Almighty Answers

Have you been praying and praying for strength, wisdom, a financial breakthrough, a door to be opened, for something in your life to change for the better, for your family to love one another more deeply, for forgiveness, for peace, for hope…etc? Many of us spend time praying for these and other things, not realizing that God has answered our prayers, but His answers did not come in the form of the manner that we thought they would.

Recently my wife and I watched Evan Almighty for a 2nd or 3rd time. I forgot just how hilarious this movie was. In the movie Evan (a modern day Noah type) is charged with building an Ark. Throughout the movie, Noah has conversations with “God” who is played by Morgan Freeman. During one on the conversations, “God” talked to Evan about how “He” answers prayers. He basically said that humans make prayer requests and think that God is confined to answering those requests in a manner that they desire Him to. We pray for strength and think that God is going to give us some “magic spinach” (like Popeye) and all of the sudden we will be strong. We ask for courage and we think that we are going go to sleep being the “cowardly lion” and wake up the next day as the “King of the Forrest”.

In general, God doesn’t operate that way. What God does is give us opportunities to demonstrate the abilities or qualities of character that we seek. In doing so, He allows us to see His faithfulness as He “pulls” those attributes out of us. For example:

*We ask for financial blessings…God answers by giving us opportunities to be good stewards of what we have now, so that He can confirm that He can trust us with more.
*We ask for strength…God answers by putting us in situations were we must demonstrate ability beyond what we think are capable of, so that we can testify of His might.
*We ask that God helps us to be more loving…God answers us by giving us opportunities to love the lovely and the “unlovely”.
*We ask for salvation for our family/friends…God presents us with opportunities to bear witness of His delivering power and to walk (live) and talk before them so that they will be drawn to Him through us.

I truly believe that as we pay more attention to our circumstances and as we allow God’s Word to serve as the scope that we examine our lives (and especially our circumstances) through, we are sure to find that God has already answered many of our prayer requests, but we have not taken the time to receive His answers.

Praying to God is not like rubbing a genie lamp and making a wish when the genie appears. It is much deeper than that. It is a time to have a two-way communication with our Creator and to ask for insight and guidance so that we can see ourselves and our situations through His eyes. God is not forced to answer us How, When, Where, etc we want Him to. We just need to live in expectation of an answer.

God hears our prayers…but do we hear His answers????

Be Blessed and Be a Blessing,
B