A matter of prayer
FEBRUARY 7, 2008 (THURSDAY)
Last evening at the mid-week prayer meeting, I talked about the will of God as it relates to prayer. We are taught by the Scriptures to pray for the will of God to be done, even if it means our prayers are not answered in the way we want them to be answered.
Some things we know to be the will of God, so we don’t have to guess whether God wants them. We know it is His desire to see all people saved, coming to a knowledge of the truth in Christ. We also know that He wants all believers to live the Christian life, drawing ever closer to Him. We don’t have to pray “if it be your will,” if we are praying for people to be saved or for Christians to live close to God.
Other matters are not so clear, so we seek to know God’s will when we pray about them. A list of such things could fill a book, I’m sure, but a few of them are: (1) Seeking one’s mate for life, (2) Living in the right place, (3) Having a vocation that God wants us to pursue, (4) Listening for the call of God into ministries He designs, (5) Choosing a church home, etc. We could go on. Perhaps you can make a list of your own in your mind right now, thinking of just a few things you need to pray about as you seek God’s will.
The sovereignty of God and the freedom of human will sometimes seem to be in conflict, but in time we always see that somehow God worked as we made decisions and it all worked together to accomplish His will. It cannot be adequately explained, so we learn to live with this apparent contradiction, learning more about the Lord and His will as time goes by.
Perhaps the most difficult prayers we offer to God come when life hangs in the balance, our own or that of someone we love. I’m no expert in this, but I am experienced in it. All I know to do at such times is to pray, turning it all over to God, who loves all of us more than we can imagine.