MYSTERY OF ANSWERED PRAYER

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Perhaps the word mystery isn’t the word I should have used but this is the way I feel sometimes.

Now I know some people say they can pray for personal issues and order up their request and receive an answer exactly in detail as they outlined it to the Lord. But me, I have to settle for a little less, and just take what my faith can produce for me. I’m not sure that there are others who fit in this same category but there maybe some.

I suspect that there are some girls who have prayed for a husband and had exactly what they wanted in mind, and told the Lord, make him handsome, about six foot tall. I want one who is virile, strong and the ideal weight, and oh yes I want him to be a great lover with money. Well what the Lord sent was a slightly bald, paunchy midriff with an average job and a rather laid back guy. Of course the man I described was what she had twenty years later after the wedding. Even before the marriage she had to compromise a little for he didn’t fit all her specifications. Now she prayed and GOD answered, but there is a mystery that surrounds this whole transaction.

A guy prays and requests a gal. I want her to be the hottest of the lot and all the guys want her but she chooses me. Well guess what; GOD answers his prayer but she isn’t the most popular girl of all. She seldom has a date and was glad the guy asked her out. She is nice but not beautiful, and besides she needs to have her teeth fixed. But now here is the mystery part, she is the only one sent along so she must be the answer to his prayer. But the guy isn’t satisfied, and prays again, and along comes another girl, one who is pretty, but she talks non stop, and when she laughs she sounds like a cackling hen. Now the Lord has answered both prayers, kinda. The guy decides he could get used to the cackling and the occasional snort but he prays once again; Lord perhaps I didn’t make myself clear. I want a wife but I don’t want to be ashamed of her. This time he meets one he is willing to settle for. She isn’t super hot, and only a few guys have asked her out (none for a second date). At least this one doesn’t cackle or need her teeth fixed.

This brings me back to the mystery I referred to, I asked for money and HE gave me a job. I prayed for healing and ended up getting a pill from the doctor. Now I got what I prayed for but not in the way I wanted it. I wanted a miracle, and all I got was a solution.

So wherein lays the mystery? The answer is we don’t know what we really need when we pray and GOD has to sort through all our foolishness and then in HIS mercy give us what we can handle.

On the broader scale there are many things that are not personal but affect the work of GOD where we can only pray and leave it HIS hands.

Who among us could be trusted with the power to always receive a direct answer to prayer from GOD without becoming inflated much like Satan did.  If we were to have that much power to command GOD and have HIM perform our every wish it would make HIM a servant to us.

So what to do? Pray fervently for everything GOD quickens you to pray for. Pray for those who need help. Pray for those who need salvation. Pray for your needs, and learn to accept GOD’S answer in whatever form it comes. Always pray with expectancy and never become passive but with understanding what the will of the LORD is concerning you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQG5wHWGsM0
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