You must pray with faith. Most of you know the scripture in Matthew 21:22 that says:
"If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer." I just found this verse the other day: "And I will do whatever you ask in My name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it." Jesus is simply saying to ask Him.
Faith about intercessory prayer is more tricky. God is always faithful, people are not. Sometimes I will be praying that a certain thing will happen in the life of another. It does, but the person does not respond in the way in which I wanted her/him to. You still must have faith in the Lord...He is still faithful amongst our human frailty. He is sovereign.
Many times, the Lord does not answer our prayers in the way we thought He was going to. In fact, often we miss the answer because we've confined it to such a narrow version of it. If it doesn't fit in our box, it's not right. Let me tell you, the Lord rarely fits inside our boxes that we've built. He can be almost weird to us sometimes. He does things differently than we would do things because He is GOD. "'For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are you ways my ways,' declares the Lord. 'As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.'" If you truly want to pray with faith, you must LOOK for the Lord's answers...sometimes, it's even better than you imagined...almost every time, it's outside the box.
Sunday, October 07, 2007
Intercessory Prayer Part 4: Faith
Posted by AUNY at 7:33 AM
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1 comments:
On "strange" answers to prayer this is what happened to me once....I am a single mom, and once I prayed specifically for an extra $100 in my budget. Two days later, my landlord informed me she was selling the house I was living in. That was not the answer to my prayer! Next week, the house across the street was up for rent. When I inquired about the house....the landlord told me "For some reason I feel compelled to come $100 off my normal rent." There you go! God does answer prayer. During that week I was waiting for a place to live, I prayed and believed and doubted some. What did this teach me? Now when times are hard and there is more "month" than "money" I know God will provide.
Thanks Auny for being the ever faithful encourager!
Teresa
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