What do expect?

Passage Ezra 8:21-23:
²¹ And there by the Ahava Canal, I gave orders for all of us to fast and humble ourselves before our God. We prayed that he would give us a safe journey and protect us, our children, and our goods as we traveled. ²² For I was ashamed to ask the king for soldiers and horsemen to accompany us and protect us from enemies along the way. After all, we had told the king, “Our God’s hand of protection is on all who worship him, but his fierce anger rages against those who abandon him.” ²³ So we fasted and earnestly prayed that our God would take care of us, and he heard our prayer.

What do you expect to happen when you pray? No really think about that questions, What do expect to happen when you pray?

Nothing, sometimes something, do you expect God to answer? Why, why not?

I was really challenged by a guy speaking at a meeting of Pastors that i was at this morning. He was challenging those of us who work for churches, christian charities etc about PRAYER. He was pretty hard with us and told us that for many of us prayer can just be words, prayer becomes a bit of our job. He said we know how to pray nice prayers, but he said how many of you believe that God will answer? He said how passionate are your prayers, do you really want God to answer?

I want to be a person who sees God answering prayers in amazing ways, I don’t just want to tell stories about the stuff I’ve heard God has done but I want to be able to say look at the stuff God is doing, not to show off but because I believe God wants to do some exciting, crazy, scary, fantastic stuff with and through us.

The passage from Ezra is about a group of people returning to their land after they had been exiled (kind of held hostage) in another country. Re-read verse 23, what do you notice? For me it reminds me that God answers the prayers of people who really want something. To be earnest in prayer means continually asking, being honest, being open with God, really showing God how much you want this thing. Real prayer involves action on our part, often not just a one off thought but coming back to God and saying again and again this is what we want you to do, the people here even give up food to show God how serious they are.

And you know what God answers there prayer and God will answer yours to. Sometimes it will be very obvious, sometimes we may not understand how he has answered and sometimes we may not see the answer for a while but he will answer.

What is your prayer today? What is it that you need God to specifically do for you, your family, your friend. Tell him and expect an answer.

Lewis