Encouragement
"Then you will call on me and come and pray to me and I will answer you." Jeremiah 29:12
It is only God who can answer all our prayers in his time and in his style. He faithfully answers all of them one by one. None are too big or difficult for him. When people appear out of nowhere and vanish into thin air to magically answer some required prayer for a needy moment, they are in fact, God's messengers appointed and chosen to do his work of responding to our prayers.
St. John has summed it up in 1 John 5:14; "This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us." and in 1 John 5:15; "And if we know that he hears us whatever we ask we know that we have what we asked of him."
Hence when in despair, dont press the panic button. Instead press the prayer button.
Imagine a young girl who walks into a shop and the doll that she always hoped for is in front of her eyes. Or a dress that caught her fancy is hanging in destined display kept in reserve just for her by a loving God who knew every desire of this little girl.
There may have also been times when the last and best piece of something is waiting just for our arrival to pick it up. These are neither incidental nor coincidental. It is God who planned it and kept it in store for us much before we even thought of any item we wished to procure.
God is by way the biggest expert in answering silent prayers. When I used to attend spiritual talks by other preachers, I used to tell myself that one day I too would stand in front of a stage like them and preach the words that the Holy Spirit was already forming in my heart. I did not share this silent wish of mine with anyone but God heard the whisper of my thoughts. It was not long before God answered this secret prayer and I found myself standing on the very stage that the other preachers in authority had used and I preached to my heart's content the words that God kept sliding down from his press in heaven.
God surely does listen more to the unsaid words and turns them into loud proclamations of his Gospel news.
Jesus told his disciples that when we pray to the Father, we should not babble like the pagans do because Our Father in heaven already knows what we need much before we ask him. He then proceeded to teach them; 'The Our Father' prayer which should in fact make our hearts leap in joy since this prayer was written and taught by Jesus himself and not any man made prayer.
And in Matthew 6:5-6, Jesus further tells us; “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you."
God's timing to our prayers is also worth saluting. He can save us in the nick of time when we think all is over and lost or see no help from any source. He never fails to hasten to our side in times of utter need.
There are also occasions when God puts in a dash of humour in his timing while answering to our prayer.
Writers can vouch to this and it has been my own story that we can awake in the middle of the night and behold the Lord is filling our minds with thoughts, ideas and words for our next article in earnest rush and we have no option but to get up at that time of the night and pen down those points since we ourselves cannot wait until the next morning or else we fear that we might forget some of the points which are in the front of our minds.
Perhaps God himself needs a little company while the world is asleep and he feels comforted by our presence with him at that midnight hour.
Yet at other times, we could be in the midst of an important but boring meeting and the Lord suddenly starts pouring in the words for an article and we shift the concentration of our thoughts to memorizing these points and loose track of the meeting we are attending. Maybe this is also God's way of turning our time into an interesting one with his intervention to overcome the boredom of the meeting.
Thus we can never predict when God will pop up with answers to our desires and wants in writing his Word and truly our whole life is not enough to form articles which can be written for every passage in the Bible.
There is a very amusing anecdote of a lady who was at her wits end with the heavy burden of work that she faced at her employment place due to her employer's overbearing attitude. She sent up a special prayer to God asking him to give her patience to put up with her boss, understanding to understand him, wisdom to discern what he actually means in the sentences when he orders her to draft letters, foresight to be a step ahead and prepare in advance for what each day has in hold. Lastly she ends the prayer by asking God most of all not to give her any strength because if he gave her strength, she would break the neck of her boss.Preposterous!
But maybe there are many overburdened people out here in the world who needs specific prayers for detail to detail requests but am sure they will not go overboard or to the extreme in their requests.
There was also a man who used to pray the whole day on New Year's day and on the remaining days of the year wake up in the morning and say;"Ditto". It may sound like the height of laziness but prayers and supplications are the need of any given moment, all the days of the year.
Lovers find their beloved solely on the strength of prayers where each is the answer to the other's prayer, soulmates chosen by God for an entire lifetime and more.
In times of sickness and adversity, God answers our prayers by giving us an indomitable strength to stand strong even when we are all ready to fall apart. He holds our hand firmly to both steady us and enable us to walk all the way and truly without his grace, we can never achieve even one bit of recovery. He makes sure we bounce back on our feet and the cheer, joy and smile is back on our faces. He does not leave us in the lurch but helps us to climb the peak of trials and illness until we reach the summit of good health at the top.
Just as God sends even strangers at times to answer our prayers, we too should be the answer to someone's prayer and ask God to use us to the full in this special service.
When we realise that we still have so much more to give the world, we can ask God in all honesty to answer our prayer of a long life to complete the work that we can offer to mankind.
Maria franco
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