Praying to God is the most basic practice for us Christians. However, when we pray to God in the face of illness, problems in the home or setbacks in our careers, most of the time God doesn’t listen to and grant our prayers. So how can we pray in accordance with God’s will? Please read a sister’s experience below.
During a great flu epidemic, the sister’s child caught the flu. In order for him to be cured, the sister prayed to God, “O God! Now the flu is raging, and my child has taken it and has inflamed tonsils. I beg You to protect him. If he becomes seriously ill, I’ll have to stay at home to look after him. This way, my spiritual devotions and my service in the church will be affected. God, please give me a way out.” She had thought that God would grant her prayer, but after taking medicine and recuperating at home for a week, her child didn’t get better. Seeing that, the sister felt very confused: “Why doesn’t God protect my child and make him soon well again? Why isn’t God listening to my prayer? What’s going on?”
One day, the sister saw these words of God, “However, there are people who forget their place as soon as they begin to pray; they insist that God grant them something, heedless of whether it accords with His will, and, as a result, their prayers wither in the praying. When you pray, whatever it is you are asking for in your heart, whatever it is you long for; or, perhaps, there is an issue you wish to address, but into which you have no insight, and you are asking that God give you wisdom or strength, or that He enlighten you—whatever your request, you must be sensible in phrasing it. If you are not, and kneel down and say, ‘God, give me strength; let me see my nature; I beg You to work; I beg You for this and that; I beg You to make me such-and-such….’ That ‘beg’ of yours has a coercive quality; it is an attempt to put pressure on God, to compel Him to do what you want—whose terms you have unilaterally decided in advance, no less. As the Holy Spirit sees it, what effect could such a prayer have, when you have already set the terms and decided what you want to do?” Contemplating God’s words, the sister suddenly realized why God hadn’t listened to her prayer for her child. It was because when praying, she took the wrong position and didn’t seek God’s will or act as God required, but instead she demanded God to cure her child. Such prayer carried an element of force and she was trying to make God do things according to her intentions. This prayer revealed her arrogance and it was too unreasonable. Moreover, when praying to God, she already predetermined that thing, firmly thinking that since she prayed, God would certainly help her. How could she expect God to listen to such an irrational prayer? God’s words say, “At the same time as pursuing God, man does not treat God as God. Man has always tried to make deals with God, ceaselessly making demands of Him, and even pressing Him at every step, trying to take a mile after being given an inch. At the same time as trying to make deals with God, man also argues with Him, and there are even people who, when trials befall them or they find themselves in certain situations, often become weak, passive and slack in their work, and full of complaints about God. From the time when man first began to believe in God, he has considered God to be a cornucopia, a Swiss Army knife, and he has considered himself to be God’s greatest creditor, as if trying to get blessings and promises from God were his inherent right and obligation, while God’s responsibility were to protect and care for man, and to provide for him. Such is the basic understanding of ‘belief in God’ of all those who believe in God, and such is their deepest understanding of the concept of belief in God.”
In contrast with God’s words, the sister recognized how selfish and greedy she was—her belief in God was solely to obtain blessings and she had all sorts of extravagant requests for God. As a believer in God, she should seek God’s will in the matters she encountered, and practice according to God’s words to satisfy God, but she always wanted to gain grace and blessings from God, asking God to satisfy her desires. She saw she was so unreasonable. She also reflected on herself and realized that as she believed in God, although she performed her duty and expended for God, there were many impurities within her and she always relied on her profit-driven satanic nature to make deals with God. She saw she was truly too selfish, despicable, crooked, and deceitful. God inspects people’s hearts and minds; when she prayed for her own interests with the intention of being blessed, God didn’t listen. This enabled her to see that God’s disposition is holy and righteous and thus He doesn’t allow people to cheat or exploit Him. From all this, she saw that if she didn’t let go of the motive of having faith to gain blessings and if her starting point was wrong, then no matter how she prayed, it wouldn’t be after God’s heart.
Afterward, the sister saw another passage of God’s words, “You seldom pray genuinely, and there are some who do not even know how. Actually, to pray is mainly to say what is in your heart, as if you were speaking as you normally do. However, there are people who forget their place as soon as they begin to pray; they insist that God grant them something, heedless of whether it accords with His will, and, as a result, their prayers wither in the praying. When you pray, whatever it is you are asking for in your heart, whatever it is you long for; or, perhaps, there is an issue you wish to address, but into which you have no insight, and you are asking that God give you wisdom or strength, or that He enlighten you—whatever your request, you must be sensible in phrasing it. … One should pray with a seeking, submissive heart. When something has befallen you, for instance, and you are not sure how to handle it, you might say, ‘God! I do not know what to do about this. I wish to satisfy You in this matter, and to seek Your will. May Your will be done. I wish only to do as You will, not as I will. You know that all human will is contrary to Yours, and resists You, and does not accord with the truth. I ask that You enlighten me, give me guidance in this matter, and let me not offend You….’ That is the appropriate tone for a prayer.” From God’s words, the sister understood. Praying in accordance with God’s will isn’t asking God to remove our difficulties or asking God to bless us to satisfy our desire for gaining blessings. Instead, when praying, we should stand in the position of a created being, seek God’s will with an obedient heart, and seek the truth that we should practice and enter into in difficult times so as to understand God’s demands. Only such prayer can be commended by God. The sister then thought of Job’s experience. When he encountered the temptations of Satan, his wealth was all taken away, his children came to unfortunate ends, and his whole body broke out in painful boils, but he didn’t speak sinfully, didn’t pray to God to take his suffering away, nor did he ask God to bestow wealth and children upon him again. Instead, he sought God’s will standing firmly in his place as a created being, submitted to God’s taking away from him, fell to the ground to praise God’s name, and ultimately stood witness for God and shamed Satan. It could be seen from this that Job was very rational. No matter how God tested him, he sought with all his heart, obeyed God’s orchestrations and arrangements, and didn’t have his own extravagant demands, and thus his prayers were approved by God. With all this in mind, the sister brightened up and thought to herself, “When praying, I shouldn’t make unreasonable demands of God any more, but instead should seek God’s intentions and act according to God’s will. Regardless of whether my child’s illness gets better or not, I’m willing to obey God’s orchestrations and arrangements.”
When the sister truly submitted to God, her child’s condition actually improved.
What the sister gained in praying enables me to have a path of practice. I believe that you will also know how to pray.
