A Real Question

[Stan]

often asked...

When ever you claim the promises..... and you feel God/Jesus has let you down???

Real questions.... need real answers

[Bravus]

This is my real answer, arrived at with a lot of pain and wrestling, and still tentative. I suspect most of you are not going to like it, but I want to be honest with all of you.

My conclusion is that God does miracles, but does them quite rarely. He doesn't magically (i.e. supernaturally) intervene in the world routinely every day every time we pray, but only under rather extreme and unusual circumstances. Instead, He expects His hands and feet in the world - us - to implement His will in the world. If someone is hungry and prays for food, God expects that we will be there to feed them. And so on... And sometimes, people stay hungry.

This is a harsher and less comforting world to live in: one where the consequences of sin have us at their mercy more than we might like to think. But for me, it's the only way that makes life meaningful, and indeed bearable. The alternative is that God is capricious: how many people have died in agony from torture or illness, claiming the promises and praying? Yet we see cases that are claimed to be miraculous where people are saved from those conditions. So is there something wrong or insufficient in the prayers of those who don't get miracles?

As I say, this has been arrived at through years of praying for and struggling with questions and issues. God is still sovereign, and still loves us absolutely, and still has the power to intervene supernaturally. He still aches and hurts and cries for all our pain, physical and emotional. But due to the rules of engagement in the Great Controversy, or for whatever other reason that He knows and we can't comprehend, he chooses to intervene in dramatic ways only rarely.

It puts us back into the incredibly responsible position of being God's hands in the world, and might make us major in that instead of more minor matters like spice tithe... <img src="/ubbtreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Edit: PS, I hope you'll respond to Stan's question with your own answer before responding to anything I've written.

[Clio]

Quote:

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When ever you claim the promises..... and you feel God/Jesus has let you down???

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I left all organized religion in 1978 because it felt like science fiction. I could see no evidence that Abba Father answers prayer. For the next 20 years, I could see no point in going to church, and my life proceeded according to the worldly perscription of success. By 38 I was a millionaire. Wealthy enough to walk away from 15,000 shares of Worldcom stock options when it was trading at $48 a share.

In 2000, the bottom fell out of the telecom market, and the value of my holdings fell with it. My husband and I lost $800K in a little less than three months. Coincidently(?!?...uh huh sure)I had just begun praying again... mostly because I knew without a doubt that if I didn't, my marriage was over and done with, and I still loved my husband. In spite of the fact that he told me repeatedly he hated me and I disgusted him.

No... I was NOT unfaithful.

For a year, I felt like my prayers hit brass ceilings and bounced back at me. Over the course of that year, Abba Father placed two books in my hands, multiple times. Stubborn as I was, I refused to read them. Even gave them away several times. Finally, He got through to me. I came to understand that the prayers I was praying were not prayers that He could answer.

In a shocking reply to an email where I wrote out a prayer for a prayer warrior friend to pray with me, I finally started to realize I was attempting to bargain with God in every prayer. "Please do this for me and I will do XYZ" - "Please do XYZ and I will..." - "I am going to church, why aren't You saving me from X?" - "Please forgive my sins" and finally in desperation, "Why aren't YOU answering me???? The promises are all there, YOU have to be there because otherwise I can't go on so WHY aren't YOU answering me?!?"

For a final time, final because I finally read them, Abba Father placed those two books in my hands again. And I began to learn to pray in a way Abba Father and True Jesus could fully and completely bless. I read, re-read, searched out online studies, studied with like-minded individuals, and learned for the first time how to pray totally within the center of Abba Father's will, in ways He could bless. I learned not to box Him in, and to realize that no matter what He asked me to do, He would always protect and provide.

His answer to my "Why" was learn to pray. I walk in a world now, where Abba Father intervenes on my behalf constantly. There are no coincidences, only His will walking out in my life. He answers my prayers, always.

Abba Father has worked miracles in areas that are REAL WORLD PROBLEMS.

True Jesus is the best mechanic I know. He has fixed a cracked block while I and the mechanic watched. That 1/4 inch crack that was gushing anti-freeze sealed itself in 40 below weather.

He has sent an angel to propel my car home, around multiple corners where full stops were required, and then made a nice three-point turn to position the car best for repairs... after which it didn't move again under it's own power for almost 3 months.

He has healed my husband before my very eyes, and kept him alive when the doctors scratched their collective heads and said we have no idea.

He has paid taxes for me... to the tune of over $75K and then moved the IRS to compassion not to seek the additional $335K we owe... and then had them set it up so no further collection action will be taken. This is from the millionaire time... We never actually saw any of the money those taxes are due on... because it was presumed value that never was realized... alternative minimum taxation. Lots of dot.commers in a similar position.

He has intervened in the juvenile justice system in an amazing way.

We have had less than 1/3 of our usual income for the last 18 months, and yet the utilities are still one, we have food to eat, our vehicles run, and we've been able to help someone even less fortunate than we are.

My marriage is being healed in astounding ways. My husband now tells me how much he loves me, how I am his security blanket and he's not comfortable and can't rest until I come home in the evening.

All of my children are baptized, and actively pursure their walk with True Jesus. One of my daughters is beginning to discover her spiritual gifts, and in my other daughter and my son, I can see where their gifts will take them, especially now that True Jesus has their attention.

I cannot afford to pay our utilities and put food on our table, not and pay the costs of my husband's medical care not covered by our insurance. Yet True Jesus provides. Our clothes do not wear out, we always have plenty to eat... maybe not what we WANT, but we don't go hungry. Our utilities are always paid, and even some of our wants are being supplied.

Just this month, I was asking Jesus about some "winter toys" for the kids. They've worked so hard trying to help the family, and they are just kids. So... July 1 we had NO toys. Today, July 18, we have two snow-machines and a 4-wheeler, all paid for. And I shouldn't have had ANY way to pay for them. I'm still not sure exactly how it happened, but everything is paid, and I still had the money to pay for them.

I resisted reading those books until I was absolutely at my lowest...after all, I'd been raised an Adventist... this was where the truth is... and surely, after 20 years of being an SDA, going to all our schools, attending every week of prayer, praying in Sabbath School, hearing prayer in church, family worship where we all prayed aloud every Friday and Saturday night... I KNEW how to pray, right?

Well, after learning and applying the principles in those books Abba kept bringing around to me, I know when I pray, Abba Father and True Jesus will answer.

I am a Daughter in the King's House with all the rights and privileges and love that a Father grants to His Daughter. I am His and He delights in me. Just as an earthly father gives good things to his earthly children, how much more, does our Abba Father, the source of all life, light, love, and every good thing long to give us EVERY GOOD THING.

It was only after I learned to pray in a way He could bless fully, that I began to strip out, with the Holy Spirit's help, the strongholds in my life and replace them with True Jesus. He is all, I am nothing.

There is nothing special about me. Only that Abba Father is all merciful, all loving, and it totally amazes me what He is willing to do for one as unworthy as I. And yet, I know it is because the Lamb is Worthy, and for His sake.

I praise Him and glorify His Name. Abba Father answers prayer, His promises are sure, and there is no glory but His.

I love You Jesus. Teach me how to love You more. Let You always be revealed in me, and never reveal me, save through You.

Clio

[Clio]

I think one post did both Bravus... come walk in my world for a while, you won't be disappointed.

Clio

P.S. Email me if you want the names of the books.

[Gerr]

Thank you for that beautiful testimony, Clio.

Gerry

[Gerr]

After learning more about what it means to be in a covenant relationship with God, I am no longer as concerned about prayers that have not been answered. I have absolute confidence that my covenant-keeping God will do everything that He deems necessary for my well-being. He has already, "granted to us EVERYTHING pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence." 2 Pe 1:3 NASB. And, "He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?" Rom 8:32 NASB.

There is a framework from which I look at prayer and its results.

1. The wages of sin is death. So no matter how much I pray for healing, either for myself or others, this law is operative & that it will not disappear until sin is done away with. Even if healing comes, we will still die anyway.

2. God will never violate the human will/power of choice. I can pray for someone's conversion all I want, but ultimately it is that person's choice whether to respond positively or negatively to the wooing of the Holy Spirit which is the only thing He can do.

3. Most problems people get into are self-inflicted which cannot be instantaneously reversed.

4. We are not blessed with the long range view of things, so we often ask for things that in the long run are not in anyone's best interest.

5. And as Jesus told James' & John's mother, we don't know what we are asking for, and as James said, we often ask to indulge our own selfish desires.

Got to go to the hospital for now.

Gerry

[Clio]

I think you summed up prayer quite neatly Gerry.

One thing more I have come to understand, is that I must trust Abba Father's will for me... no matter how far outside my comfort zone it takes me.

And I must also trust that He truly knows each and every heart. That being said, I stand heartily with you in stating that Abba Father will never abrogate free will in the subject of salvation, so what makes us think He will do so on any lesser subject we may choose to include in our prayers.

Another concept helpful in assessing answered prayer, is that we are called to sow... not to reap the harvest. The harvest remains until the Holy Reapers do their work separating the wheat and the tares.

We may never know the results of our witness, until the very end. And many of us pray for loved ones to be saved. I wonder what my husband will think when he reads the annals in the heavenly library and comes to the pages where I repeatedly plead with the authority of a wife, "whatever it takes Jesus for our family to be whole before Abba Father's throne".

It has taken a tremendous amount for True Jesus to get the attention of some in my family.

Clio