Jan 14 • *SPIRITUALITY
UNANSERED PRAYERS...
When I was a young man, I would pray and ask God for certain favors. Like most people, I used prayer as a celestial wishing well and generally asked for very specific outcomes. More often than not, I'd get the result I desired and immediately forget about God.
As I got older, the complexity and seriousness of my prayers intensified. More and more, I asked that my will be done, and protection be given to me throughout whatever dangerous, stupid idea I had taken up. Remarkably, I would come out the other side of danger, almost unscathed apart from the fear having to face the music. And still, I learned nothing.
During the most trying time of my life, I was on the run from police and probation. Years of bad decisions had culminated in a hole that there was no talking my way out of. I was back in jail, facing 99 years in prison, again! All the letters, pleas and promises fell on deaf ears. Even I had come to the realization that I was lying...to everyone. At that moment, I stopped asking for what I wanted and asked for His will be manifested in my life.
Immediately, things began to happen in my life that I did not want, AT ALL! Almost as quickly, I resorted back to asking for things I wanted in life. The seal was already broken. None of those prayers were answered and I would eventually turn my back on God and faith, altogether. I spent the next few years studying every other religion as if to make my God jealous. Because my prayers weren't answered to my liking, I went on a campaign to destroy the faith of any Christian I encountered.
This would continue for over a decade. I gladly served the darkness in my actions, while doing the devil's work. I was rewarded for my service and my "success" blinded me to the truths that I was missing. I had turned my back on God for not giving me what I wanted. Little did I know the necessity of those denials. It wasn't until I was blessed with the vision to see what I had been given in place of what I so desperately begged Him for that I finally understood the power of "unanswered prayer."
When we choose to walk in faith, that means that we surrender our will to God in complete confidence that He will guide our path, no matter how rocky it may seem. This is easy to do when the waters are calm and times are good. But calm seas never made a strong sailor, nor does an easy life create a strong man. Many times, unanswered prayers are simply God telling us "Not yet..." or even more difficult, "Not THAT!" Instead of truly having faith, like petulant children, we throw a fit and become indignant with God.
The beauty of my Lord & Savior is: He answered my prayer, when I begged to jump back into the fire, allowing me to burn myself as many times as was needed to learn the lesson. But, just as a good father will, when I asked him for his help and to take the wheel of my life, he didn't allow me to drive myself back into the fire. In those moments, no matter how much I cried, begged and pleaded for it to be such, He didn't gift me the destruction I had come to know. Instead, he ignored those cries and delivered to me one of the most amazing lives I could have imagined.
Sometimes, God's greatest gifts are the prayers He DOESN'T answer...
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UNANSERED PRAYERS...
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