Faith and prayer!

One basic reason most of us christians don’t get answers to our prayers is our lack of understanding of faith in relation to God’s will. We often assumed it’s just about praying to God and believing He’ll do whatever we ask of Him. We ignorantly assume God is a rubber stamp. Be a child of God, go to Him with your request, exercise your faith and request granted. And when our prayers go unanswered, we start to wonder what could have gone wrong.

Well, the missing link is usually in our inability to discern God’s will for that situation. I told a friend yesterday that “you cannot exercise faith for what is not God’s will for your life.” Faith is first about knowing God’s will for your situation. The Bible says in James 4:3 that “you ask, and receive not, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it upon your lusts.” When your request is not in line with God’s will, your faith becomes an exercise in futility. Apostle Paul’s prayer for the Colossians is a pointer to the significance of knowing God’s will. In verse 9 of the first chapter of his letter to them, he wrote “for this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that you might be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding.” He fully understood that even inspite of their zeal, the only way they can get results whenever they go on their knees is to pray God’s will and not just praying to satisfy their selfish desires or justify some wrong motives.

I do tell people that God has plans for each and everyone of us. He created us all for His pleasure and the only way we can give Him that deserved pleasure is to toe His path for our lives. Making His will the center of our universe would give Him great pleasure and letting it guide us and our prayers would certainly make our lives stress-free too!