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I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, Move from here to there and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you. (Matthew 17:20)
During my high school years, God chose to draw my heart closer to His through answering my prayers immediately and sometimes miraculously. Still intrigued with what I had learned as a young child about how God answered the prayers of men like George Muller, I decided to try his tactic of praying for something and then looking for the answer expecting to see it. I realized, of course, that God would only grant requests which were good for me and in accordance with His will, but I also believed that He desired to work for His children through answering their prayers.
If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him! Matthew 7:11
I started off by praying for little things – like that I would find a missing book, or for resolution when my dad was struggling to fix a broken appliance. I would pray immediately when an unfortunate situation arose, and almost 100% of the time God would do what I asked of Him right away. I was thrilled – especially in instances involving other people such as when my dad was frustrated with something.
Another instance that stands out in my memory was when I was outside with my little brother searching for our lost cat. I remember looking all over our property to no avail, and then telling David that we should stop and pray for God’s help. And I kid you not, when we opened our eyes from that prayer the cat was directly in front of us walking toward us. That sort of things actually happened quite often.
This victory in my prayer life led me to pray more often. I realized that if I wasn’t careful, however, I would end up praying only for selfish things. So I would make a point of thanking God for beautiful weather, or praising Him for this or that. Every once in a while God chose not to grant me what I requested immediately, and I recognized that I needed to accept that response, move on, and assume that what I wanted wasn’t good for me at that time. When I was lonely or discouraged, I would spend time with Him (often on our family swing set outside) talking with Him and looking forward to the time I would get to see Him face to face. I was delighted with the tangible evidence of the personal relationship that I was forming with my divine Pursuer.
Eventually I got a little bolder with my prayers. When I was fourteen years old, our family had become a family of seven, and our family vehicle was quite cramped whenever we went anywhere as a family. So, despite the fact that my parents had no plans of purchasing another vehicle any time soon, I began to pray that we would be able to get a larger car.
Two weeks later, as we were going somewhere as a family, our car began to eject steam of some kind. We were barely able to pull into a gas station before it stopped working entirely. Mechanics who worked at the station informed us a couple days later that it would not be worth fixing. My parents began scouting for another vehicle and before long we had a larger, much more comfortable van. God had answered my prayer again.
The most exciting instance of answer to prayer, however, occurred a few years later. I’ll write about that next time!
Do you believe that God desires to grant you things for your good? Do you involve Him in the small things as well as the large?
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