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Perceiving Answers to Prayers
Dear Friends,
We are directed by the Word of God to pray. Repeatedly, our Lord Jesus tells us to ask for anything in His name with the sure expectation that He will give to us what we ask. (Jn. 14:13,14; 15:7,16; 16:23,24,26). We are told to pray without ceasing (1 Thess. 5:17), to pray without doubting (Jas. 1:6), to pray with the help of the Holy Sprit (Rom. 8:26,27), and we are even given patterns for our prayers throughout the Bible, particularly in the Book of Psalms and in the Lord’s Prayer (Mt. 6:8-13). With so many encouragements and helps for our praying we should probably all pray more and more believingly than we do now. However, I know as the pastor of this flock at Immanuel that we are a praying people whom I encourage to excel still more in this vital ministry.
One thing that can be especially heartening or disheartening to our praying is how we view the answers to our prayers. For example, it can be very disheartening when we pray believingly and without ceasing but perceive no answer to our petitions. On the other hand, a prayer asked and quickly and clearly answered in a way we understand can greatly encourage us. Our encouragement will increase and our discouragement will decrease if we bear in mind that our God hears and answers all of our prayers. However, He rarely if ever answers exactly according to our asking. Far more often (if not always!) He answers above what we ask or think (Eph. 3:20).
If we keep in mind that our loving and wise heavenly Father answers our prayers in this way, we can train ourselves better to see and to accept His answers. His delays and denials do not mean that He has not heard or answered us, but they rather indicate that what we ask or the timing of our asking may not tend to God’s glory and our highest good. Frequently we receive in due course the better thing for which we should have asked. Many mature saints can testify with sincere and profound gratitude to God that His choicest answers to their prayers have come through His denying them that for which they had prayed. Many times also, because God answers beyond what we ask or think, His answer is so great in magnitude that it can take years for us to unpack it. Believers all over the world beseeched the throne of God’s grace for decades for the downfall of atheistic communism. Now we no longer ask for this because it has been given to us, except in a few isolated and backward places in the world, such as North Korea. Should we not, then, view the current upheavals in the Middle East to be God’s hand moving in answer to our prayers that the people in that troubled region, along with the trouble some of them try to export abroad, would come to know and love the King of kings and become our brethren in Christ?
Let us, then, advance in our understanding and right perception of the Lord’s answers to our prayers. Our loving gratitude, joyful wonder, and holy comfort will all grow as we learn to see rightly how graciously and gloriously our God has been all along hearing and answering our prayerful cries to Him.
Faithfully yours,
William Harrell
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Sunday
Morning Worship 10:30 AM
Evening Worship
6:30 PM
Wednesday
Christian Education
7:00 PM
Saturday
Congregational Prayer Meeting
7:00 PM |
