Have you ever wondered why your prayers go unanswered? If you're like a lot of people, you've probably spent a lot of time doing some soul searching trying to figure out what's wrong. We keep making our requests to God, but our prayers seem to fall on deaf ears. There could be a number of things causing problems, but the main problem that plagues most of us may surprise you. The simple fact is: We don't know what God wants. We spend all of our time frustrated because we don't know God's will. Struggling to determine God's will was the single greatest problem that came up in an informal survey that I did. At a Bible study I was teaching I asked a simple question: What is the biggest difficulty you have with faith? In one form or another the answer that kept coming up was: "I don't know what God wants." This feeling that we might might be wrong stops our faith dead in its tracks. The solution to this problem will most likely shock you, because God wants what you want. It's that simple. I may have lost some of you, but listen carefully because this could be the most important thing you'll ever learn about prayer and faith. God's will is to give us what we want, and I can prove it. In John 14:13-14(NIV), Jesus says, "And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it." This verse causes some real problems for me. It seems like Jesus is literally giving us a blank check, but I know from my own experiences that it can't be that way. And you probably agree with me when I say, "Yeah, I know that's what it says, but that's not really how it works...or is it?" Experience is a great teacher, but does it always teach us the truth? There is one inescapable truth that we all have to deal with. We have to decide what we believe to be true. We have to make up our minds that we will either believe what Jesus says or we will believe what we (and most of the people around us) believe to be true. Will we believe what God says, or will we believe what we experience? The ultimate test of faith is that we accept what God says independent of what we've always believed, what the circumstances are, and what experience has taught us. When David faced Goliath he could have listened to what every one else was saying. King Saul emphatically told David that he would not be able to defeat Goliath. David's brother told him that he was just being proud and that he should go back to herding sheep and leave the fighting to the soldiers (my paraphrase :-). If David had listened to them, he would never have fought Goliath and he probably never would have become king. The simple answer to the question about God's will is: God's will is to glorify His Son and Himself by doing what we ask. It's that simple. So what is it that you want most in life? Do you know what you want to ask God to do for you? In an upcoming article I'll talk about what it means to ask God for what we want. Until next time, Rob |
