We now come to one of the most important questions we can ask. Very much in our life it depends on the answer we give. Let's not try to avoid the question, but let's consider it with sincerity and frankness. Answer, God always the sentence?
Naturally, we all grant that you answer the prayer. But, always answer the true prayer! Some calls prayers, do not answer them, because He does not listen. When his people were in rebellion, he said: "When you multiply the prayer,
I will not hear. »(Isaiah 1: 15)
But a child of God must wait for an answer to prayer. God wants to answer every prayer, and there is no true prayer that ceases to have effect in heaven.
And yet, this wonderful declaration of St. Paul "Everything is yours, and you of Christ" (1 Corinthians 3:21, 22) seems tragically false to many Christians. And it is not. Everything is ours, but we often do not possess our possessions.
The owners of Mount Morgan in Queensland (Australia) worked assiduously on the infertile slopes of the mountain for years, taking only enough to drag a miserable life, not knowing that under their feet was one of the richest gold mines in the world. world. There was wealth, not dreamed, neither imagined nor possessed. It was "his" and it was not his.
Christianity knows that there are riches in God, in glory in Jesus Christ, but he does not know how to obtain them.
Now, our Lord tells us that we can have them if we ask them. May He give us judgment in matters concerning prayer! When we say that there is no true prayer that is not answered, we do not mean that God gives without fail all that
it is asked. Has there been any father so unwise that he treated his son like that? We do not give the child a red-hot iron because we know it would burn, no matter how much he asks for it. Or, nobody should give a child too much money.
What would happen if God gave us everything we asked? Soon we would be directing the world and He would have to contemplate it. And without a doubt it is evident that we are not capable.
In addition, this would be an impossibility, because there would be many who, simultaneously, would claim the position of director. God answers the prayer, sometimes with a "YES", sometimes with a "No", sometimes it is a "Wait", because it may be that his plans are to give us a greater blessing than the one we ask for, and that it affects other lives besides ours.
God's answer is sometimes "No". But this is not necessarily proof that there is known or hidden sin in the life of the beggar, although there is the possibility that there is unknown sin.
He said "NO" to Paul at times (2 Corinthians 12: 8, 9). Many times the denial is due to our ignorance or selfishness in the request. "For what we ought to pray for, we do not know" (Romans 8:26). This was what was wrong in the request of the mother of the sons of Zebedee. He went and worshiped Jesus and asked for something. He answered immediately: "You do not know what you ask. "(Matthew 20:22.) Elijah, the great man of prayer, also received a" No "in response. But when he was caught up to glory in a chariot of fire, he did not regret that God had said "No," when he cried out to God: "Oh, Lord, take my life away."
God's answer is sometimes "Wait." It may delay the answer because we are not yet ready to receive the gift we desire, like Jacob when he struggled. Are not our prayers many times like that? Are we really willing to "drink the glass", to pay the price of the answer to prayer? Sometimes He delays so that the answer may result in greater glory for Him.
As you look back and compare your own sincere and fervent prayers, with poor and unworthy service, and lack of true spirituality, you see how impossible it would have been for God to grant those very things you wanted to give. Sometimes how to ask God to pour the ocean of his love into a heart like a thimble. And yet, how much God yearns we bless with every kind of spiritual blessing! The Savior exclaims again and again: «How many times I wanted to gather your children ... but you did not want! "(Matthew 23:37) The saddest thing of all is that we often ask and do not receive because we are unworthy of it, and then we complain because God does not answer our prayers. The Lord Jesus declares that God gives his Holy Spirit - which teaches us to pray - in the same way that a father gives good gifts to his children. But there is no gift that is "good" if the child is not ripe to receive that gift. God never gives us anything that we can not, or do not want to use for his glory (I do not mean talents, because we could abuse them or "bury them")
spiritual gifts).
Have we seen a father give a child a knife because he has asked for it and because he expects the child to grow will use the knife and will be useful?
S Father says: "Expect you to be older, or wiser, or better, or stronger." Well, our heavenly Father also sometimes tells us "Wait." In our ignorance and in our blindness many times we say Precisely for your love you deny us what You see would cause us harm. As much as we do not like it, you do us a favor!
We can be assured that God never gives us today the gifts that he must give us tomorrow. It is not out of ill will on your part. Its resources are infinite and its paths inscrutable.
Can we, as a conclusion, give the testimony of two people who have proven that God can be trusted? Sir H. M. Stanley, the great explorer, wrote: "I am not going to be the one to say that prayers are ineffective. When I have prayed with fervor there has been an answer. When I asked for light to guide those who followed me prudently in the midst of the dangers they were in, a ray of light has come to my bewildered mind, and a path has been opened that has led to liberation. We can know when the prayer has been answered, by the warmth of the inner contentment that fills one who has presented his cause to God, or when standing up. I have evidence, myself, that
there are answers to prayer. »
Mary Slessor, whose life in West Africa has been narrated in a story that has moved us all (The White Queen of Okayoug - mission biography, published in Spanish by CLIE) was asked once what prayer meant to her. He answered:
"My life is a record of answered prayers, which had been made, done day by day, hour by hour, asking for physical health, rest for the mind, direction received wonderfully to avoid dangers and errors, so that enmity against the gospel, asking for food that was provided exactly when it was needed, for all that has constituted my life and my poor service. I can bear witness with full reverence and amazement, that I believe in God's response to prayer. I know that God answers prayer!