Sometimes God doesn’t answer our prayers the way we expect them to be answered. Right? I believe God is sovereign and that He has the power to heal. I have had the privilege of seeing Him do so. However, in what I believe is God’s infinite wisdom, sometimes the healing doesn’t come the way we anticipate or desire.
When I prayed and asked Jesus to be my Lord and Savior I never DREAMED that I could (or would) leave my life in the USA to serve Him with my life wherever He called. This journey has been a once in a lifetime adventure with God and I could not imagine doing anything else.
When we beg, plead, listen, dream, HAVE A RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD I don’t think we can help but be changed.
And change, regardless of it being negative or beneficial, is difficult for us! We have a default as people to be selfish, like to be in control, and are fragile. We do not even like to inconvenienced. And we will avoid people and situations that cause irritation.
Change is hard. But I believe God loves us way too much to let us stay where we are.
So:
1.We can trust God hears us. Not just prayers in general but YOUR prayers. Specifically and personally.
(1 John 5: 14,15 This is the confidence we have approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked in him.)
2. We have been given the power essential for life and godliness. This knowing is meant to increase and comes from a relationship with God.
(2 Peter 1:3 His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.)
A somewhat emotional conversation with a friend planted a question in my mind, “What makes a prayer a dangerous one?”
In Luke 22:42 Jesus says, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will but yours be done.”
Not what I want, desire, yearn and ache desperately for, but God YOUR will be done. Your Kingdom come on Earth as it is in Heaven. This prayer places God in the appropriate place, as Lord over our life.
I think what makes a prayer seem dangerous to me is the stretching. What I mean is the personal cost to myself. When we pray, “God, not my will but YOURS,” or ,”Make me more like YOU Jesus,” this opens us up to a reshuffling, a re-prioritizing, potential inconveniences, a changing and demands a response from us–action.
This post is just a beginning. I have not arrived, do not always pray dangerously, but my desire for God is growing! I am going to continue exploring the dangers of prayer and soak in the knowledge that the Living, the Mighty, the God of the Universe hears ME.
Is your desire to find deeper intimacy with God enough to propel you beyond the boundaries of your comfort zone?
Do you believe God answers YOUR prayers?
My prayer for myself and for you is that God would help us to pray dangerously bold and audacious prayers in sync with God’s will, asking God to help us with our unbelief, and grow in our relationship with God.
