Prayer Column - January 2020

Did you get what you wanted?

Not just for Christmas, but in response to your heartfelt prayers? Did God answer? Did he cause things to happen the way you felt he should, or thought he had promised?

• Yes – then give him thanks (and ask for more!)
• No – praise him for his greater plan, yet to be revealed
• Don’t know – keep praying: patient, alert, watchful, trusting

Consider: what was written in former days was written for our instruction (Ro 15:4), and the prophecies of the coming Messiah (eg, Unto us a child is born – Is 9:6), which we have just celebrated, were given 700+ years before the event. And all that time people like Simeon and Anna (Lk 2:22ff) had been praying all their lives for his coming. Let that give us confidence for our own praying. God’s promises are rock-solid sure, but they take time to come to fruition. And not only time but prayer: long, devoted, faithful prayer; from the prominent and the hidden, from the likes of you and me, together and alone. Wasn’t Jesus worth all the wait?

So what do you want? What do you long for? What blessings do you feel would be right, which God should confer on the world (or yourself), which he has indeed promised, and for which you feel called to pray? Then pray for them, alone and with others – neither take rest nor give God any rest until he brings those promised blessings into being. And remain alert to the Spirit’s guidance, watchful for God’s answers in unexpected and unimaginable ways, and perhaps through unlikely people.

Roy Lorrain-Smith

A prayer for each week

Beneficent Lord, blessing us all, richly and lavishly, thank you for all we have received, and please may we have more of what you plan for us. Amen.

Sovereign Lord, who knows best and always does best, thank you for calling us to faith in you, and please lead us in the best way we can go. Amen.

Long-term Lord, unhurried in your great plans, yet attentive to each of our prayers, please give us faith to ask for what you show us to be right. Amen.

Eternal Lord, please show us how to pray, and what for, and to persevere, watchfully, able see and welcome your answers, whenever they come. Amen.

Your own prayers