Prayers that God Answers

             “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4 NIV84).

            I can’t count the number of times that I have heard people quote that verse, convinced that God will give them whatever they ask.  Then, when their prayer is not answered as they requested, they become angry with God, often claiming that He did not keep His promise. 

            Unfortunately, they have taken one verse and based their entire prayer life on it.  They have become convinced that God is a “gimme” God.  They think that because they believe He will give them whatever they want.  The problem is that when the whole of Scripture is considered, that’s not what God tells us.

            In the very next verse, God says, “Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this” (Psalm 37:5 NIV84).  So, what does it mean to commit your way to the Lord?  I think the Apostle John clarifies this for us.

            “…we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him” (I John 3:21b-22 NIV84 emphasis added).  He clarifies this further in chapter 5, “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.  And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him” (I John 5:14, 15 NIV84 emphasis added).

            God is not a vending machine where we put in our request and out pops exactly what we asked for.  When we expect that kind of God, we are attempting to bring Him down to our level.  He is an all-knowing God, while we have one small piece of life’s puzzle.  To expect Him to do whatever we ask without conditions is to expect Him to ignore His own plan, not just for us but for all humanity, and to ignore His own knowledge.  That is not the God that we serve.

            God will give us the desires of our hearts when we commit our lives to Him, obey Him, do our best to please Him, and pray, “Not my will, but yours be done.”  A life committed to obedience and surrender is one that seeks the will of God in every situation.  That mindset will lead to answered prayers.  They may not always be answered as you wish, but they will be answered within His will, which is always far better than anything we can ask or imagine.

Psalm 37:4, 5

I John 3:21, 22

I John 5:14, 15

Ephesians 3:20

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hi, I'm the Sun Porch Lady

  Hi, I’m the Sun Porch Lady. I recently retired and while most of the world thinks that is a wonderful thing, I've found it to be anything but wonderful. I've been going to school and/or working since I was six years old so finding myself with nothing, but free time is a whole new experience.   I have no structure, no daily schedule, and seemingly no purpose in my life.   While that may sound like heaven, I believe that Christians never retire.   God just repurposes them. As I struggled to find new purpose and bring some structure back to my life, I turned to writing.   Over the years, I have often written devotional thoughts or put various ideas to paper.   I can’t say that I’ve ever been very good at journaling but from time to time, I have written about events in my life that taught me values or made me more aware of God working in my life.   So, to keep busy and hopefully spark an interest in others I've decided to create this blog. I’m callin...
Read more

My Dad

                 Yesterday would have been my father’s 98 th birthday.   He’s been gone for 13 years, and I still miss him.   He wasn’t perfect, but he loved his family.   His letters home while he was in the service reflect his love for my Mom—Mandy, as he called her.   They were married for almost 65 years, and his love for her was never more evident than when she became sick in 2007.               As Mom underwent several surgeries due to an infection that ravaged her body, he was always by her side.   He became her primary caregiver as well as the cook, house cleaner, and laundry person, but you never heard him complain.   When she went to the hospital with another round of pneumonia, he was right there, remaining by her bedside until just a few hours before he died.             His lov...
Read more

Jesus Prays to His Father

                 A few weeks ago, I wrote about the need to “abide” in Christ.   I think every Christian desires to develop that deep, intimate relationship with our Savior.   That is the definition of “abide.”   The question is always, “How do we do that?”             This week my Bible study group looked closely at John 17, which I believe allows us to examine the deep, intimate relationship between the Father and the Son.   As Jesus prays, not a prayer of teaching as is found in Matthew 6, but a prayer of love and devotion to His Father and the “Mission”, we get a glimpse of what it means to “abide” in God or Christ.             He begins the prayer with humility, seeking glory for Himself only so that the Father might be glorified.   His mission of bringing salvation to the world was done.   ...
Read more