An Honest Conversation
I recently had a conversation of the sort best reserved for wise and intellectually honest friends. It went something like this:
Friend One: I have spent thousands of hours praying for things that God did not grant.
Friend Two: Prayer serves to conform us to the Son’s character.
Me: That’s a palliative. From what Jesus declared in the Gospels, we should expect the Father to grant our requests.
Friend Two: Don’t get me wrong. My requests are often granted before I rise from my knees.
Before I Could Forget His Words…
Susan and I are in a remarkably tight-knit and loving small group at church. This morning I was composing a group email to remind us all of the prayer requests we shared at last night’s meeting. My request had been that I need a little more work… Not a huge amount. Just a little.
As I wrote my email to the small group, other emails were coming in FROM CLIENTS. Those emails were requests for at least two day’s worth of website maintenance work. Good, pleasant work, for excellent clients.
So, this evening, I texted our group about how our prayers had been answered before we rose from our knees.
Additional Thoughts
Another of my very wise friends suggested one of her favorite quotes on prayer:
Sometimes when we say “God is silent,” what’s really going on is that he hasn’t told the story the way we wanted it told. He will be silent when we want him to fill in the blanks of the story we are creating. But with his own stories, the ones we live in, he is seldom silent.”
― Paul E. Miller, A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World
