- Coffee Hour @ Chicklit Power...
Hear my prayer, O Lord, Give ear to my supplications! In Your faithfulness answer me, and in Your righteousness. Psalm 143:1
Welcome back this week to our Coffee Hour. I’m certainly glad you could join me today. Grab you things and let’s see what He has in store for us today!
How many can honestly say that when you’ve prayed you felt your prayers just hit the ceiling and you get no answers? No matter how hard you try, they just don’t seem to be getting anywhere. Do you begin to think He doesn’t hear you? Do you believe He seems uninterested and He doesn’t care? Sometimes we have to ask ourselves some hard questions; for example, are we asking with the wrong motives?
Are we praying self-centered prayers? In my 40-plus years of ministry, I have come across times when I’ve had people come to me wanting to know why God hasn’t answered their prayers. They’ve heard what God has done in my life and in my marriage and they want the same for theirs as well; who could blame them? There have been times I’ve heard people say: I go to church. I pray. I cry out to God. Why isn’t He answering? Why doesn’t He care?
I must reiterate this truth: He does hear, and He does care. Psalm 18:6 says “In my distress I called upon the Lord; and cried out to my God; He heard my voice from His temple, and my cry came before Him, even to His ears.”
Could it be that we want a program to follow to get God to do what we want Him to do? Trying to side-step God’s plan in the process by rushing the purpose can be dangerous. God is not a genie where you can rub the magic lamp and ask for whatever your wish is and expect it to be His command!
Please don’t get me wrong or think I’m uncaring…if anything, I may be more so! Our heavenly Father is a loving Father who sometimes says “yes” and sometimes says “no” or even “wait,” just as any earthly parent would say when asked by their children for certain needs. Matthew 7:11
We can rob God of His full glory when we imply that He uses magic to accomplish spectacular feats. Now think of all the prayers on a universal scale. How can God answer them all? One is asking for it “to rain” and at the same time another asks for it “not to rain.” Then there’s the two teams both praying to win. We look at our requests and forget that everyone else in the world is praying to Him, too. Boy, am I glad I’m not God! Yet, most of the time, we can fall into a trap and treat God as a genie. We tend to treat our prayers as wishes far too often and when our prayers go unanswered it is hard. Maybe we have to wait longer. Maybe it is just not good for us at the time. Maybe we need to endure a specific trial in order to become more like Christ. Whatever the reason is we can rest in the knowledge that God answers our good requests.
Many times we ask from the knowledge of our heads and not necessarily from our hearts and with God it is always a heart thing. He is God and though we don’t always understand His reasons or His ways, they are always for our benefit. We cannot live how we want, outside of God’s ways and will, and expect Him to simply answer our prayers.
So the next time you enter into His presence, enter with thanksgiving in your heart and pray “not my will but yours” and then approach Him with your requests. God wants to know that you want Him to be a part of your life, not just a wish granter. Matthew 6:33 reminds us “Instead, desire first and foremost God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”
He is a good God and when we ask and it’s not answered right away, we must simply trust that He knows what He’s doing; that He is working on our behalf for our own good. He is a good God! Till next week; can’t wait to hear some of your long awaited answered prayers! And, remember, keep Him close to your heart!
Love, Deb
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