Do you ever find yourself struggling over what you feel like is unanswered prayer? Most of us have gone through discouraging and perhaps puzzling episodes of unanswered prayer. Typically we begin the Christian life very optimistic about the possibilities of prayer; then we have some disappointing experiences with prayer and skepticism sets in. Few experiences pose a greater challenge to our faith. Maybe you had committed yourself to pray frequently and earnestly that God would do a certain thing for you, and because by what seemed to be unanswered prayer, you felt like He never answered it at all… or, He answered it in a way that you were not happy with….maybe you even questioned as to if God even heard your prayer or not!
My own confidence or conviction that God answers prayer springs not only from biblical teaching but from personal experience as well. But it has taken time for that conviction to grow into a strong and abiding one; and while I still stumble around in the waiting part of prayer…I am confident that God will answer my prayers according to what is best for everybody and every situation involved.
It’s not that God refuses to grant His children their request, nor does He not hear them…but, that He simply understands the outcome better than we do. Appreciating this can do wonders in keeping us from losing heart when our prayers seem to go unheeded. While it is very clear in the scripture that if we ask it will be given to us…if we are asking it in His will then we will not struggle over the answers to our prayers…..God’s Word also tells us to seek and we will find….What that means is that we are to seek and search for God in our situation….in our prayer request…many times too often we state our prayer request and move on….but oh dear friend…we must learn to do more than that in many cases…..we need to learn to knock and when we do…God will open Himself up to us and show us His love and will in that request …to sustain us in whatever the answer may be….and that sustaining love ends up being our fervent answer over anything that we take to Him in prayer.
May I say that there are different types of prayer request that require different types or ways in approaching the Lord on their behalf. Some types of prayers require a simple request….ie, “Lord, help me to be like you”….that prayer is a given….why? Because we know that according to his Word that that prayer request complies with His will…..meaning , He has already said clear and simple…be ye Holy, even as I am Holy….so there is therefore nothing else that has to be said…..However, the tougher prayers are when we are praying our wills to become His will and His word does not have a specific passage that we can go to that may pertain to our request…..that is when we find ourselves seeking Him and searching for Him ... knocking on His door simply means that you will do anything to get into His presences over a situation…like His word tells us to do…..it is then He will open that door…purify our hearts and satisfy our pain and lack of understanding and assures us that all is well… He is in control and knows the situation better than we do. It is at that point that we can know if we are praying in accordance to His will or not! Because, if we walk away fretful and without peace, then we have not severed those strings that will keep us captive and weakens our faith ... and it is then that we realize that we are unwilling to yield our way into His. Jesus prayed in the garden before His death….”Father if it be possible to take this cup from me”….but in the end Jesus proclaimed His Father’s will be done and not His own….how else could He bear what He had to bear except through coming to terms with the will of God! It was the coming to terms and submitting to those terms that provided Jesus the power to go through and endure whatever God’s answer was to be…..He sought God in that Garden…He knocked on the door that stood before Him…and when He entered in….He and the Father supped together and Jesus left that garden with the peace that He ultimately was seeking from the Father….and that peace only comes through surrendering our wills to the Father!
"...The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availed much." James 5:16b This verse has zeal in it....or feet you might say....it's going places and seeing things happen! Many times we grope for an explanation to our experiences of unanswered prayer and we attribute the problem to lack of faith we say, " We just didn’t believe strongly enough " and indeed, this can be a problem ... and yet even our motives can be the culprit of unanswered prayer, as James 4:3 reminds us to pray in Jesus’ name and when we do, it simply means to pray with a desire for his will and glory. I believe that it was Andrew Murray that said, “the thrust of the biblical promises is that God limits much of what He does on earth to what His people are bold enough to request through prayer.” We are to pray and to keep on praying ... especially when hard times come our way and burdens seem too hard to bear. It is through continuing prayer that our desires become clarified. Some grow stronger. Others fade away and we’re grateful that God refrained from granting them! Jesus told the parable that we might “always pray and not lose heart” Luke 18:1. Clearly H e meant that we shouldn’t give up praying about specific personal concerns, no matter how long it takes to receive an answer or what that answer may be. If we hang in there, we’ll discover that God is more abundantly willing to grant our petitions than we’ve imagined. But we must do it His way and by doing it His way, we are granted the peace to endure the answer ...whatever it may be!
Imagine if we never had to seek out an answer …I can promise you that we would never know God on the level that He calls us to know Him on if we did not seek Him out as the precious treasure that He is… Hebrews 11:6 says,”But without faith it is impossible to please God… for he that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. "...you see He makes it all worthwhile ...if through our faith, we do it His way!
Develop your prayer life...by seeking, searching and knocking!
Loving you and praying for you today!
Bren
No comments:
Post a Comment