Yesterday a friend and I had tickets to the Twins game. The game was to start at 7 pm. The rain was forcasted to come through between 4 and 6 pm. I didn’t want to be guilty of not bringing my requests before God, so I again commanded that the weather behave itself for my outing. Yes, I used the same amount of faith that I had used on Sunday.
However, this time, God decided that I was not acting in His will, and saw fit to allow it to really pour (for Minnesota – nothing like what I have experienced in Florida, though!) from 5:30 pm until, well, I don’t know exactly when it ended. The game was delayed until 8 pm, and then postponed to a date TBD in August. My friend and I hiked through the downpour to the Rock Bottom Brewery, a local restaurant I would highly recommend. I guess their alcohol is amazing, though I wouldn’t know. But their food is wonderful. My friend and I shared some scrumptious lobster and shrimp mac and cheese, then washed that down with a mocha sundae that I wouldn’t have minded having more of, despite the fact that my stomach was near bursting (we had already had some food at the ball park before the game had been called). We found the precipitation quite light when we left for home at 10: 30 pm; it had stopped by the time I reached my door 30 minutes later.
So why did God answer my prayer on Sunday but not on Tuesday? It was the same prayer, prayed in the same way. The Bible says God will grant me anything that I ask in Jesus name, right? Well, here’s the caveat that many of us miss. “In Jesus name,” does not simply mean that we say, “in Jesus name,” and mean it. It means that we are praying something that Jesus agrees with, something that is absolutely in God’s will. For instance, if an official in a kingdom acts in the name of the king, they are doing something that the king has already said they could do, something that he agrees with.
In other words, when I prayed about the weather on Sunday, it was something that God agreed with, so he allowed my words to be fulfilled. When I prayed on Tuesday, is was not something he agreed with, so my words were not fulfilled. Quite frankly, I was being lazy on Tuesday. I should have first prayed, asking God what his will for the weather was, before wasting my time just praying for what I wanted.
Jesus’ prayers were always answered because He only prayed for what he already knew God wanted. If we want our prayers to be answered, we need to do the same thing – ask God what His will is, before we start blabbing 🙂
"Most Likely to Succeed" 