Prayers Answered

Take time this week to sit down with a paper and pencil or at a computer terminal uninterrupted for at least twenty minutes. Identify one specific area of life or one need that you have been praying about consistently.

I have been praying about how I can best serve God with my gifts and talents in my current setting.

Write out two prayers focused on this area of need or concern.

First, write out a safe, polite, cautious prayer. Play it close to the vest and don't get too passionate. Don't be too expectant and don’t expect God to be very responsive or extravagant.

Heavenly Father, please guide me in the direction you wish for me to go. I am so lost and confused and unhappy. I am unfulfilled and desperate for something to throw myself into. I need something to so consume me that it doesn’t matter what others think. Please put something on my plate that makes sense and fits into my character. Amen.

Second, write a prayer that reflects the attitude Walter Wink suggests in this chapter. Be bold, fearless, and expectant. Ask in a way that takes you beyond your own comfort zone and ask in anticipation.

Most gracious Father, have mercy on your poor child. I want to serve you abundantly. I don’t want there to be anything that I’m not allowed to do to. Everything that fulfills me and brings me joy that has been given as a gift to me from you, I want to use for you. I am not asking to be the best and I know it is not for me to be adored. All adoration belongs to you. But if I can do it, I want to do it for you. And if it can lead others to You in a new way. I wish Your will to be done. If I am to write, help me to find the way to do it. Give me inspiration so that I cannot help but sit to write it down. Encourage me. Send encouragement. If I am to sing, please send me – already got it. If I cry this much because I want to sing, I must sing. Then give me the courage to ask. And give me the bravery to take what comes with it. You are the Creator. The first and only true Creator and you have made me in your image. I am a creator and artist and I want to reflect your Divine Beauty. Please, help me to be satisfied with my character and my desires. Help me to be content with what I am. And please continue to send all of the beautiful people my why. I am finally beginning to love your ultimate handiwork. Thank you for giving me the open eyes and searching nature to find those connections that I was missing. Amen.

After you are done writing both prayers, read each one out loud and ask yourself which of these prayers most reflects what God wants to hear from his children.

The first prayer was a chore. The second prayer came from the heart. God answered me during the second prayer. The second prayer was more of a conversation with someone rather than a wish list to be sent to the North Pole. The first was a prayer to be put in an envelope, sent, but no expectation for a response. The second didn’t even need to be written. God was there all along. In it with it through it guiding it. The Holy Spirit was intervening on my behalf.

Identify what you can learn about prayer and how these lessons should impact your prayers.

God is ALWAYS there. God is ALWAYS there. God is ALWAYS there. He cares about me. He loves me. He has plans for me. They are plans for good and not for evil. If I want to do something, there is a reason. I was made to want to do these things. Not everyone is like me. The very thing I might be begging to do, might turn others off or stop them dead in their tracks. I have to stop feeling as though I’m nothing special. He made me this way. I will make Him joyful to allow myself to do that which I was actually made to do. My abstention makes me miserable and would be against His will. It is unnecessary punishment.

What does all that have to do with prayer? It doesn’t matter so much the activity. It’s the outcome that matters. We can talk all day about prayer. But we must pray. The answers we receive are the goal not the ability to pray well …

Give thanks to the Lord with the lyre;
make melody to him with the harp of ten strings!
Sing to him a new song;
play skillfully on the strings, with loud shouts.

Psalm 33:2-3 (ESV)