A young man once told his Christian parents that “God can’t lose!”. Expanding on this, he added, “If you pray asking God about something and your prayer is answered then you thank/praise God for answering prayer. If you don’t get what you ask for, then you say it is not God’s will”.
It has also been said that “Prayer is aligning our will to God’s not the other way round”. I suppose as I reflect on a long life, that a greater percentage of prayers have not been answered as I would have chosen. Sometimes the delayed response, or completely different outcome has, with hindsight, been a considerable improvement on my original requests. There are still some of my prayers that do not appear to have been answered yet, even though I know I have prayed in accordance with God’s will.
Often, when sharing thoughts about prayer I have suggested that “the secret of successful prayer is submission”. Over four years ago, I was confronted with a challenge and had to learn the truth of that statement. This reminded me of the advice given by an elderly Christian to a young man starting out in his public ministry “Be careful what you preach on young man, because the Lord may test you on it”.
I am sure that many readers will be praying for relatives and friends to enter into a personal relationship with God and possibly there seems to be no hint of anything happening to encourage that. I know that “God doesn’t wish the death of any sinner” but I also have to accept that God, through Jesus, has done everything possible for a person to be saved. However, God does not force a person to become a Christian, so what do we do?
I suggest we keep on praying, after all, God is more patient than we are and though we may not see such prayers answered in our lifetime, we mustn’t give up.
PRAYER: Heavenly Father, please help us to know how to pray in accordance with your will, and to wait patiently for the outcome. AMEN