Careful What You Pray For

As Christians, prayer is essentially part of our daily diet. In fact, it’s hard to imagine being a Christian without prayer. The Lord Jesus, Himself taught His disciples to pray. We are to pray for everything, earnestly and without ceasing. We even sing,

“What a friend we have in Jesus,

All our sins and griefs to bear!

What a privilege to carry

Everything to God in prayer!

Oh, what peace we often forfeit,

Oh, what needless pain we bear,

All because we do not carry

Everything to God in prayer!”

We are to bring our fears, concerns, supplications, thanksgivings, requests and all of the above to the Lord. He is a gracious and good doing God and longs to hear from, and bless His children. To which we say a hearty yes and Amen. However, we often struggle with prayer. We struggle with volume, “Am I praying enough?” We struggle with intensity and sincerity, “often times my prayers just seem to be routine.” We struggle with focus, “When I am praying my mind often drifts to other things.”

However, for purposes of our chit-chat here today there are a couple of struggles that I want to point out, and as far as struggles go, I am sure that we have all struggled with these struggles and then struggled that we’ve struggled. These are much more serious struggles because these struggles are of the objective sort, namely, they deal with the character of God. Or at least, it is the character of God that stands behind these struggling struggles. These struggles deal with the answering of prayer and with the means with which prayer is answered.

We’ve all struggled with answered prayers, or rather unanswered prayers, but we have to

remember that prayer is meant to conform us to God’s will not visa-versa. God is not at our beck and call. His ways are higher than are ways and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. He is perfect in every way, and He is all-knowing, all-powerful and all-good and He is altogether holy. And He is our perfect, loving heavenly Father through Christ. And the relationship that we have with Him is as such.

Therefore, we have to trust that the ways and means through which He answers prayers is also perfect in every way. Which means that some prayers are answered immediately – praise God. Some prayers are answered over long periods of time – praise God. And some prayers are never answered – praise God. Again, the goal is conformity to His character trusting in Him that He knows what’s best for us. We are fickle, short-sighted creatures at best and we can’t even begin to fathom what God is doing in the world at any given moment and how our lives fit into that, but we can trust Him in all things.

I think most of us understand this, though this theological point may not be any easier to

existentially swallow when praying for comfort, relief or respite that doesn’t seem to be coming fast enough. However, this doesn’t change the objective reality of things, and when that time comes we always look back with the knowledge that God really did know what He was doing, weird!

Another area that we struggle with is the means through which God graciously answers prayer. This one is a bit more subtle and painful and one we often fail to acknowledge in praise and thanksgiving, because we fail to see the correlation. For example, a man could, hypothetically speaking of course, being praying for patience. We just want God to answer that prayer immediately. “Lord, make me a patient man, and please do so now! Thank you.”

However, that’s usually not the way God works. If you want to grow in holiness, those fruits of the Spirit are going to need resistance like muscles need stress. So if you’re praying that God will increase your patience, be prepared for road construction and traffic jams all summer long. Be prepared for your children to test every last fiber of the patience you have within your soul. Be prepared to listen to that old lady at church who has no one else to talk to so she is going to take full advantage of your listening ear on Sunday morning for three and half hours (or at least it will feel like it). I think you get the point.

If you pray for the Lord to increase your faith He is going to give to reasons to have to exercise that muscle. You want growth? Get ready for resistance and pain, that’s typically the only way it comes. The beauty is, that when said lifting is done, you are able to look back and praise the Lord, for lifting that load for you. God not only blesses on the front end and the back end, He also blesses between A and B. Struggling through the struggle is the means through which God answers prayer and blesses His children that we often fail to praise Him for.

So if you’re having a hard day, week, month, year – praise God, He is far closer to you than you realize right now. Cheers!