The next time you pray, stop and listen. Can you hear the roar of a bulldozer, the shouting of orders? Can you smell fresh-sawn wood, see hard-hats bobbing busily about between blueprints and buildings in progress?
If not, maybe it’s time to re-read 1 John 5:14-15: “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us – whatever we ask – we know that we have what we asked of Him.”
We know that we have what we ask for. Yes, the person of faith, praying according to His will, believes that God will respond. When we present our need in faith, He goes to work beyond what is seen, developing His best answer.
Of course, we don’t know exactly what or how to pray, but God’s Word assures us that “the Holy Spirit comes to our aid and bears us up in our weakness; for we do not know what prayer to offer nor how to offer it worthily as we ought, but the Spirit Himself goes to meet our supplication” (Rom. 8:26, AMPC). He presents our “reinterpreted” request to the Father in a way that harmonizes with His will and our need, and pleads on our behalf “with unspeakable yearnings and groanings too deep for utterance.”
The Father hears. And in response, blueprints are laid out, sub-contractors are lined up, workers (seen and unseen) are hired and put to work. Massive kingdom machinery is crawling all over the objects of our request, the terrain of our difficulty. God keeps working even as we dwell in the night of spiritual blindness, in the foggy drizzle of doubt.
In other words, prayer is a busy activity. Although we may see no action and detect nothing out of the ordinary, God is at work. Our prayers, prayed in faith and according to His will, are being answered.
What are you praying for these days? Do you know God is hearing your requests? You can be assured that He is at work answering you. His answer may not be what you envisioned when you initially prayed, and you might be disappointed at first. But then, His answer may far exceed your expectations because you prayed in faith and trusted God to work beyond what is seen.
