Praying for Things

If you don’t have that assurance, and you don’t really believe you can have that assurance, then you probably shouldn’t sing that song. Or “Face to Face with Christ my Savior,” in that verse, that song talks about “saved by grace.” If we don’t believe in some of those things, we shouldn’t sing, but praise the Lord, I believe that I’m saved by grace. How about you? And I’m going to sing that song. And praise the Lord, I believe in blessed assurance, and I’m thankful today that Jesus is my Savior, and that I have eternal life. How about you? So, likewise, I believe that “What a Friend we Have in Jesus” is a good hymn. And it says, “Oh, what needless pain we bear all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.” And so I’ve made it a habit through the years to pray to God about everything because it matters to him what happens in your life, even little details.
Of course, when it comes to praying for things, in 1 John, Chapter 5:14, “Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.” When we pray about physical things, material things, things, we should always say, “Your will be done.” Even Jesus did that in the garden about his physical life. He said not “my will,” but “yours be done.” Now, there are things that we know are God’s will. Is it God’s will to forgive your sins? Yes, it is God’s will to forgive your sins. It is God’s will to save you eternally in His kingdom. Is it God’s will to help you overcome your sins? These are all things that we know are God’s will, and many more besides. So when we ask for those things, we have perfect confidence that we receive the things we ask for. But when it comes to praying for material things, sometimes, it is not God’s will to give us a material thing because it interferes with our eternal salvation and the process of becoming like Jesus. That’s why we are taught to pray, “Your will be done.”
Now turn to Matthew 10:8. One of the reasons that Jesus wants us to freely ask for blessings is so that we might be a channel of blessing to others. He says here, in Matthew 10:8, “Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons.” By the way, I still believe God does, and wants to do all those things. And I’ve seen all those things except the raising of the dead, but I’ve met people who have seen it. So I know that God still does these things. I’ve watched it myself, I’ve seen it myself, except for that one, and I have good testimony from other people who have seen it happen. And then He says, “Freely you have received,” and then He says to do what? If we are not receiving God’s blessings, how can we give God’s blessings? And He says we are to ask for things, and we shall receive.
Let me give you an example. When we were going to Walla Walla College down south here, it was a winter quarter. Now, I just have to back up and tell you that my parents, bless their hearts, they just were not able to help me go to school. They just did not have the money, and I was there on my own. And then after I married Dolly, which is the best earthly decision I ever made after giving my heart to Jesus, she helped me because she had finished college. She took a two-year degree, and so the last couple of years, she was able to help me. What a blessing that was. And then God did a lot of other things, and here’s one of the things that God did.
I tried really hard to pay my bills on time, and we scrimped and saved and lived very frugally, and because we were doing those things, I could freely come to God and ask Him to help us. And besides that (and this is a whole other sermon) we were returning our tithe to God faithfully, every month, as we received our income. And so, I remember that one particular time, when fall quarter was over and Christmas break was coming, and I was thinking, “Good, I have a nice, long Christmas break. I can work hard,” because I hung sheet rock, and I thought, “the nice thing I like about sheet rock is that you get paid for what you do.” I love piecework because when you work in piecework, you get paid for what you do. And so I would go in there and I would work hard, and I had a nice long time for vacation, and I thought, “I can work hard, and I can make the money to put down on my bill for the next month.” Well, wouldn’t you know it, work slowed down right about the time Christmas break came, and there weren’t as many housing starts as there had been. And so I thought, “Well, I did my best, and I did make some money, and I was able to pay off the previous quarter’s bill and all that, but I needed $600 to put down on my school bill before I could register for the next quarter.
I could see I wasn’t going to make it. So what do you do? Well, I’m sitting there, and I’m starting to write out my tithe check for that coming Sabbath, and I’m thinking, “I could delay my tithe.” See, pastors get tempted, too. I thought, “I could delay my tithe,” and I thought, “No, God has always been faithful to me, and He says right there in Malachi that if I return my tithe to Him, He will bless me, and I’m not going to withhold God’s tithe from Him.” So I made that decision, I turned in the tithe to the Lord, and then kept praying about it and asked God to please help us. That week, when I went out to the mailbox, my sister, Judy, bless her heart, had sent a Christmas card. And in the Christmas card, there was a check for $630.
And she wrote this note in there, and she said,

The other day, I was deeply impressed that you needed some money. I don’t know how much you need, but I sent this money, and I hope it’s what you need.

And of course, I told her later that it was $30 over what I needed to register for school. Now, I’m not asking you to follow this example; you do what the Holy Spirit tells you to do, but I’ve always returned tithe on gifts. And so, in this case, that’s $63. Well, guess what. I had $30 in my banking account, and with the $30 extra that she gave, I was able to return tithe and still have money for my school bill. God hears our prayers. Now, what if I hadn’t asked? The Bible says I wouldn’t have received.

Turn to Mark 11:24. “Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.”
Now turn to Matthew 9:17. What did Jesus say about the importance of believing when we ask for things? Here is a man who came to Him and asked Him to please heal his child. And when he came to Jesus, His response to this man is very interesting. Starting with Verse 18, it says, “While He spoke these things to him, behold, a ruler came and worshipped him, saying, ‘My daughter has just died, but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.” Now, is that faith? Yes, it is. And then you go down to Verse 22, and a lady who touched Him the way said, when she had this problem of bleeding, she touched the hem of Jesus’ garment on the way. And in Verse 22, it says, “Be of good cheer, daughter. Your faith has made you well.” And then, when Jesus came to the ruler’s house and saw the flute players and the noisy crowd, He said, “Make room; for the girl is not dead, but sleeping.” Of course, they laughed at Him. But when the crowd was put aside, He went in and took her by the hand, and the girl arose, and the report of this went out into all that land. Notice the importance of faith and having belief in what Jesus will do for you when you ask, when you pray, to believe that He will hear your prayer. I’ll help you with that as we go along.
Now go to Matthew, Chapter 8. You notice that here is a Centurion, a Roman. Not a Jew, not a Christian, a Centurion, a Pagan. But he understood that Jesus had a connection. And he came to Jesus, and he said, “Lord, my servant is lying at home, paralyzed,” that’s in Verse 6, “dreadfully tormented.”
And Jesus said, “I will come and heal him.”
The Centurion answered and said, “Lord, I am not worthy, that you should come under my roof, but only speak a word, and my servant will be healed. For I am also a man under authority, having soldiers under me, and I say to this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes. And to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes. And to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”
When Jesus heard this, He marveled, and said to those who followed, “Assuredly, I say to you, I have not found such great faith, even in Israel.” So Jesus said to the Centurion, “Go home. Your servant is made well,” and he was, just as Jesus said, in harmony with the word that Jesus had spoken.
I’ve seen stuff like this. I’ve seen this kind of stuff happen. Some of you have probably seen it. Jesus still does things like this. I believe, when I pray for someone, that wonderful things are happening in the unseen world of the angel, and that the Holy Spirit is working when we pray. I know that that’s happening.
Now, Wayne, I’m going to ask you; I know that I feel safe that I can ask you to come up here for a second. I like for you to come up and help me. Wayne is a friend of mine, and I think he’ll still be a friend of mine after this is over. Now, Wayne, you and I and the class upstairs were talking about Randy Philips and his illness a little while ago, and his attitude, and all that. Now, first I want to ask you a question, and then I want you to tell us, the whole group, what you told us upstairs.
And that is that our friend, Randy, was sick with cancer. And his prayer was to be healed so that he might see his grandchild born, right? And the doctors didn’t give him that much time. And he was very, very ill when we met together down there in College Place; you could see it in his face, in his body. He was very ill, and we were all worried about him. But we a knelt for prayer and anointed him, as the Bible says to do, and there was a healing that took place there. Randy had remarkable health for a period of time. And he was able to see his grandchild born. That was his prayer; that was his request. And then, after a time, his cancer came back. And the doctors were amazed that it went away, and then many of us were amazed that the cancer was allowed to come back. But as he began to die from that illness, he had a wonderful testimony. Wayne, would you tell us what that was?

Wayne: His testimony was, “Wayne, if I could go back and change all of this,” and I was expecting him to say, “I’d like to not have cancer, I’d like to be able to enjoy my new grandchild, I’d like to a lot of other things.” But he said, “If I could change everything, I wouldn’t change one thing because I’ve never been so close to the Lord as I am right now in my life.”

And I thought, “How can you take that from somebody?” He died in the arms of Jesus. And the next thing we’ll know is Randy being brought up from the grave when Jesus calls him from the grave. But what a testimony of his faith and trust in the Lord, and the Lord gave him that peace, and gave him that kind of relationship.

Thank you, Wayne, very much. Which takes more faith, to receive a yes answer or a no answer? It all takes faith, right? And that’s why we say, “Your will be done,” when it comes to praying for things because God knows best. And God, in this case, allowed Randy to go to sleep, but he had faith that he would see Jesus and be resurrected when the Lord comes again.
Faith is something that, if you don’t have enough faith, it’s not your fault. You can’t make yourself have more faith. If you say, “Well, I don’t have that much faith,” join the crowd. God gives faith as you need it. In fact, faith is one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. It’s something that God gives to you. It’s like as your need is, so he will supply. So don’t sit there today and say, “Well, I don’t have that much faith,” or, “I don’t think I’ve had that much faith.” You can’t make yourself have more faith. It’s something you can only get from God, and so pray and ask God to give you the faith that you need, for whatever it is that you need faith for. That’s a gift that God will give you.
Now, if you want to, turn to Romans 10:17. Another way to get faith is right here, in Romans 10:17. Not only should we ask for it, but the Bible says that as we pray, that he will supply our faith. So then, faith comes by what? Hearing. And hearing by the word of God. One of the reasons why Christians have so little faith is that they have spent so little time in the word of God. If we would take our Bibles out and read them, our faith would grow and we would see more of God’s power in the world around us. We would recognize it because we’ve seen it here. And we would know what to ask for. We would know how to ask. Jesus said, “You receive not because you ask amiss.” But if we knew what God says, we would know how to ask for the things that God has promised to give, and we would have more answers to prayer.
So now I want you to turn to Psalm 84:11. I think I’ve worn this verse out in my life. If you can wear a verse out, I’ve worn this one out. But I just keep wearing it thinner and thinner. The neat thing about God’s promises is they are so thick, it would take you a lifetime of wearing on them to even take off a little bit of the surface off of it. Because God’s promises are so powerful. And here in Psalm 84:11, the last part – what a statement about God this is – “No good thing will He withhold from those who walk uprightly.” We serve an awesome, generous, merciful God. And besides that, He’s rich. He owns all the planets and all the universe, and everything, and all those planets, billions upon billions and trillions upon trillions of planets. He owns it all, and He’s able to give us every single thing that we could ask or think, beyond whatever we could ask or think.

What a great and mighty and powerful God He is. Many times, we have gone to Him. You may think I’m silly, but I pray about lots of things. When my razor broke, I prayed about it. You can laugh if you want to; it’s okay. But I did, I prayed about it, and God helped me figure out how to fix it because I didn’t have the money to buy a new one. That’s the truth. And so I took that thing apart, and a lot of times, if you take stuff apart, you might as well go buy another one, right? I took that thing apart, and I prayed. I said, “God, I don’t have the money to buy a new one, but I believe you can help me fix it.” And he helped me fix it, and it worked, and I used that thing for years. And I’m not a razor mechanic.
God can do anything. I pray about everything. When things get lost, I pray about it. When stuff happens in the car, I pray about it. When stuff happens with my house, I pray about it. I pray about everything. I’m talking to God about stuff all the time, and I know He wants to hear it. He doesn’t get worn out like we do. His ears don’t get tired of hearing. When we’re raising our kids, they talk, and talk, and talk, and talk, and talk, and talk sometimes, and after a while, you’re thinking, “Man, it’s bedtime, isn’t it?” But God is not like that. He loves to hear from us. He wants to hear from us. He asks us to come and talk to Him and tell Him about all the stuff we need in our life. He’s got resources unbounded, and he wants to share it with us. And I’ve been the recipient of many of those things.
I want to tell you about a man I know about. I know this is a true story because I watched it happen. This guy, a hard worker in our community where we live, he works so hard, but sometimes, the money just spreads so thin. Especially sometimes in the year, or in the season of years, the money just seems to not go anywhere. It just seems that you bring it in, and POOF! It’s gone. And Christmas was coming, and his heart was breaking. He said he didn’t even have the money to get a Christmas tree for Christmas, let alone presents, and he was just devastated because he loved his kids. And he said, “Lord, what am I going to do?” He was a man of prayer. And he told me that he took it to the Lord and prayed. He said, “Lord, I don’t have the money, even for the presents that my children deserve. They’ve been such good kids, and I would like to do just something for my kids.” And he took it to God in prayer, and he claimed verses like this. He said, “I know that if you see fit that this is a good thing for my kids to have these gifts, I believe that you will help me.” He prayed that prayer.
He kept praying that prayer, and then he told me that out of the clear blue, a guy that he had done some work for in the past, who had never paid him, called him up and said, “You know, I never paid you for that job, and it’s been on my conscience all this time. I’ve just got to get it off my conscience. I’m sorry, and I want to apologize to you for withholding what was due you, and I’m writing you out a check for the full amount, plus some interest.” And he had more than enough money to take care of the needs that his children had for Christmas. Some of you might be in that situation. I think you should pray about it. I think you should talk to God and pray about it, and ask Him to help you with that need.
One more verse. Turn to John 11:41. Jesus, when he came to the tomb of Lazarus, prayed, and part of his prayer before he arose Lazarus from his grave, he prayed, and he said, “Father, I thank you, that you have heard me.” You see, that’s the seed to claim, or to thank God that he has heard us. When we come to God and pray, it is to begin with praise and end with praise. In Matthew, Chapter 6, you’ll remember the Lord’s Prayer. I want you to say it with me.

“Our father, which art in heaven
Hallowed be thy name”

That’s the praise part. It begins with praise. Then it goes,

“Thy kingdom come, thy will be done
On Earth as it is in Heaven
Give us this day our daily bread
And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil”

Here’s the praise part:

“For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory
Forever.”

Jesus taught us how to pray. He didn’t want us to just repeat that prayer as if that was the prayer. He gave us an outline. He told us the kind of things that we should pray to God and how we should pray. And when we come to God, you know that song, it goes,

“I will enter His courts with thanksgiving in my heart
I will enter His courts with praise
I will say this is the day that the Lord has made
I will rejoice, for He has made me glad
He has made me glad; He has made me glad
I will rejoice, for He has made me glad
He has made me glad; He has made me glad
I will rejoice, for He has made me glad”

I will enter His gates with thanksgiving in my heart. I will enter his courts with praise. We begin our prayers with praise, and we end our prayers with, “Thank you, God, that you have heard my prayer. And I know that you will do what is best.
When you turn to Mark 9:20, then, they brought this young man to Jesus, and when he saw Him, immediately the Spirit convulsed him (the boy), and he fell on the ground and wallowed, foaming at the mouth. So He asked his father, “How long has this been happening to him?”
And he said, “From childhood.” Can you imagine wrestling with that since he was a baby? “And often, he has thrown him both into the fire and into the water to destroy him, but if you can do anything,” (catch that) “have compassion on us and help us.” Jesus first had to help the father before He could help the boy. Too many of us approach God as if He was reluctant to help us and to save us, and to give us what we need. God is not reluctant, he’s eager.
And so He turns to this man and says, “If you can believe.” It wasn’t a matter of if Jesus could do anything; it was, can you believe. “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.”
Immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.” That’s a good prayer to pray. Sometimes we need to pray for faith, and He said if we would ask, He would give it to us.
I’m going to end with this story so that we try to stay close to our closing time, and I can pick it up next time. Our daughter, Carrie, when she was about eight years old, came to me and asked, “Daddy, I would like to have a horse.” Number one problem, we didn’t have the money for a horse. Number two problem, we didn’t have the place for a horse. Number three problem, we didn’t have the money to keep up a horse, even if we had number one and number two. But when you love your daughter and she comes and she asks you something, I told her, “Sweetheart, I would like nothing more in all the world than for you to have a horse.”
I didn’t want the horse, but I wanted her to have it. I grew up with horses, literally, and I had to take care of them. My dad raised registered quarter horses, and it was my job to go out there and water them and feed them day and night, day and night. We hardly ever did anything with them until a show came around, and they were kind of like a nuisance to me when I was growing up. And besides that, they cost a lot of money, and they were always getting slivers off the fence, and they were always needing something done with the vet to come out and sew them up or stuff a pill down their throat. It just seemed like money, money, money.
I think I mentioned this once before. I had a friend who had a boat, and there was a plaque on the boat. Do you remember me telling you that? And the plaque on the boat said, “A boat is a hunk of fiberglass into which you throw money.” Well, a horse is another type of fiberglass into which you throw money. But they’re beautiful animals, and if a person can have them, what a blessing they are to so many people, and don’t take my comment to mean they aren’t great. They’re wonderful animals.
But we didn’t have the money or the place, and I just explained that all to her. I said, “But Sweetheart, this is what I’m going to do: I’m going to pray that God will somehow make it possible for you to have a horse. And I want you to know that your daddy is saying to you that if there ever is a way or a means whereby you can have a horse, you will have that horse.
So she began to pray, eight years old, prayed and prayed. And she made a decision that I didn’t know about until a few weeks or months later. She said, “Daddy, when you give me my money for allowance, I’m going to put that away for a horse.” And she said, “Whenever I earn any money, I’m going to save that for a horse.” Now, you know a lot of kids make statements like that, and they don’t follow up on it because the candy looks really good and the dolly looks really good, and they spend that little bit of money. Kids have good intentions, but sometimes it’s hard to be that disciplined.
Not Carrie. She made that decision and she very seldom deviated from that. For the next eight years, she saved her money religiously, put it away until after all that time, besides little miscellaneous things that she had to spend some money on, she finally had over $600 that she had saved for a horse. Her dream was to have a black registered horse. So she prayed, and that was what she was praying for, and there’s nothing wrong with praying for that. She knew how to pray; we taught her how to pray, “Thy will be done,” and she was praying for the Lord’s will to be done.
I remember the day when she was 16 years old. She came in and she said, “Daddy, I found a horse for sale.”
I said, “Really?”
She said, “Yeah. You know my friend Graciella? Graciella’s going to sell her horse.”
And I knew Graciella’s horse, a registered Arabian. But it was gray, not black. And I said, “Is that the horse you want?”
And she said, “Well, it’s not my dream horse, but you know, I understand that sometimes we’re not as in tune with what God wants for us. It’s an Arabian horse, it’s a good horse, it rides well, and I can afford it. She’ll sell it to me for $600.” And there was a place to keep it. And we could see our way clear to help feed that thing.
And so we were thinking, “Well, maybe this is God’s will. Sometimes, we have to adjust our thinking to what God has for us.”
So we prayed about that, and she decided that that’s what she wanted to do, and I said, “Well, if that’s what you want to do, then we are just one hundred percent behind you.” So she went and bought this horse, which was called Pinocchio. Keep that in mind; it was called Pinocchio. And Pinocchio came to live with us, and it was a nice gelding, a beautiful horse, just a delight. Not a problem, didn’t push over fences or eat on the posts, or any of that kind of stuff. It was just a good horse. I wasn’t high-spirited and wasn’t wild, just a good horse. And she could ride that horse, and she was the right size for that horse, and she loved that horse, and they got along so well. We were never worried about that horse hurting her. They just had a good relationship. It was a good experience.
A few months after she owned the horse, she came home and she said, “Dad, you know where I’ve been going down and riding in the arena? That lady is willing to give me dressage lessons.” Carrie had always wanted to do dressage, where the horses go through these fancy paces. And she said, “I think Pinocchio has had some dressage training.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I’m going to find out.” So she went back, and the lady herself got on the horse, and Pinocchio was trained for dressage. He knew how to do all these fancy things – the diagonal stuff, feet up, and all kinds of stuff – he was doing all this dressage stuff. And Carrie only had to learn how to make him do it. That’s all she had to do because he was ready to go. Whoa! A dream, answered. She couldn’t believe it because she had always wanted to do dressage with her horse.
So, then she goes, “Dad, I prayed for a registered horse. Do you think Pinocchio could be registered?”
I said, “Well, he’s had all that training, and he looks like a purebred Arabian to me, but I don’t know how you’d ever find that out.”
She says, “Well, he’s been cared for all these years by a particular ferrier, and I’m going to ask him.”
I said, “That’s a good idea.”
So she asked the ferrier, and he says, “Well, I don’t know if Pinocchio is registered, but I know where he came from.”
She said, “You do?”
He said, “Yeah, he came from this place down in Grants Pass,” because we were living in southern Oregon at the time, “I know the family that raised these horses. I know right where he came from. I’ll give you the phone number.”
So he gave her the phone number, she wrote it all down, she comes home, she gets on the phone, she calls the lady down there, and the lady says, “Oh yeah, he’s registered.”
“He is?”
“Yeah, he’s registered.”
And she said, “What do I have to do to get papers?”
She said, “Oh, you just send in $35 to this place, and they’ll send you back the papers, and then you’ve got a registered horse.” Whoa! So here’s Carrie, praying that God will provide for her a horse. The only she didn’t get was black. Everything else was exactly what she had prayed for. God was so good, and when the time came that she traded in her horse on a guy, she got way more money for that horse than she paid for it. God always knows what’s best for us.
Because of things that have been mentioned here today, and a few things that may be in your minds, I want you just to stay tuned here with this for just a minute. Here it is. I want you to turn to 1 Corinthians 10:13. I meant to mention this earlier and neglected it, and I feel like I would be sinning if I let you leave without looking at this verse and hearing this one last thought about praying for things. Now, you know we have a sweet family in our church who just lost a baby yesterday, and I’m sure that they were a praying, probably praying for this little baby. Why does God let stuff like that happen? Or when you get a disease, and you try to behave yourself, and you still get a disease. Why does that happen? Why does God let stuff like that happen to us?
I have a thought for you. God made a solemn promise to us in 1 Corinthians 10:13. He said, “No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man. But God is faithful. He will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able. But with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.” Some day, I’ll tell you a true story about this. I will illustrate this, but I can’t do it today. But here is the thought: God has promised that the most important thing is your eternal salvation. And He wants you to be in Heaven. And sometimes, He has to let bad things happen to us to get our attention, and to help us stay close to God.
The only time I ever saw my family get serious about God when I was growing up, was when something bad happened. And then all of a sudden, we remembered there was God. And that’s true for too many people. And so God sometimes withhold physical blessings from us even though a great big part of His heart wants to give it to you because He knows that if He allows you to suffer a little bit, you’ll be more serious about your faith. And that will keep you closer to Him because sometimes we get too lighthearted and we need a little bit of sober stuff to happen to wake us up a little bit.
Now turn to Isaiah, Chapter 57. Right here, God says that sometimes He lets people die to save them. I’d like you to put yourself in the place of God for a minute. Suppose you’re in God’s place. And by the way, I’m glad you’re not, and that I’m not, okay? But let’s pretend for a minute that you are, and here’s this person who has had some terrible disease strike him, or some accident, and now they have to decide whether or not they have to pull the plug in the hospital. A terrible thing, and I’ve been in the presence of people when they had to make those decisions. Awful, awful time for people.
But imagine you’re God, and they’re praying to you, they’re saying, “God, save him. Save him. Don’t let him die. Please save him. And you love every one of those people with all your heart, and you want them to be happy, and you know that what they want is they want that guy to live. But you also, because you’re God, you see the future. And you know everything in that man’s future. And you know that down here, he’s going to have this terrible thing happen to him, so bad that it will completely destroy his faith. And that there would be no way that he would be able to avoid such a thing.
And you’re thinking, “If I let him die here, he will avoid this, and I’ll have him forever. But if I save his life here, he’ll go here and I’ll lose him forever.” Which decision would you make? Aren’t you glad you’re not God? He has to make those decisions every single day. But I guarantee you that when you get to Heaven, you will be thankful for every adversity God let into your life so that you would be a person of faith. Because when you get to Heaven, Heaven will be cheap enough and you will not complain about anything that happened to you in your life because of the joy of eternity.
It says in Isaiah 57, “The righteous perishes, and no man takes it to heart. Merciful men are taken away, while no one considers that the righteous is taken away from evil.” God loves you so much, and He wants to give you every good thing. And say it again with me: “No good thing will he withhold from those who walk uprightly.” The thing we need to do is, when we pray for things, to say, “Thy will be done.” Because God knows best.
Let’s stand for prayer:
O Father, what a great and loving, compassionate, generous God. We come to you with our needs, bushel baskets full every day, and you never tire of hearing us talk with you, and you never tire of providing the good things we need. Sometimes, Lord, you let us get sick. Sometimes, you let loved ones die. Sometimes we don’t receive the very things we ask for, but always when you say no, it’s because there is something much more important, something that is much better that you’re trying to give us. But father, we get so caught up in the here and the now that we forget that there is a greater future that you’re planning for us.
Help us to remember, Lord, that the temporary things that we do not receive are only because they’re not really for our best good. And that’s so hard for us, Lord, because sometimes we think they are for our good. So we want to pray to you today the way that man prayed when he said, “Lord, we believe. Help our unbelief.” Give us more faith, O God, so that we are able to believe in you and trust in you, even when we don’t get a particular thing we’ve asked for. And help us to remember all the things we have received from you that we did pray about.
Please bring to our minds when the Devil whispers in our ears and tells us you don’t care about us, help us to remember, Lord, all the things you’ve done for us so that we have that evidence in front of us to say, “No, no, no. He does care. I don’t understand right now, but I know he cares for me.” Give us that kind faith, Lord. Help us to pray more and more and more about the things that we need, and to trust you because you’re too loving and too wise to make a mistake. And we know we’ll understand it by and by.
Thank you, Lord, for hearing our prayer. In Jesus’ name, Amen.