The Ways Of God And Mysterious Things

And like it or not...this is exactly what happens sometimes. All prayers don't get instantaneous answers--and then, some do! You're constantly trying to figure out and understand what you're doing or saying wrong.

Your prayer is in alignment with the universe...it's not a far-fetched prayer...it's something you can really use...it's not something you want, but something you really need...but...

How does it work? You think you've done everything right, and still no answer. Remember, you're not alone. It has happened...and is happening to all of us. The most important thing to remember, and not give up on, is faith and trust.

How does it work? The ways of God? No one really knows, because only God can see the entire picture of our lives and how the things we pray for will affect us.

It's hard I know--and waiting and being patient isn't always the things we want to do. But if our prayers are to be answered, that is exactly what we'll have to do. Anything else...like doubt or lack of faith, will cancel out our prayers like we've never said them.

And remember...the mysterious things in life, are only mysterious to us. God knows everything! That's the only important point to remember.

I don't know about you, but there have been many times in my Christian walk that I've asked God for something, only to end up disappointed because I didn't get the answer I was expecting. That feeling becomes a problem because it starts to eat away at my faith and makes me question God's love for me. And the more I do that, the more cynical and angry I become.

I start to blame God for the problems in my life and ask Him why He keeps ignoring my prayers. But then I realize that perhaps it isn't God that is making the mistake. Maybe, just maybe, I'm the one that's getting it wrong.

We Can't Understand God's Ways

The truth is that we can't understand how God does what He does. And there are times when we pray for something, God begins to answer our prayers, but we just don't recognize it. We then get mad and say, "God never answers my prayers," and sure enough, those doubts prevent God from finishing what He started and we don't get an answer.

When Jesus is explaining how the kingdom of God works, He said, "The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground, and should sleep by night and rise by day, and the seed should sprout and grow, he himself does not know how.

For the earth yields crops by itself: first the blade, then the head, after that the full grain in the head. But when the grain ripens, immediately he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come." (Mark 4:26-29)

Even though I'm not a farmer, and I don't even like gardening, this makes a lot of sense to me. I can't imagine a farmer sowing his seed, waking up day after day, and then getting upset when the first thing that he sees is just a few blades.

A farmer understands that the plants go through a maturation process. The blades that pop up at first are not the end of the story, there is more to come and the harvest will arrive as long as he doesn't give up on it.

No! All Prayers Aren't Immediate And Complete

But when it comes to my prayers I often get this wrong. Part of the reason may be that I'm fooled into thinking that all answers to prayer are immediate and complete. In other words, I believe that my faith will result in instant answers of exactly what I asked for. But that simply isn't true.

If sowing seeds tells us how the kingdom of God works, then I need to learn from that there will be times, and it's probably true for almost all of my prayers, that I will need to be patient and wait for the complete answer to come. It won't be immediate, it will take time and I should not get discouraged and give up hope simply because I keep looking for an answer and all I see is a few stupid blades of something sticking up out of the ground.

To make this more practical, let's say that I'm praying for a new car. And I'm being bold about it and believing that God can just as easily give me my dream car as He can give me an old clunker that will simply get me from point A to B. The question I need to ask is: What might the "blade" look like?

Work With God - Not Against

We all need to realize that God isn't just going to drop a shiny new car in our laps. Besides the fact that it doesn't work that way, it would be very painful. So if getting a new car will be a process rather than an immediate answer, what might happen, what will we see along the way?

For example, we might begin to see cars that are similar to the one we want. They may have been there all along and we weren't aware of them, but by asking for one, we start to see them everywhere we go. What we should do at that point is give God thanks for answering our prayers. He is reminding us that He is working on our car by making us aware of cars like it.

We might also find that our current car has more life in it than we originally thought. Some people get upset about that, and one guy even parked his rusty old car out behind his house and shot it full of holes with a rifle, which is a somewhat extreme way of killing a car. But often times God will extend the life of the one we have, and we might even clean it up, polish it and make it look nice, to put us in a good mood about the transportation God has already provided for us.

It Always Comes Back To Expectation!

The first signs we see that God is answering our prayer will rarely look anything like the finished answer. But it's up to us to recognize that God is working. We are not to "despise the day of small things," because that is usually how God creates. He didn't start with the universe complete and finished, instead He began, bit by bit, to bring order to the chaos and to form what we see from things that we don't recognize. (Hebrews 11:3)

Whenever you ask God for something, and particularly when it's likely that it will take some time for the answer to come, begin to look with joyous expectation for the blade, then the head, and know that soon the "harvest", the answer you are looking for, will come.

Go From How Does It Work Prayer That Is To Prayer With Expectation