What are you expecting from your prayers?
Often I am asked: What should I
expect when I pray to God for something? This question often comes up when
people are lonely and looking for a soul mate, or they or a loved is sick and
they are asking for healing. Many ask this question because they feel frustrated
that God is not hearing or responding to their prayers, and they feel something
is missing. So I generally ask: What are you expecting from your prayers? Let us
consider some ways that we can expect our prayers to help us during these
moments of need.
1. The miraculous sign.
Of course, many of us have the images of the miraculous signs that Christ
performed during his ministry, and we hope that the response from God will be
something similar – quick, definite, and complete fulfillment of what we ask
from God. If a loved one is ill, we expect immediate healing. If we are looking
for a soul mate, we expect to meet the right person immediately. Of course this
can and does happen. However, God may also help us attain our objectives in
other ways.
2. Give us the hope so we would
not panic.
When there is a difficult situation, we can very easily panic. It seems
that it is the end of the world and the situation is hopeless. At times such as
these, although we would not attain our request immediately, but prayer helps us
gain some hope that someday we will attain what we are looking for.
3. Relieve the fear and anxiety
because of time.
When a difficult situation arises, it seems that “time has
collapsed,” that the end has come, there is no time to do anything, our back
is against the wall, and we are helpless. At moments such as these, prayer helps
us not only be hopeful, but also realize that time is on our side –
that we have time to plan and take the necessary steps in order to deal with the
difficult situation.
4. Wisdom for planning.
Prayer also helps us become wiser and insightful about the options for action
that we have at our disposal. This wisdom allows us to plan and set a strategy
for how we will deal with the difficult situation. Before the prayer we may have
felt that we are lonely, isolated, and have nowhere to turn to. After prayer, we
can become wiser and gradually see that we have more options than we thought.
5. The courage to act.
It is not sufficient to have an idea of the options we have; we also need
to act upon them. In fact, often a situation appears bleak because we do not see
any options because we do not take an action. Yet once we set our fear aside
through prayer and move forward, suddenly hopeful situations begin appearing on
the horizon.
6. The patients to persevere.
Perhaps one of the most frustrating moments in life is when a loved one
is in duress or we are in a difficulty, and there is nothing we can do about the
situation except wait. At times such as these, prayer can certainly give us the
patients to persevere and endure till a situation is clarified.
7. Help us face a situation. After all of our prayers, the conclusion may be that there is nothing we can do about to change the situation and we have to face it with dignity and integrity. At such moments prayer helps us in two ways. First, it helps us deal with our anger and even rage. Second, by helping us face a situation, it gives us an opportunity to see beyond it. Even if it seems that we will not get what we had been asking for from God, through prayer we may see that there is even something better than what we had been praying for. Yes, this is rather difficult, and it may take weeks, months, and even years to come to this realization, but through prayer it is definitely possible, whereas without prayer it is definitely impossible.
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