Isn't it interesting?? Much that perplexes us in our Christian experience is but the answer to our prayers... I can only smile thinking about it all...and the times when I've asked "Why" and God has softly replied, "But Mel, that's what you prayed for! I am only answering your prayers!"
Soak in the depth of one author's insights below. It is profound!
- We pray for patience, and our Father sends those who tax us to the utmost; for "tribulation worketh patience."
- We pray for submission, and God sends sufferings; for "we learn obediently by the things we suffer."
- We pray for unselfishness, and God gives us opportunities to sacrifice ourselves by thinking on the things of others, and by laying down our lives for the brethren.
- We pray for strength and humility, and some messenger of Satan torments us until we lie in the dust crying for its removal.
- We pray, "Lord increase our faith," and money takes wings; or the children are alarmingly ill; or a servant comes who is careless, extravagant, untidy or slow, or some hitherto unknown trial calls for an increase of faith along a line where we have not needed to exercise much faith before.
- We pray for the Lamb-like life, and are given a portion of lowly service, or we are injured and must seek no redress; for "He was led as a lamb to the slaughter...and opened not his mouth."
- We pray for gentleness, and there comes a perfect storm of temptation to harshness and irritability.
- We pray for quietness, and every nerve is strung to the utmost tension, so that looking to Him we may learn that when He giveth quietness, no one can make trouble.
- We pray for love, and God sends peculiar suffering and puts us with apparently unlovely people, and lets them say things which rasp the nerves and lacerate the heart; for love suffereth long and is kind, love is not impolite, love is not provoked. Love beareth all things, believeth, hopeth and endureth. Love never faileth.
- We pray for likeness to Jesus, and the answer is, "I have chosen thee in the furnance of affliction." "Can thine heart endure, or can thine hands be strong."
The way to peace and victory is to accept every circumstance, every trial, straight from the hand of a loving Father; and to live up in the heavenly places, above the clouds, in the very presence of the throne, and to look down from the glory upon our environment as lovingly and divinely appointed.
-Author Unknown-
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