I am laughing right now. As if I could possibly answer anything involving such an incredibly advanced precept of prayer in the first place!
I can see the Lord nodding in agreement right now, relieved that I do not suppose that I can.
What I heard that I mentioned to you was an astoundingly good, crystal clear teaching only ON THE WORD OF GOD taken from Romans regarding prayer. Frankly, I don't remember EVER reading Romans regarding prayer, and stay away from Romans.
Now, whatever dear brother Adrian Rogers was saying, it was all so good and so overwhelmingly right that I sort of just let it all go by me, and I have ordered the tape. All that I actually got straight that I can pass on is that WHAT IF a prayer is not answered.
Does this ever happen? (Duh.)
So, do we get mad? Do we get our feelings hurt? Do we decide we will pray no more? Do we wish we had never heard of prayer and go back to honing our pool game? Of course prayer will sometimes not be honored, and Adrian was just pulling from the Bible certain Truths as to WHY.
I found it very reassuring, and simply encouraged me to want to pray even more.
What I have realized for years and years through my human understand and my human spirit, not necessarily any kind of revelation of any kind, but just makes pure sense is that under free will God CANNOT come in and fix things. But He CAN AND DOES IF WE PRAY THAT HE PLEASE DO SOMETHING.
That's all in the Word, and it's over and over I'll bet, if we went looking for it.
But, "please Lord, bless this mess". What if HE DOESN"T FEEL LIKE PATCHING UP THE MESS? That's a toughy. What if there's a reason that fixing it up will just lead to something worse? To me that is possible, therefore I always pray what I think would be the best thing, but also pray that God's exact will be done in this matter.
You know that I didn't want those buffalo shot down like rabid dogs because they were a little hungrey and were just walking around Montana trying to find some grass to eat. I had to assume the Lord would also have no problem with that. And most certainly that our Lord would prevent the sickening depression that would follow if those people--even if they were a little pagan in their stupidity--who knows--mostly fairly young and with nothing better to do, probably, ran out there to protect some poor beasts and had to watch them shot down.
That's why I could boldly pray for such a situation that might not bother someone else. Mainly because it just was not something that God would not also want to see happen--that some beautiful beasts would be able to eat some of God's grass and no one would shoot them and cause people who need more of Jesus to fall into horrible depression and go look for drugs or booze.
So, don't we all attack evil, disease, need, etc., just like that?
Assuming that whatever bothers or depresses us or makes us feel horrible that it is happening certainly effects God in the same way?
On the other hand, there are just things that we pray for that are not going to have a good result, I believe. These prayers may still be answered, then again they might not, and the answer is there in the Word.
I ordered this tape so I could zero in on these things.
I'm sure none of this answered the question you were asking, and I would imagine if I ever said ANYTHING which would seemed to indicate that I felt you weren't supposed to pray earnestly for each and every single prayer anyone brings to the prayer thread which I believe our Lord had you create for the purpose of answering prayers in a truly divine manner, then I would be a liar and someone to never listen to under any circumstances.
But, this teaching, slow and peaceable, from Romans was a pure joy and good enough that I felt I needed the tape to get it all right and learn from it.
Whatever there is to be learned, all I know is that the praying person has nothing whatsoever in the world to do with the answered prayer, except maybe that the praying person had the dogged determination and faith to stand on the Word rather than worry about what men might think if the prayer was not answered. Maybe that's the secret, just not caring and standing on the Word no matter what.
Maybe that is the secret of the whole Path. Standing on the Word no matter what, whether blindingly Spirit-Filled or just hanging on to our faith by the last digits of our fingers sometimes, lest we fall from the ledge into utter oblivion. I think both extremes of the Path are wonderful, and seem to be quite common to all, from the very beginning, so I find it quite exciting that most everything we do probably is part of the Path, and probably quite common to all men/women, in one way or another, and this is all in scripture also. |
