Last week I mentioned a prayer request. I asked you to join with us in praying for Pastor John Eaton a board member for our ministry. He was in a car accident a few weeks ago and was struggling to recover.
Thank you very much for praying for Bro. John. Many of you let me know you were praying. He has improved amazingly well since then. I know that God intervened in a mighty way and we praise God for it. He is doing so much better.
There are other times when I do not see any direct result of my sincere prayer. Why is that?
Does that ever happen to you? If you pray, then I am sure that has happened to you more than you care to remember.
Do you ever wonder why God does not move when we ask him? I have spent a lot of time wondering where my prayer went and why the answer seemed delayed or the petition seemed denied.
We have been given permission to ask God the Father for whatever we need in the name and the authority of Jesus Christ, God the son. We ask in faith believing as Jesus told us to ask. Why is there no obvious answer.
We must remember that God is God and we are not God. We pray in faith as we are commanded and what God does from there is His business and not ours.
God sees the big picture that we can not see.
I remember the story that Corrie Ten Boom told about one particular happening in the German concentration camp during WWII. They were plagued by lice in the barracks. They wanted them gone and begin to complain. I can certainly understand complaints about lice.
They were reminded from scripture that God said to be thankful in everything. What? Thankful for lice? They prayed for deliverance from lice, but thanked God for them anyway.
They noticed the German guards were not coming into the barracks and bothering them near as much as they had before. They had much more freedom to pray, worship, read their smuggled Bible and study God's Word. God's work and power began to spread in the barracks because of this new liberty.
They learned the guards were staying away from the inside of the barracks because of the lice. The curse of the lice proved to be a blessing.
We have had situations that worked out in similar fashion although not near as serious as life in a concentration camp. We have prayed and received no answer. We have wondered why we found no answer. Then one day we got a glimpse of things from God's perspective.
We could suddenly understand, at least partially, that our unanswered prayers were actually blessings that we had no idea we needed. God knows what He is doing!
I want to encourage you to keep praying. Keep believing. Keep trusting God. There will be times that the answer will be obvious and the healing will come as it did for Bro. John Eaton the other day.
At other times the answer may not be so obvious. But God is listening and God is working His plan. You can trust Him.
Thank you for dropping by today.
Davy
