PRAYER Part 4 of 4
How Does God Answer Prayers?
YES.
NO.
Wait, or I have something better.
YES!
When Peter was in prison, a “prayer was being made earnestly to God for him by the church.”
Acts 12:5-17 (HCSB)
5 So Peter was kept in prison, but prayer was being made earnestly to God for him by the church.
6 On the night before Herod was to bring him out ⌊for execution⌋, Peter, bound with two chains, was sleeping between two soldiers, while the sentries in front of the door guarded the prison.7 Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared, and a light shone in the cell. Striking Peter on the side, he woke him up and said, “Quick, get up!” Then the chains fell off his wrists. 8 “Get dressed,” the angel told him, “and put on your sandals.” And he did so. “Wrap your cloak around you,” he told him, “and follow me.” 9 So he went out and followed, and he did not know that what took place through the angel was real, but thought he was seeing a vision.10 After they passed the first and second guard posts, they came to the iron gate that leads into the city, which opened to them by itself. They went outside and passed one street, and immediately the angel left him.
11 Then Peter came to himself and said, “Now I know for certain that the Lord has sent His angel and rescued me from Herod’s grasp and from all that the Jewish people expected.” 12 When he realized this, he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John Mark, where many had assembled and were praying. 13 He knocked at the door in the gateway, and a servant named Rhoda came to answer.14 She recognized Peter’s voice, and because of her joy, she did not open the gate but ran in and announced that Peter was standing at the gateway.
15 “You’re crazy!” they told her. But she kept insisting that it was true. Then they said, “It’s his angel!” 16 Peter, however, kept on knocking, and when they opened the door and saw him, they were astounded.
17 Motioning to them with his hand to be silent, he explained to them how the Lord had brought him out of the prison. “Report these things to James and the brothers,” he said. Then he departed and went to a different place.
NO!
Isn’t “No” an Answer?
Amy Carmichael
Just a tiny little child
Three years old,
And a mother with a heart
All of gold.
Often did that mother say,
Jesus hears us when we pray,
For He’s never far away
And He always answers.
Now, that tiny little child
Had brown eyes,
And she wanted blue instead
Like blue skies.
For her mother’s eyes were blue
Like forget-me-nots. She knew
All her mother said was true,
Jesus always answered.
So, she prayed for two blue eyes,
Said “Good night,”
Went to sleep in deep content
And delight.
Woke up early, climbed a chair
By a mirror. W
here, O where
Could the blue eyes be? Not there;
Jesus hadn’t answered.
Hadn’t answered her at all;
Never more
Could she pray; her eyes were brown
As before.
Did a little soft wind blow?
Came a whisper soft and low,
“Jesus answered. He said, No;
Isn’t No an answer?”
The above poem, written by Amy Carmichael, was based on an incident that actually did occur in her life when she was three. It turned out to be in the providence of God for her to have brown eyes.
She became a missionary to India in the late 1890s. At first her ministry was primarily evangelistic. But along the way she became aware that some parents in India sold their daughters to the temple, where they were used for immoral purposes.
God led one such child to her, and through a series of events and a sense of the Lord’s leading, Amy took the child in. Then, more stories of other girls (and later, boys) surfaced, and more opportunities to rescue and provide homes for these children arose.
Amy had to struggle with this because the Lord had seemed to be blessing her evangelistic work. Was it right to turn from that ministry to give herself to housing and raising children? She concluded that that was indeed God’s will for her life.
The ministry grew exponentially and eventually became a whole compound, with housing for children of all ages, the workers who took care of them, and even their own hospital.
As Amy went “undercover” to find details of these children, she would stain her arms with coffee and wear an Indian dress so that she could pass as an Indian woman and move freely in Indian society, where she never could have as an Irish missionary.
This she could not have done with blue eyes — her eyes would have given her away immediately. Neither she nor her mother could have ever known, all those years ago, the Lord’s purpose for her brown eyes, but the lesson of faith stayed with her all her life.
Sometimes I have to thank God for what we call “Unanswered Prayers”
Wait, or I have something better.
We have to trust the God who knows tomorrow, He knows what is best for us.
Sometimes there’s a spiritual battle like we have never seen, and the answer is delayed but right on time. As when Daniel “prayed for all of Israel because they had broken God’s law and turned away, and refused to obey You. The promised curse written in the law of Moses, the servant of God, has been poured out on us because we have sinned against Him.” Daniel 9:11
And an angel shows up;
Daniel 10:12-14 (HCSB)
…12 “Don’t be afraid, Daniel,” he said to me, “for from the first day that you purposed to understand and to humble yourself before your God, your prayers were heard. I have come because of your prayers.13 But the prince of the kingdom of Persia opposed me for 21 days. Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me after I had been left there with the kings of Persia. 14 Now I have come to help you understand what will happen to your people in the last days, for the vision refers to those days.” …
It took a while, but God gave him a prophetic answer, and God says;
Jeremiah 33:3 (NKJV)
3 ‘Call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know.’
“Answer you, and show” you will get an answer, and He will SHOW you things, great and mighty things, not GIVE you things.
As long as God can get the Glory, He will show and, at times, give us exactly what we need, and sometimes things we didn’t know we needed.
And again, and it is well worth repeating,
1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 (NKJV)
16 Rejoice always, 17 pray without ceasing, 18 in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
Pray without ceasing, Pray all the time.
In everything give thanks, Praise Him!
This is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. This is the WILL of God!!
