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.”
