‘Now, our God, hear the prayers and petitions of your servant. For your sake, Lord, look with favour on your desolate sanctuary.’ (v17) Daniel 9:17–18
Reminding God to listen to our prayer requests is more a question of reassuring ourselves, because God has invited us to pray and promised to receive and respond. Yet, there’s often a certain uncertainty within the human heart that God actually listens to our prayers.
One reason is the apparent lack of answers to our specific requests. In this there remains a great mystery, but it is through the heat of this mysterious storm that God is revealed.
Caring for my wife, Katey, I certainly called out for healing. I meant physical healing. This was not to be.
However, as we persevered would either of us eventually have had it any other way? The short answer is no. For God’s dealings with us were sweet in the very horrors of our experience and we gladly declared, ‘It is well, it is well with my soul!’
I can no longer consult Katey since her death. But what God did in my life was truly amazing and I would be a fraction of the person I am today without the bitterness of that storm. God asks us to pray. Will we comply?
Prayer is to secure God’s purposes, many of which remain obscured to my human understanding. I pray, as I live, by faith not by sight. Our prayers are always in accord with Jesus’ own: ‘not my will, but yours be done’ (Luke 22:42).
Related Scripture to Consider: Jer. 33:1–3; Luke 22:39–46; 1 John 5:1–15; Psa. 139.
An Action to Take: It’s hardest trusting God when personal requests are unanswered. But remember that you have surrendered your life to God, who is working His eternal purpose out through your life.
A Prayer to Make: ‘Lord, “When peace like a river, attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot, God teach me to say, it is well, it is well, with my soul.” Amen.’
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