|
Friday Evening Devotionals
Welcome to Tuesday Morning—hope reduced to one
page and sent to nearly two thousand readers in 35 world
areas.
I have seen no statistics on the number of people
worldwide who admit to having said prayers during the
course of a day, a week, or a year. If I were guessing,
my guess would be millions--people on every continent in
the world. Whatever the number is, there are no
statistics that report objectively the number of prayers
prayed by these millions of people that are answered to
their satisfaction. Only God knows that number. Again,
if I were guessing, I would guess that the total number
of prayers answered positively would be less than the
number of prayers made. There are so many different
reasons why a sovereign God would deny, delay, or alter
the course of a person's life because of prayers made.
However, the number of "failures" won't keep most of us
from asking again...and again...and again.
This week's Tuesday is entitled, "When Our
Prayers Are Not Answered." It is not an "end all" on the
subject, but it is on the subject of prayer and why we
pray. It is attached below. Read on when you are ready,
and do whatever you do when you start to read something.
Hopefully you will read it from start to finish.
Blessings.
Tom Barnard
A Senior Encourager
________________________________________________________
When Our Prayers Are Not Answered Tom Barnard
on’t you hate it when your ignorance is revealed? A friend comes to you with a delicate personal matter—one that seems to be headed for a worst-case-scenario ending. So you agree to join that person in petitioning God for his intervention. Your expectations are high. The results for which you are praying are reasonable and good. You plead with God to intervene. And nothing seems to work out to your satisfaction. At least, not according to your timetable.
Questions arise in your mind. “Was it presumption on my part? Did I miss something along the way? Was I asking for something unrealistic? Was I not sensitive to God’s will in this?” Maybe it was not ignorance on your part. Maybe it was just part of being human. Then, what should be our attitude when God’s timing is not the same as our timing? What should we do when our prayers are not answered to our satisfaction?
Among other things, we learn—that’s what we do. We return to the basics we learned as youngsters. We call our zeal what it is—ignorance, or failure to see the big picture. We ask God to forgive us for our short-sightedness. We ask our friend for whom we are praying to be patient. We let God be God. We trust His sovereignty. And we keep on praying and believing and trusting until an answer comes.
A friend sent me the following words on the subject of intercessory prayer:
Petitionary prayer is our effort to find out and to accept what God has to say concerning us and our desires. Having brought our desires before God, we are to leave them quietly, trustfully with God, and go away from them. We can trust God to act upon them and upon us, but his work is done silently, slowly, mysteriously, and without our knowing how or when he works. All change of self requires time and pain, and the all-wise God alone knows how to help us change..
Dr. Ray Pritchard is president of Keep Believing Ministries. In a sermon entitled, “If God Is Sovereign, Why Pray?” he gave four answers to that question. Here they are:
At some point we need to be willing to let God do his work “silently, slowly, mysteriously, and without our knowing how or when he works.” That’s where faith begins. We leave our petitions “quietly, trustfully with God, and go away from them.” God will do the right thing. At the right time. He always does. |