Over the past recent months, I have been learning the power of effective prayer and what it takes to stand by the prayer I have prayed. Mostly, the difficulty doesn’t lie in the prayer… it lies in the belief of that prayer.
Faith is such a simple thing. Faith is easy to have when things are going right, the sun is shining, and answers come quickly. This is not a true indicator of your faith. It is when the sun becomes obscured with clouds and everything goes wrong, when answers seem never to come – it is during those blackest moments of tempest that true faith blossoms forth.
True faith believes. True faith is not just believing, but ACTING like what you have prayed has already been granted. Yes, you prayed for money to pay the bills this month, but what did you DO after you prayed? Did you immediately begin to fret in your mind about how the bills would be paid or where the money would come from? Did your imagination take you down the road of electricity and water cut-offs? Or did you pray again the next morning for money to take care of the bills?
This is not faith.
Faith utters the prayer for the provision for bills and then believes. Faith rejoices and finds hope and peace in the knowledge that God is taking care of it and He will provide the necessary funds/provision at just the right moment. Faith holds fast and does not waiver, standing before God and claiming His promises. Faith never doubts and does not fret. Faith always believes God will come through in the end, no matter how black the situation appears at the present.
Every morning, as I pray, I thank God for the many things I have prayed for. I thank Him because I believe He has already answered my prayers... I'm just waiting for the manifestation of His blessings. Every morning as I give that thanks (and sometimes it's more of a sacrifice of praise than others), I become tickled by the fact that the wording for giving thanks for an event which has not manifested yet is EXACTLY THE SAME wording as giving thanks for an event which has already occurred!!
For instance, I have been praying for some time now for the Lord to supernaturally provide a way for me to pay off my debts faster. I prayed once and every day say, "Thank you for providing a supernatural way for me to pay off my debts faster." A couple weeks ago, the Lord did indeed provide a supernatural way for me to pay off all my debts faster than I had believed possible! The next morning, as I thanked God now for an event which had happened, I laughed as I heard the exact same thank-you sentence come out of my mouth - not for something I believed would one day show up, but for a prayer God had answered!
My excitement was high as I realized the power contained in this form of praying; the form of praying once and then, every time that situation pops into my head, thanking God for answering that prayer. It really works and I have seen more miracles and answers to prayer in the past few months than I have seen in a long time. God loves faithfulness and He loves when we believe He will do what He promised. We are His children and He is our Father; how could He not delight in our faithfulness to Him?
And so it is that I have come to the living realization that the purest form of faith is to truly wait on God for His timing and His answers to our prayers. He is outside of our dimensions and can see so much more than we can. Trust Him to take care of all your concerns and if you find yourself lacking faith to believe, ask Him for that too… He will give it.
“Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.”
Hold fast in purest of faiths… stand and see the salvation and majesty of God as He works in your life, proving Himself time and time again to be a loving Father and Guardian of His children.
