“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.”
—Philippians 4:6
God wants us to pray because as we commune with God and let our requests be known to God it helps us remain strong in our faith. However, a lot of people get disillusioned because they don’t think God answers their prayers. God really does answer our prayers. Really what’s happening is that those prayers aren’t answered in the manner that we expect.
Sometimes God answers our prayers with saying “no.” Sometimes God says “no” because God is saying he is not going to get involved in something we think is important. In reality, God should remain neutral for some prayers as in our “Super Bowl” prayers. God answers our prayers but not always to our liking or expectations.
We should pray and we should take our requests and our petitions before the Lord, but we should be careful to not dictate to God what God’s answer to those prayers will be. Simply by praying we should not assume that God’s answer will match our desires. We need to understand that God has a perspective that is much more comprehensive than any perspective we could possibly have. So we must trust God’s answer, whatever it might be, to be the best answer because God possesses more knowledge and wisdom than we could ever hope to have.
This week we will examine how prayer helps us stand strong. To do that we will look at STRONG as an acronym for the some of the amazing things that we can accomplish through prayer.
