Make your requests known to God

MAKE YOUR REQUESTS KNOWN TO GOD

Have you ever prayed really hard for something and you felt that you did not get the result that you were looking for?  I guess many of us have.  Scripture is full of encouragement to talk to God about things.  “You have not because you ask not.” “Ask and you shall receive”, “God hears you when you pray”.  Be anxious for nothing, but with prayer, asking, and giving of thanks make your requests known to God. What we don’t remember is “You will be judged the way you have judged others”,  “We know that you don’t hear sinners pray”, “If you love me, do my will”. 

     God isn’t our own personal genie in a bottle.  He’s the one in charge.  We had nothing to do with creating the heavens and the earth.  We had nothing to do with the creation of man.  Scripture tells us that “His ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts”.  Sometimes when we pray, we are looking for a certain answer to come in a certain way.  Maybe God has answered, but not in the way we were expecting.  The Hebrew people were looking for a mighty warring king to come in with a physical sword and an army to conquer all of their enemies.  They believed that Messiah was coming to save them from their enemies.  Well, their mighty warring king did come.  He DID save them from their enemies.  Here was one of the problems.  They didn’t recognize their enemies.  Scripture tells us that we fight NOT against flesh and blood, but against spiritual forces of darkness in high places.  Jesus came to defeat the spiritual forces of darkness that confuse us, destroy our families, cause illness in our bodies, lead us away from the truth, and turn brother against brother.  We didn’t know that.  Luke 10:17 tells us that he gave us authority over the enemy and over all His power.  So you see, He did come and he did defeat our enemies.  Why do gentiles accept Christ so much more easily than do Jewish people?  The Hebrew people already had someone, a picture of a hero, in mind.  We gentiles had no preconceived ideas, so we didn’t have to change a millennia of thought conjured by man, that didn’t match the mind of God.  When you pray, God hears and He answers.  Our job then, is to open our minds to any possibility.  God may have answered your prayer and you just missed it because “His thoughts are higher than your thoughts”.