“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. – Matthew 7:7-8
We live in times of instant gratification. We are so accustomed these days to a “vending machine” mentality, that we no longer have the patience to wait or not to find what we need immediately. Unfortunately, I have noticed that sometimes we carry the same mentality into our prayer life.
Let’s think about vending machines for a moment. We have a pocket full of change and we stand in front of a vending machine trying to decide what we want, we look at all the options. Once we make up our minds, we put in the change and voila! We get what we want.
The same thing may be happening in our prayer life. Unconsciously we think of God as the ultimate vending machine. Our thought process goes like this: Jesus promised that whatsoever we ask in His name He would do. Then we pray for what we need or want in His name, and we may continue to pray thus for few days expecting that God will do what we want. but whenever an answer comes not exactly in the way we expect it, we become mad at God. Some people believe that God does not love them because He did not give them what they had asked! Seriously?
We must realize that even when we ask good things, sometimes the answer is “No”.
“God is not a vending machine where we can go and purchase with prayer our every desire and whim”
If every prayer you ever prayed were instantly answered, two things would be true. Prayer would become a weapon of destruction in your life and you’d never think about God because He would become a vending machine.
Why be persistent? When you pray a prayer request over and over, it’s not to remind God. He doesn’t need to be reminded! It’s to remind yourself who the source of your answer and all your needs is.
Prayer is a faith builder. In the waiting God begins to grow you even more. So don’t let go of your prayers, keep on trusting
So Why Keep Praying?
Without prayer you will be powerless.
Without prayer you won’t build faith.
Without prayer you have no insight of what God is doing in your life.
Prayer prepares us for what is yet to come, what we aren’t ready for perhaps. Prayer humbles us, takes us off the throne, and puts God in His rightful place.
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