Dear Gregor, if at the end of each trial the person prayed for is closer to God, then the prayer was answered. If not, we were obedient to pray. But again, my little ritual of reciting prayers is not capable of fixing a cut finger. To fix a cut finger, I would have to personally wash it out and then bandage it, and that's about all I could personally do for that cut finger.
That's why prayer is such a sacred activity. It requires that God intercede and do something specifically. And even when He does, half the time He still doesn't get the glory as the mind can hardly contain the miracle.
The truth is I don't pray for every single thing unless God gives me some urging to pray for it. But I back all prayers, whether or not I put them in words. I believe all matters brought here should be held up for a miracle.
My relationship with God began with me at 8 years old when I desperately missed a long lost hampster. I was still praying for the hamster weeks later. I told God if he gave me back my hampster, I would go to Sunday School every week. Within a few minutes of that I heard my father say to my mother in the most ASTOUNDED TONE, "I can't believe it, here's the blank blank hampster." The hampster was skin and bones and could hardly walk, yet he emerged from under the dresser in their room.
True story. If I must pray for a hampster sometime, I will pray with great fervency. |
