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| Pray with persistence – Matthew 7:7-8 |
I’ve been writing about the Matthew passage; “Ask, it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and it will be opened.” It looks like Jesus is saying the same thing three times. In a way, He is. All of these exhortations are related to prayer, but they each have their own nuance. “Ask” relates to desire, “Seek” relates to purpose, and “Knock” relates to persistence.
Unless you go around knocking on random doors, you usually knock with the expectation that someone will answer the door. Depending on the circumstances, you might knock for a long time waiting for a response. Or, you might finally decide that no one is home. I believe this exhortation explains the two reasons our prayers appear to go unanswered – it is not God’s timing to answer our prayers or it is not God’s will to answer our prayers. Let me first talk about God’s timing.
In our instant coffee/microwave/fast food/Internet society, we have grown accustomed to having everything now. And we want our prayer life to work the same way. Pray today and get a response an hour later. As I mentioned in an earlier article, I refer to this as the “Cosmic Vending Machine”. Put in a prayer, get out a blessing. And if we put a prayer or two in, or maybe even a dozen, and we don’t get the blessing, we assume our Cosmic Vending Machine is broken. Which means we assume God doesn’t care about us, God doesn’t answer prayers any ore, or God doesn’t exist.
God does exist and He does answer prayers. I believe that sometimes He has us wait for an answer because He is either trying to teach us something or help us improve our character.
By way of an example, think about when you were 14 and you were looking forward to driver’s education class. Maybe you had older siblings or older friends who were driving and you couldn’t wait to join them. But, somewhere a group of wiser, more experienced adults decided that it would be in the best interest of society if young adults waited until they were 16, not 14, to drive. In the same way, I believe God has us wait for His timing because He knows the best time to answer our prayers.
I’ll finish this thought on praying with persistence in my next post.
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Posted by prayer on 2008-10-29 11:47:37 | Rating: | Views: 111
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