I've been giving a lot of thought lately to how God answers prayer. Why does He answer some prayers and not others? Why are some prayers answered immediately, while others, you pray for years without any results? Are some prayers more important than others? What kinds of prayers does He answer?
The thing I've noticed is that the prayers God is answering in my life right now are the brief thoughts that kind of just flash through my brain at random times. I don't necessarily recognize them as prayers, but just as a sort of conversation that's happening in my head. For example, thinking this morning that I'd like to get up at a certain time (because I hadn't set my alarm), and sure enough, Sarah knocked on my door at precisely the time I wanted to get up, with my "lost" iPod in her hand. Yep, 2 answers to prayer and I hadn't even woken up yet!
The question or even struggle I've heard from a lot of people is feeling like the little things don't matter to God. He's too big, everybody else wants His time, why would He bother listening to my piddly prayers about what time I want to get up in the morning? But the thing is, He does care, He wants to bless us, even in the most insignificant ways. And we have to have our eyes open to it. I have this tendency to put the blinders on and to put my sights only on the things God hasn't given me, yet. Some of the things I ask God for, perhaps I'm not ready for at this point in my life. But "Wait" does not mean "No." Sometimes, God will say no to things we ask of Him and we need to trust in His sovereignty, knowing that He wants His best for us. Not what we think is best for us. Sometimes, He will ask us to wait, because maybe, just maybe, He wants to do something amazing in our lives and the thing we want so desperately may hold us back from really, truly knowing Him. I am trying to learn to trust Him fully in the waiting.
Which leads me to another thought I've been having. We talk a lot about waiting on God. "I'm waiting on God for a job," "I'm waiting on God for a child," "I'm waiting on God for a spouse," etc... Could it be that sometimes God is waiting on us? Is there ever a time when God says, "I have so much to give you, I'm just waiting for you to take a step"? And once we step off the ledge, into the unknown, that's when God begins to move in our lives and things start to happen. But until you take even the tiniest step of faith, your both in this sort of stand-still, wondering who's going to make the first move. Sometimes, I think it has to be us.
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