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In Mark 11:24(NIV), Jesus Christ says, “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” This is an extraordinarily wonderful truth! Our Great Big Powerful God has made it very plain that we have access to Him. So much so that when we make requests in prayer according to His Will, He will answer our prayers. He’s a Good God, and indeed He has already answered many of our most important prayer requests throughout the years, but there are also some requests that are yet to be fulfilled. We are totally reliant on Him, and we realize that the answer to our prayer request is something we cannot make happen through self-effort. God has to do it. We know He wants us to be happy, and we also know He’s an all-powerful, all-knowing God that is well aware of our needs. Jesus tells us in Matthew 6:8 that the Father knows what we need even before we ask, so some of us are quite perplexed. We’ve been asking for a while now, and the Father hasn’t said “yes!”
Communication is a two-way street. This is something most of us have heard many times. With our human interactions, from cradle to crib to queen-size bed, we grow accustomed to talking to someone and have them talk back to us. Prayer is a different kind of conversation, and it involves a different type of communication. Reverence and humility are required. But there’s also another aspect of prayer that we must understand. 1Corinthians 6:19-20(NLT) says, “Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.” God’s Spirit lives deep inside our human-spirit; this is the place God calls home. We have to remind ourselves of this continually, because God is more interested in the conversation that is taking place inside of us than the ones we have with other people.
So, we pray to God, sometimes audibly and articulately, and because of what we’re used to, we’d like some kind of a response from Him. We’d like to know if He heard us, did He like what we prayed about, does it match His Will, and when will He deliver the goods. The clock keeps on ticking. Days pass. Months go by…then years. Our emotions get the better of us at some point. Impatience turns to anger. Anger turns to confusion. Confusion turns to doubt, and doubt is the parasite that sucks vitality right out of our faith.
Most of us find it exceedingly challenging that God sometimes speaks the loudest to us through His silence. It can be frustrating and most of us really detest this feeling of frustration. So, we begin a dance where we try to take matters into our own hands and push faith to produce. That doesn’t work out so well, so we then give patience another run at it—reminding ourselves to be strong and take courage, and that joy comes in the morning. It’s a process every believer that I personally know has gone through. Wait mode is no joke. It’s a season that can have us going through some things, but we must never forget that we serve a God that is forever and relentlessly faithful. His grace and mercy endure forever.
Patience is a fruit of the Spirit, and learning patience is so important because it sets the stage for many other spiritual lessons we will need to learn. But we shouldn’t just sit around with our hands tucked beneath our laps. We must seek the Word for the strength and wisdom we need, and most importantly, we must press into God in a greater way. Rather than acquiescing to impatience, we must consider that silence during the wait is meant to draw us closer to the Father.
In Revelations 3:20(NLT), Jesus Christ said, “Look! I stand at the door and knock. If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in, and we will share a meal together as friends.” The Spirit of Christ comes to live in our temples, and he wants to influence every aspect of our existences with God’s overwhelming love. How are we responding internally to what God is doing? Are we feasting on the meal that Christ offers, or are we still letting something worldly feed our hearts and minds? What is our internal conversation like?
No part of us can be held back, and often it takes what seems to us to be God’s silence to call this to our attention. We all have our little boxes of stuff tucked neatly away inside. Faith will require the lids to be ripped off so that the contents are exposed to the light of Christ. It’s the most intense and uncomfortable part of going higher in him and reaching a new season of blessings and spiritual elevation. You’ll find that your waiting seasons will be the most impactful of any other time in your life, if you don’t resist them and humbly surrender to God’s process.■
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
“Lids Ripped Off Our Little Boxes” written by Reverend Fran Mack, edited by Kim Times for Sundie Morning Sistas ©2020. All rights reserved. All done to the glory of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord! SMS is dedicated to inspiring and encouraging Christian Women through the Word of God.
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