Psalm 40
1 I waited patiently for the LORD;
he turned to me and heard my cry
Waiting and patience are two words that the average American does not like to hear. We leave restaurants if service is not fast enough. We fire contractors if their work is not completed in the proper time. We buy and purchase services based on who can provide the quickest, fastest and most economical services to us. We live in a competitive society where businesses daily compete to provide their services to customers at faster pace than their competitors. Everyday someone is attempting to do something faster and quicker in our society.
But Yet God says to Wait on Him!
While the world is speeding up at a pace that yet is known to man, God is saying wait. God is not just saying slow down, but God is saying wait on him because it is what we learn in waiting on him that is the most important part of our life with God.
The reason most Christians do not like this scripture is because it seems to collide with other things that God tells us. He tells us that whatever we ask in his name that he will give us the desires of our heart. Mt 21:22, Mk 11:24, Jn 11:22, I Jn 5:15
There is no value in waiting.
Often we have been told to wait, but what value is there in waiting when God already knows my needs and he knows the timing of my needs. We have all heard words from the pulpits that say waiting produces patience. But if I have serious needs patience is not what I need. I literally need God to answer my prayers and I need the answers now. And God knows that even more than me..
Could it be that God has a greater desire than just answering our prayers?
Many of us see prayer as nothing more than a check list of needs that we feel that God wants to do for us and what he may want to do for others on our behalf. So at times it takes great discipline to make time to pray unless our needs are so great that they drive us to our knees – in that case we never have a hard time finding time.
John 17:3 Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.
The bible says over and over again that God wants to answer our prayers but he also says eternal life is knowing him. How does knowing him and our prayer life relate?
Could it be that we have only used prayers to meet our own selfish needs when God wants to use prayer as his avenue to get to know him. Could it be that God wants to use prayer as an opportunity to share his heart and his very soul with us? Could it be that God wants to use prayer to speak to us and to build our faith by knowing him? Could it be that God wants to use prayer to teach us to listen to him and also teach us to talk to him? Could it be that God wants to use prayer so that we might literally experience him in more ways than we can even think or ist here?
Don’t limit prayer to praying for needs.
When churches have little knowledge and connection with God it may be because they lack an active and an alive prayer meeting within their own church. Does your church develop a culture of prayer that leads people to place of knowing God or does it only pray when there are needs and emergencies.
One of the most common reasons that I hear of why churches do not have corporate church prayer meetings, is that they often say that no one would attend. Most recently I spoke to a pastor and he stated that it was impossible to get people to come out to another meeting other than the minimal Sunday morning service. But could it be that if prayer moved beyond praying for our own needs to the place of encountering and experiencing God – Maybe then our churches would become spirit filled with hungry men and women finding God.
Prayer breaks through spiritual dullness and religiosity and it opens up our churches to the overflow of the Holy Spirit.
Learn to use prayer for more than our needs. Use it as the main ingredient to know God on a daily basis. Use it as the main ingredient to encounter and experience God daily by the work of his Holy Spirit.
God Bless
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