Praying in Faith

A few days ago Ken Whitten posted this on Twitter and I retweeted and sent to Facebook.

“Faith is the bucket of power lowered by the rope of prayer into the well of God's abundance. What's down in the well, comes up in the bucket.”

A friend on Facebook made a great comment asking a question about a situation many of us have faced.

“And when the bucket comes up empty anyway? What does that tell you?”

I am posting my response here in hopes that maybe it will help you when you pull up an empty bucket.

The key to praying in faith is to persistently seek God's desires. I've prayed for things I've wanted and the bucket has come up empty. God doesn't fill my wish list but gladly and generously gives me what he desires that I have. The Bible refers to that as praying according to his will.

Another key is to realize that God desires a right relationship with us most of all. I've had to ask for forgiveness for things that have stood between God and me before I could experience all the other things.

And sometimes all that is good but it's just not yet God's timing. From my perspective, I pray thinking now is the right time. God sees my life from his eternal perspective so he knows when is the best time.

Paul Overstreet wrote a song 20 years ago that says, "Keep praying til the answer comes."

Three hindrances to effective praying are selfishness, sinfulness, and stopping. We are to pray according to God’s will and in so doing we won’t pray selfishly but seeking his greater desires. Sin can hinder our praying so we are to confess our sin, which is more important to God, so that we can talk with him about other things. Persistence is important in prayer – not in order to change God’s mind by pestering him but by agreeing with him about the importance of the thing we are praying for – so we cannot stop praying until we get the answer.

A man in my church is so confident in the Lord that he prays about it and leaves it in God’s hands. I agree with that and don’t want to imply that we must pray constantly about this one thing. Instead, we pray until we have confidence that the Lord will do what we are praying for. So we pray until we no longer pray selfishly. We pray until our prayers are obstructed by our sin. And we keep praying until the answer comes.