No 4

(What Good Does It Do To Pray?)

This question goes a little further that our first question: Why Pray? Does talking to God really change things or does it just change us? The Lord welcomes our prayers and He always answers them; of course, the answers we get may not necessarily be the ones we want but our loving Heavenly Father knows what is best for us. When He answers our prayers, there are three possibilities; they are YES NO WAIT. What if nothing happens? I read a story once about a Christian man who witnessed all his life to his best friend and his witnessing was accompanied by fervent prayer to the Lord. His friend was very stubborn and refused to repent of his sins to be saved. The Christian died and, at his funeral, his best friend bowed his head in humility and accepted Jesus Christ as his personal Saviour which gives much credence to the verse in James 5:16b “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.” We cannot know for sure if the Lord will give us everything we want but we do know that He will give us everything we need; we are His children. In Psalms 37:4, the Bible says “Delight thyself also in the LORD; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.” The Lord knows the desires of our hearts, He created us! All we have to do is delight ourselves in Him and we will lack nothing; delighting ourselves in Him is another way of stating obey the Lord and His Word. Obedience is the key!!

Here is another story about five men who were trapped in a mine and for 53 hours they were in total darkness. Do you know what they were doing all that time? Singing hymns and praying!! They prayed that the Lord would deliver them from their underground prison; they didn’t know if He would save them, they just prayed. They heard the sound of picks and shovels; they knew that He had set them free. But in case that they had died, they wrote on their hardhats the following words: “If we’re dead when you find us, we’re all saved”. They trusted God to answer their prayers in whichever way would bring Him the most glory.