This is part of an ongoing series during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. To engage further in the #QuarantineSoulCare series, click here.
Perhaps one of the greatest reasons we don’t ask God for what we want or need is because we’re afraid that he won’t do it. We fear that he’ll say no, that he won’t answer the way we asked, or that he won’t even answer at all. Unanswered prayer is perhaps one of the most perplexing parts of prayer. Why would God invite us to ask him for anything and promise us that he is listening, only to abandon us at the altar of our asking? …
It is impossible for me to understand why God hasn’t answered all of my honest and earnest prayers. And it’s irresponsible for me to try to tell you why he hasn’t answered yours. It is true that sometimes God uses your asking and waiting and asking and waiting to grow a deeper faith and deeper desires in you. It is true that sometimes God answers your prayers in unexpected ways to lead you to something far greater than you even knew you could ask for. It is true that sometimes there is sin between us and God, sin that keeps us from intimacy with God. … All those things are true—and yet I still don’t know why God answers some prayers and doesn’t answer others in ways that we hoped for or can recognize. But I do know that right after Jesus taught us how to pray, he taught us how to keep on praying. …
Prayer is an unapologetic act of audacity. The willingness to keep on knocking, keep on asking, keep on trusting, and keep on believing, even when you don’t get what you want or in the way you want it, is the alchemy of faith and persistence. It means having the faith to take God up on his invitation to ask him for whatever you need—and the tenacity to hold him to it.
Don’t burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master, cheerfully expectant. Don’t quit in hard times; pray all the harder.
–Romans 12:11-13, The Message
May today you take God up on his invitation to ask him for whatever you need, and may you have the tenacity to hold him to it. #quarantinesoulcare Click To Tweet
Today’s reading was taken from Praying Through by Jarrett Stevens.
