Some time ago Sharon Robbins asked me if I would contribute a regular column with the theme of prayer, and she came up with the title “When We Pray”. I happily agreed and will try my best to contribute articles that will help all of us when we pray. By no means am I an expert on this subject and will basically be writing based on personal experience and what I have learned about prayer growing up in the Catholic Church as well as books such as Betty’s. Remember that it doesn’t matter what religion you are when you pray because God loves us all unconditionally regardless of religion, but what does matter is your heart’s intention and that you ask for God’s will to be done.
I have learned that when we pray it is important for us to remember to ask God that His will be done and then have faith that He will answer our prayers according to His will. Many times we believe that God doesn’t hear our prayers or that He doesn’t answer them because we don’t get what we asked for, but God does hear our prayers and He does answer them. It’s just that sometimes He answers them in ways we do not recognize, or sometimes His answer is simply different than what we wanted because He knows what is best for us.
A simple example of this is when you go on a job interview and pray you get the job, and when you don’t get the job you think your prayer wasn’t answered, but God may have a better job in mind for you that you end up getting later on. He answered your prayer of getting a job and gave you a better one than you first prayed for.
In my life I have had so many prayers answered, and I wish I could share all of them with you, but I will share an answered prayer that happened recently for my fiancée, Karmyn, and me. It isn’t anything earth shattering, but it is an example of God helping us out in normal daily life as He always does.
This year has been very busy for Karmyn and me because we were engaged on Valentine’s Day and have been preparing for our wedding since that time. This has included going to “evenings for the engaged” meetings through our church, organizing our wedding ceremony and reception, working with many vendors for the reception, working with our wedding coordinator, planning our honeymoon, and finding a place for us to live after we’re married.
We both agreed we would not live together until we were married, but of course we had to find a place beforehand. Our plan was for me to move in first and then she would move in after we were married. Basically we planned on one week where we would dedicate every day to finding a place that met our criteria such as location, rent amount, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, etc. We continually prayed that God would help us find a place that was right for us, and for one week we looked at about 15 to 20 different places.
I was starting to get discouraged because we were struggling to find a place we liked and time was running out. Karmyn repeatedly reminded me that we had to have faith and trust that God would provide for us, and we continually prayed that He would lead us to the place where He wanted us to live.
At the end of the week of searching it came down to two places. We were both torn between the two, and I prayed to God to show us which place of the two we should live. The answer I received was that I would be given a clear sign.
On the last day of searching we had one more place to look at that had just come up on the Internet, and when we saw it we knew it was perfect for us. Not only that, it was a very nice place and also had the lowest rent of all the places we had looked at during our week of searching.
Leave it to God to reward us on the end of the last day when we were just about to decide between two other places! I had thought we would be living in one of those other two places, and then we were shown a beautiful place at the very end that blew those two out of the water and at a lower cost. We were both so grateful and knew our prayers had been answered.
If you think back in your life, you will probably remember when prayers similar to this were answered for you when you showed faith but weren’t quite sure how they would be answered. They may not seem like miracles or may not even seem like that big of a deal to other people, but you know inside that God answered your prayer because you had faith it would happen. You will probably remember times when God answered your prayers differently than you expected, and maybe you were even disappointed at first, only to realize later He was answering your prayer differently because it was in your best interest.
When we pray, as tough as it is we must try our best to hand over our request to God, ask Him to answer it according to His will, and have faith that He will answer it. Sometimes the answer is not what we expect or may take longer than we would like, but we may be assured He will reward our faith. God will do this for us because He is happy to help us, wants us to be happy, and loves us unconditionally.
Betty says it best in the following quote from Embraced by the Light on pp. 104-105:
“Once our prayers of desire have been released, we need to let go of them and trust in the power of God to answer them. He knows our needs at all times and is simply waiting for an invitation to help us. He has all power to answer prayers, but he is bound by his own law and by our wills. We must invite his will to become our own. We must trust him. Once we have asked with sincere desire, doubting nothing, we will receive.”
May God answer all of your prayers.
