Food for Thought
I read a quote from an author a couple of days ago who defined ‘asking’ as what we do when we know the will of God and pray the prayer of faith. He went on to define ‘seeking prayer’ as what we do when we do not know the will of God and must seek his mind on the matter.
Near the end of the sermon on the Mount Jesus gives some instructions to his audience on how to pray. Part of that lesson is to pray that the Father’s will would be done here on earth as it is in heaven. The author’s comments and our Lord’s teaching got me to thinking about how much time and effort we put into hearing from God about a particular subject we are intending to pray about.
Perhaps many of our prayers are not answered because we ask amiss with wrong motives as James suggests. And perhaps another portion of those unanswered prayers is because we have not spent sufficient time in ‘seeking prayer’, waiting on God, listening for God to reveal his will concerning a matter. Interesting that the Apostle Paul engaged in three such seeking prayer sessions before he heard God’s will with respect to his ‘thorn in the side issue’.
It seems quite logical that we should want to pray in alignment with the will of God. Why would we want to pray for something that is not his will? If this is the case, then why does it seem that so little time and effort is invested in finding his will?
And the other consideration in this matter is that God has given us a helper! In Romans 6:26&27 (ESV) we read these words: Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.
Could it be that we are underutilizing this gift of the Holy Spirit in our desire to be praying in alignment with the will of God?
Pastor Dave