I realized something this week: the way God answers my prayers is typically NOT how I think my prayers should be answered.
When I pray, my focus is on a positive outcome to a need or to a situation. Many times, I have already decided what the correct outcome to my prayer should be. I pray, God listens, God gives me what I ask for. Simple—and fast.
As exaggerated as this may sound, often in our microwave culture—we do believe that if God is a God of love, He will give us what we want when we want it.
In real life, it may seem as though God has turned a deaf ear to our prayers. Days turn into months and often into years, and we believe that nothing has happened because our preconceived outcomes to our prayers have not materialized.
What if our individual journeys ARE the answers to our prayers?
Once we pray, we are not “done” with our prayer requests! Prayer often requires action—or a pressing in. We are instructed in scripture to “pray without ceasing” or to “pray continually.”
(I Thess. 5:17)
For example, what if your prayer has been for God to lead you to a local church that feels like “home?”
When praying for a church family, the action required might include researching local churches and showing up on Sunday. Over and over again. Possibly for months.
The road to Answered Prayer can be tedious and long.
Learning which churches are NOT a fit is just as much a gift from God as when He leads you to a church that IS a fit. Intertwined in the journey is a prayer being answered.
Remember, too, that the picture we may have in our minds of what our church should look like may not be the church that God knows is best for us. Keep asking. Keep seeking. Keep knocking. Keep pressing. Ask Him to make His will clear to you.
As followers of Christ, we want God’s answer to our prayers, not our answer to our prayers!
Jesus was one with God, yet we read of the many times that he went away by Himself to pray. Jesus understood that His life wasn’t about showing God that He could make right decisions on His own.
Jesus lived every moment of his life as an obedient servant. Jesus prayed without ceasing, then He said and did whatever His Father told Him to say and do. Jesus’ prayer, “Not my will but Yours be done,” was a prayer which was answered on a road filled with cruelty, mundane tasks, rejection, hate—and ultimately death.
Because the road to Answered Prayer is often tumultuous, it can be tempting to blame Satan for our difficulties. Struggle feels more justifiable when there is someone to blame. Satan likes to trip us up for sure, but perhaps God, in His goodness and love, is more concerned about what is happening in our internal worlds than He is concerned about the temporary unpleasant circumstances of our external worlds.
I am learning that the road to Answered Prayer is zig-zaggy and full of surprises. God holds each prayer, the ones which I verbalize as well as the prayers my heart whispers. The more I seek Him the more he is teaching me to trust that He is ever faithful— even when the journey doesn’t make sense.
So, if the prayers of your heart feel unheard or unanswered, stop striving and start pressing into God’s Word and into God’s presence. Reflect back on your life and the many times God’s answer to your prayer has not looked at all how you had thought it should look—and then marvel at the beauty of the lessons learned along the road to Answered Prayer.
Stay the course…
Sheila
