Answers to Prayer; Yes, Maybe, No!

As our prayers reach up like incense before God the grace we receive continues to grow. There may be times when the answer is slow but know that God hears and responds to each. We understand God answers each prayer with Yes, Maybe, or No. Yes, because the quest is within his plan and already being answered. Maybe, since the particular need may become too difficult for our own ability to handle the result, and ending up as something we do not need. No, here is the wisdom of a parent’s guidance who sees into the near or distant future where giving permission would certainly harm this child’s begging for change.

Any of the three choices is a blessing since only our loving God knows the immediate and lasting result of what we pray for. At times, the answer we may not expect can be a slap in the face from our perspective until the possible outcome could’ve been disastrous had the Lord not rejected our request.

Consider this as we become anxious when asking, and it isn’t granted; we can not see the future, even one minute from the present. Imagine being late for an early flight and no other flights are available the rest of the day. Our frustration may get the best of us and the verbal outbursts don’t seem the help. With all the rushing we miss our plane by just minutes. The plane we were supposed to be on ends with a disaster. So much for cursing bad luck and even blaming God for various reasons. The prayer was answered without even praying for a good trip which occurred in God’s plan of saving lives.

Here is a good example of how much God looks after us without our involvment or realizing our need for an intercession, Jesus comes to the rescue and surprises us with salvation from any number of disastrous events. I have a step-niece who lost control of her car, went over an embankment and was thrown from her car. As she laid there feeling at peace a voice asked her if she wanted to remain in this peaceful ecstasy or stay in the world. She was told the choice to survive would have some suffering and she chose to let the peaceful experience go. It took a while for her to crawl up the hill and was finally spotted by a passing motorist. Today she works as a pharmaceutical advisor to doctors at one of the nation’s super hospitals. She has little use of one leg but chose to live foregoing a sleep of peace. Her decision was a choice after God’s intervention saved her.

An incident where I experienced an opportunity to understand how the Lord allows us to learn the effort he will go to teaching us how much he will do to have us realize his presence. This story has appeared a few times in other articles but its importance has a place here. It involved my forgetting the homily for a particular Sunday and in spite of my praying for a sign from the unwritten homily, he let me go to the point of picking up the microphone after proclaiming the gospel, to the moment I opened my mouth. Without any thought of what I would say the words just flowed and even to this day had no idea what I said. The pastor liked it and my assumption was it went over very well. When arriving back home I went inside the house, looked up and said; “What are you doing to me?” A voice told me, “You are always speaking about faith, “Today I tested yours.” The lesson here showed me that it is so easy to allow pride to present itself without relying on the Holy Spirit. Because I never wrote my homilies I thought I was so astute with preaching that I didn’t need any help. I couldn’t refute this.

Depending on the grace of God will cover a multitude of actions; A woman who could have passed into a peaceful existence, chose life here; a homily that might have become a nightmare, a successful arrival for a plane that would have ended destroying a family, and any other situation that didn’t need a conscious input from us. Prayer, whether we reach out on our own for an answer or at times when God already answers the prayer without our knowledge of its need.

Ralph B. Hathaway, Finding God’s Answer to prayer.