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Having Faith To Pray
Heb. 11:6 ... But without faith it is impossible to please HIM: for he that cometh to God must believe that HE is, and that HE is a rewarder of them that diligently seek HIM.
To have faith to pray, it might be helpful to focus on the following instruction:
Phil. 4:6-7 ... Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
Often when there is a problem, we, as humans, want to pick up the phone and tell other humans our problem. The person we talk with might care about us and our problem. But that person may not be able to help us with the problem.
(We end up dumping our problem on others this way as we try to make them our "god".)
Instead, why don't we, who profess to know God, pray?
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A woman in our little church group moved from Houston to Lubbock, TX, where I live. She called me one day asking me if I would go with her to hunt a light fixture which she could put above her dining room table. I told her I would meet her at the home design store.
As I drove to the store, I prayed: Please, God, help us find the right fixture ... quickly ... so it won't take a lot of effort.
The minute we stepped inside the building, I saw the fixture that would work. I let her look around the store before I spoke. Then she bought the fixture.
Later I asked her if she prayed before going to look for the fixture.
She replied: "No ... I knew you would."
My faith is in God and her faith was in me.
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This same woman told me something I have no memory of. When she lived in Houston, she was very concerned that her elderly father would be a burden on her. She called me and asked me to pray.
(I'm sure she did but I don't remember this and it is hard for me to imagine today that I would pray over such a thing but I was more fleshly then, I think.)
She said I prayed that her dad not be a burden to her and the next week or so he died.
Again, her faith was in me.
This eventually led to my having to stay away from her, plus she is very twisted and grieves me when she tries to talk, especially if she talks about religious things.
I can't stand it.
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If we walk "in the light" we have fellowship one with another ... (I Jn. 1) ... but if our light is darkness, how great is that darkness, says Jesus ... the godly can't stand the darkness. If godly tried to walk with them in darkness, then godly would turn dark.
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Pam Padgett, a person in our little church group, had a very serious problem when she was in college. She talked with God about the problem and she made a request to God. God resolved her problem but God did not resolve the problem the way she requested. God had a better way to take care of the problem.
Here is the story:
Pam says ... Many years ago when I first started going to college God showed Himself strong on my behalf. My older sister had been at college two years when I started attending the same school. She dated a man who was a member of a fraternity, and she had become a member of the fraternity's "women's auxiliary", assisting with fraternity social functions. She was very excited for me to join the social circles she was in, and especially wanted me to meet members of the fraternity.
The first week of school my sister invited me to go to a student bar where many of the fraternity guys gathered on Thursday nights. I went, but found what was going on there to be so bad (lewdness, drunkenness) that I was unable to stay and walked back to the dormitory.
A week or so later my sister asked if I'd go to an outdoor luau with one of the freshmen pledges at the fraternity. The luau site was about 20 miles away near a river, and there would be a campfire. The setting was very appealing to me, plus I was excited about having a date, and I agreed to go.
Then, a few days before the luau, my sister told me that arrangements had been made for one of the other fraternity guys to take me to the luau because my date would be spending the day at the luau site building a hut for us ... a young man I had never even met was building a hut "for us"!
Suddenly the reality of this luau became very clear to me. This was not going to be people sitting around a campfire roasting marshmallows. The lewdness and drunkenness I had seen at the student bar was probably mild compared to what would be going on at this luau ... and I wouldn't be able to walk home.
I told my sister that I couldn't go along with this and did not want to go, but she kept insisting that it was too late for me to back out, that it was too late for this guy to find another date.
I turned very strongly to God, asking Him to somehow get me out of this situation.
There seemed no way out.
At one point I asked God to let me have appendicitis, preferring to be in a hospital having surgery than to go to this luau.
The morning of the luau I woke up and checked to see if I might have any pain that would indicate appendicitis, and was disappointed that I felt fine.
I kept praying for God to somehow work this out. Time was really running out! When I looked outside, it was raining a little, but not much. However, the rain became heavier and heavier as the day went on.
Around 2 pm I received a call from the fraternity guy who planned to take me to the luau site. He told me how sorry he was to have to tell me this, but the luau had to be cancelled.
The luau site had been totally flooded, washing away all the huts that had been built, which would include the hut my date had built for us.
He told me how long the luau had been held at this same site (many years) and, although there had been rain at times in the past, nothing like this had ever happened before, flooding and causing the luau to be cancelled.
I rejoiced, knowing that God had delivered me.
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