What are YOU praying for?

In the Experiencing God book I am reading right now, Henry Blackaby talks about our prayers. He says we often pray and then go about our day and wonder why God doesn't answer. He challenges us to PAY ATTENTION. He prays and then watches, expectantly, for anything unusual that may indicate God's answer. So often we miss His answer because it is not what we expected.

I have been struggling with the idea lately that God isn't answering my prayers. It has seemed that He has, in fact, done just the opposite of what I am praying for.

So Sunday, I was sitting in church, listening to a good sermon on the church at Laodicea, and thinking about how good it is to get into the Word of God. Then I started thinking about how hungry I am for His Word. From there, I remembered a prayer I had offered up a few months back. I had asked God for a hunger and thirst for Him and His Word.

The next thing you know, my pastor implodes.

Fast forward a couple of months. Now I can hardly read or hear enough of what God has to say. I feel insatiable.

I started this year with the daily reading of Scripture intending to read it through this year. You know how that goes. By February, you hit Deuteronomy and forget it. But not me. Not this time. I am reading and listening to so much commentary that I don't believe I will make the whole thing in a year, but that's O.K. I am getting SO much out of it.

I had an epiphany in a much shorter time than it took me to write this. God answered my prayer! I am experiencing the hunger and thirst for Him and His Word I prayed for.

He certainly didn't do it in the way I expected or desired, but God used the current situation to send me straight to Him and His Word.

But isn't that just like God!?!

When He says His ways are higher than our ways, I always thought that meant His ways were just better. You know, the option we forgot about or didn't think was possible. But now I believe His ways are so much outside of our way of thinking that it's more like, "What the heck, God?" Then we SEE. He is answering prayer but because He is God, he orchestrates things in a way I cannot even see coming.

So I am not giving up on my prayers just because the answer seems to be not even in the realm of possibility. It may take years, but I believe God is God. He will bring about His will in His way in His timing. To me, it may look like He is sending things in the absolute wrong direction, but He's in charge!

A few weeks back, I was spending some serious time in prayer telling God how wrong everything was. How nothing was turning out right and nothing was going the way I assumed He intended for it to go. I so clearly heard Him respond in a very gentle way, "I'm taking care of it."

He's taking care of it. Whatever it is you are praying for, if it is within the will of God, He's taking care of it. It may not look like it, but don't give up. Keep praying in the direction you know He wants you to pray! Afterall He says in Luke 11:9: "So I say to you: [Keep] Ask[ing] and it will be given to you; [Keep] seek[ing] and you will find; [Keep] knock[ing] and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened."

What if we actually are getting the things we have asked for, but we don't even recognize it?

So, what are YOU praying for?