The following article is an excerpt from this book.

Prayer was never meant to be an end in itself—not an exercise to glory in, to impress someone, or even merely for communion and enjoyment of God (though that is part of prayer).  Rather, the main purpose of prayer is to glorify God when we receive from Him the things we ask for (Jn. 14:13).  And that is what we should expect when we pray—that He will give us exactly what we ask for, nothing else, nothing different.  Here are three reasons why we can know that we can recieve answers to prayer—taken from my book Prayer A to Z.  

1.  In all of Jesus’ teachings on prayer He has emphasized strongly that we can receive answers.  In Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 7:7-11, Jesus instructed His disciples on asking and receiving.  He told them that if…