The current audio book playing in my car is Phillip Yancey’s Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? It’s an excellent read. Yancey is very candid about his own prayer failures and about his own questions about the practice of prayer. He shares some wonderful insights into what the Bible says about prayer. Excellent book. I recommend it.
The Week 1, Day 4, lesson of Living Beyond Yourself is about "believing God." Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. I am made righteous through faith in Christ, not by any work I may do or wonderful ministry I may accomplish. The lesson caused me to ponder how I believe God. (Not believe "in" God, but just believe Him.)
A few years ago, I received in prayer what I believed was a promise
from God regarding a particular situation in my family. I clung to that
promise through many difficult times, but in the end, the situation
unraveled differently than what I expected or wanted. So did I hear Him wrong? Or
did God fail to come through with His promise? Or was the promise as He said and He kept it but I just didn’t understand how it would play out? Has He already delivered on that promise and I just can’t see it?
Only the second of those self-posed questions is impossible. I know that I know that I know that when God makes a promise, He keeps it. The Messiah was promised hundreds of years before He came. But when He came, He didn’t look like the promise to most who saw Him in His days on earth and thus many missed the answer. So it often is with me. God answers my prayers but in ways I hadn’t conceived.
The mysteries of God are many. I will continue to pray. I will continue to ask. I will continue to believe.
In the grip of His grace,
Robin
