the one chief thought on which Jesus dwells here and which He would have all His scholars understand. He would have us see that the secret of effectual prayer is to have the heart filled with the Father-love of God. It is not enough for us to know that God is a Father; He would have us take time to come under the full experience of what that name implies. We must take the best earthly father we know and think of the tenderness and love with which he regards the request of his child and the love and joy with which he grants every reasonable desire. We must then, as we think in adoring worship of the infinite love and fatherliness of God, consider with how much more tenderness and joy He sees as we come to Him, and He gives us what we ask correctly. When we see how much this divine arithmetic is beyond our comprehension and feel how impossible it is for us to understand God’s readiness to hear us, then He would have us come and open our heart for the Holy Spirit to shed God’s Father-love there.”

So this arithmetic of God is unsettling to the natural mind but it is the life and hope of every believer. His miracles just do not “add up” to the natural mindset but they become part of our life in His kingdom. Hezekiah prayed and 185,000 Assyrian soldiers dropped dead outside the wall of Jerusalem, Jehoshaphat’s priests sang, and his enemies fled in terror, Jesus prayed and 5000 hungry followers were fed. None of these things add up unless you are moving in this life of prayer. Let’s just call it God’s arithmetic.