How many times should we have to pray for something? More specifically, how many times should we have to pray for something that we know is God's will? Should we even have to pray for something we know is God's will? Won't God just do whatever He wants to do?
This morning, I was reading in 1 Kings Chapter 18. There had been a horrible drought that lasted years. In verse 1, God told Elijah He would send rain. Boy, that's great! Let's just sit back and wait for the rain. What a blessing! Blessing? Absolutely! Just sit back and wait? No way! Elijah had so much confidence in God's Word, that he told Ahab in verse 41 there was the sound of abundance of rain. Then Elijah went up to the top of Carmel to pray and wait for the rain. Seven times he prayed and asked his servant to go look for signs of rain and finally the servant saw a tiny cloud. This was all the proof Elijah needed that rain was on the way!
1 John 5:14-15 says, "Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him." Elijah knew God's will and then prayed accordingly. God chooses to work through us, not around us! As followers of Christ, we have a responsibility to pray. Isaiah 43:26 says, "Put Me in remembrance; let us contend together". Finally, in the model prayer that Jesus gave us in Matthew Chapter 6, He instructs us to pray, "Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven."
We live in a generation that stands in front of the microwave oven saying, "hurry up!", but sometimes we have to continue to pray and wait for God's answer. God is always on time even when we think He just showed up too late!
For encouragement, I would like to ask anyone reading this post to send a comment to me (you can do this anonymously) giving me an example of a time you prayed and had to wait for God's answer but when it came, you knew it was worth the wait. I'll start by saying from the time God promised me a wonderful marraige, I had to wait 10 years to meet and marry Andy but he has been worth every day I had to wait for him!
No comments:
Post a Comment