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.
Showing posts with label answers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label answers. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
The Power of Prayer
Today’s post is not complex, but one I needed to express. Over the course of my life, I have time and time again discovered the efficacy of prayer. Not rote, mindless prayers, but prayers that truly come from the heart, that are truly seeking after God’s heart, that are prayed with fervency and faith.
I believe the key to praying and petitioning God lies in how much we believe He will answer that prayer.
Take this scenario. You want to buy a sofa so you call up Sears and order a sofa. The sales representative on the other end of the line takes your order and all your information and assures you the sofa will be delivered in the near future. Excellent. That’s wonderful. The next morning, however, you awake and discover the sofa hasn’t arrived yet. Where could it be? Frustrated, you call back Sears and order another sofa. Once again, the order is taken and all the information recorded with the promise of delivery in the near future. You breathe a sigh of relief. That is, until the next morning when you, once again, awaken to no sofa. Aggravated that your order STILL hasn’t manifested, you call Sears yet again and order another sofa…
I see this process very much how many people pray. There’s a lot of asking and not a whole lot of listening and waiting. I know… I did it too. About half a year ago, the Lord convicted me that I was praying in the wrong way for some very important things. Finally, it seemed nothing was happening so I asked Him to show me how to pray. The answer was to pray once for whatever it was and then every time while I was waiting for the prayer to be noticeably answered, I was to simply thank Him for whatever it was as if I had already received it.
The Bible tells us we have not because we ask not. My natural caveat is that if I want something, I should first take that desire to God and make sure it is something He wants me to have. For instance, I could pray for a million dollars, but that might not be God’s will for me at this point. To avoid falling into the devil’s trap of pointing to the non-appearance of the money as a reason to never trust God again, I believe it is essential to make sure my requests are in line with His will… that way, what I ask WILL be what He wants me to have.
I see prayer very much like the sofa story. So often, we don’t give God a chance to answer our prayers. We offer them up and expect an immediate solution. Now I do believe He answers immediately some times, but other prayers take longer to be answered. The question is: Do you have enough faith to believe He has already answered your prayer? Can you live your life in faith, waiting for His plan to come to perfection?
Many things I have prayed for and the older I get, the more intense and big the prayers get. I have of late been focusing on praying once and then daily thanking God for the things I pray for. Since I started, huge things have happened and God’s blessings and miracles have poured out on me and those around me.
His timing is not always my timing… the challenge is waiting for Him to move and answer instead of assuming He didn’t hear and moving ahead in my own strength.
God hears and He ALWAYS answers prayers – sometimes it’s “Yes,” sometimes it’s “No”… frequently it’s “Wait.”
I believe the key to praying and petitioning God lies in how much we believe He will answer that prayer.
Take this scenario. You want to buy a sofa so you call up Sears and order a sofa. The sales representative on the other end of the line takes your order and all your information and assures you the sofa will be delivered in the near future. Excellent. That’s wonderful. The next morning, however, you awake and discover the sofa hasn’t arrived yet. Where could it be? Frustrated, you call back Sears and order another sofa. Once again, the order is taken and all the information recorded with the promise of delivery in the near future. You breathe a sigh of relief. That is, until the next morning when you, once again, awaken to no sofa. Aggravated that your order STILL hasn’t manifested, you call Sears yet again and order another sofa…
I see this process very much how many people pray. There’s a lot of asking and not a whole lot of listening and waiting. I know… I did it too. About half a year ago, the Lord convicted me that I was praying in the wrong way for some very important things. Finally, it seemed nothing was happening so I asked Him to show me how to pray. The answer was to pray once for whatever it was and then every time while I was waiting for the prayer to be noticeably answered, I was to simply thank Him for whatever it was as if I had already received it.
The Bible tells us we have not because we ask not. My natural caveat is that if I want something, I should first take that desire to God and make sure it is something He wants me to have. For instance, I could pray for a million dollars, but that might not be God’s will for me at this point. To avoid falling into the devil’s trap of pointing to the non-appearance of the money as a reason to never trust God again, I believe it is essential to make sure my requests are in line with His will… that way, what I ask WILL be what He wants me to have.
I see prayer very much like the sofa story. So often, we don’t give God a chance to answer our prayers. We offer them up and expect an immediate solution. Now I do believe He answers immediately some times, but other prayers take longer to be answered. The question is: Do you have enough faith to believe He has already answered your prayer? Can you live your life in faith, waiting for His plan to come to perfection?
Many things I have prayed for and the older I get, the more intense and big the prayers get. I have of late been focusing on praying once and then daily thanking God for the things I pray for. Since I started, huge things have happened and God’s blessings and miracles have poured out on me and those around me.
His timing is not always my timing… the challenge is waiting for Him to move and answer instead of assuming He didn’t hear and moving ahead in my own strength.
God hears and He ALWAYS answers prayers – sometimes it’s “Yes,” sometimes it’s “No”… frequently it’s “Wait.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)