God Answers Prayers

Prayer changes things. It always amazes me. I never really ever used to take the time to write down all my prayer requests in my personal life. I figured I could always keep a mental list as God laid things on my heart. Since I've been using my new prayer journal, I've written down prayer requests with the date I began praying over each one. As each one is answered, I write down that date. The past couple days when I've opened up that page, I've just been in awe as to what has already been answered. All I can think is "Wow, God is amazing."

God is truely amazing. The other night I went to bed with a certain subject matter laid on my heart. I was so desperate for an answer. The next day, a friend came to me with the answer God had laid on her heart. An answer to my prayer.

When I think about prayer, I am reminded of something I learned from one of my Bible classes at Evangel with Smallwood (yeah, I actually learned something from his class believe it or not besides not reading things word for word off of his power points because I end up saying "epople" instead of "people" due to typos). He told me that God does not work on our timetable. It is so true. When I pray, I want immediate results. If I don't get that immediate response, then I'm disappointed or feel God did not listen. The truth is God does answer every prayer. The answer is either yes, no, or later. Sometimes the things we ask for, God plans to give us, only not as soon as we'd like. God sees the big picture and knows exactly when we need something.

I know I've mentioned this a thousand times, but I view life as a big jigsaw puzzle. God has the box with the picture and hands us each piece and tells us where to put it. Because we don't see the big picture, each piece makes no sense. Sure some pieces seem obvious where they go like the corner pieces. While others we have a good idea where they go like the side pieces. But most pieces fall somewhere in the middle. We look at each piece and do not understand where that goes in our life. Or we grab a piece from another puzzle that looks really good and like it belongs, but it really fits no where. We can shove and smash that piece all we want, but it never will be a perfect fit. We instead should just listen to God and take the pieces he gives us and put them where he wants us to put them. Only until we see the finished project (aka our life) will we see the reason for each piece.

All I have to say is God is amazing. He really does answer prayers, in his perfect timing, and in his perfect way. We will never understand exactly why he answers the way he does until we take a step back and see the big picture at the end of our lives.

Sarah Trusty, this blog is for you because apparently you were upset I hadn't blogged in a while. Here you go.