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God Answers Prayer on His Terms

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11/17/2007 / Prayers

We cannot help but approach God on His terms. We breathe His air, live by whatever life He provides, and we speak to Him through this thing called "prayer," which He invented.

All things considered, it is to our eternal benefit that God answers prayer on His own terms.

Any prayerful person's game plan must eventually become less self and more Christ. As we continue seeking Him, He will become our irresistible Main Thing. This is also God's general goal for us, that we become less of the world and more of Christ.

Having tasted the sweetness of this exchange, who can resist Him? The slightest exposure to His Divinity instills a soul-sanctifying thirst for more of Him.

It's obvious that some people pray more sincerely than others. Some people seem to have a knack for being on the same page as God while others, for whatever reason, just don't get it.

Christ will transform any diligent seeker. Any diligently prayerful person won't be able to resist total consumption by God's Spirit. Jesus Christ will cause that person to grow up spiritually for His own name's sake.

If we simply ask, Christ will teach us how to pray effectively. He teaches not so much the right words to recite in the right order, He teaches more of a right mind and heart-set. He implants Himself in the praying saint, empowering that man or woman to approach God humbly, submissively and yet also boldly. He teaches those aspects of praying that would otherwise be neglected, such as preferring to listen to Him over gabbing at Him ceaselessly.

God's Spirit causes praying people, over time, to adopt His all-consuming, earth-shattering goals as their own. Only remember that His idea of "earth-shattering goals" is not the measurable sort of things we mortals tend to admire.

God has been orchestrating all things up to this point so that it is now possible for us to approach Him for the right reasons. Before Christ, we were all about ourselves. But now, by Christ's Spirit, we are all about God. This is a mind-blowing miracle for anyone who has even an inkling of their inherent love for sin.

We used to know nothing but hopeless self-centeredness. But now, consumed by God's Spirit, there remains only one central motivation for the rest of our fleshly sojourns, and that is to seek God's kingdom on this earth.

If we are Christ's servants, then He places us into specific situations so that we would inquire, listen to and obey Him concerning the things that He deliberately brings to our attention. Therefore, the subject matter of our prayers should be everything in our vicinity, either around us or involving us. This also means that, if we submit everything to Him with confidence in His competence, then we will also learn to listen and be useful to Him in every situation.

We fellowship with Christ best in the scenarios He decides is best. As we dwell with and in Him according to our respective times and locales, we will discover that He has placed us exactly where we are for specific, heavenly purposes.

by Patrick Roberts. Find his book and additional material at www.BooksByPatrick.com

Patrick is an average Christ-seeker. His goal is to turn people to Jesus Christ.

Article Source: http://www.faithwriters.com-CHRISTIAN WRITERS

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