So much of the time when I pray, in my head I’m picturing how I think God should answer my prayer. I understand that sometimes God says no, but if he says yes, I always assume it will match my mental picture. Growing up I prayed a lot for my parents. I prayed that God would make my Dad a Christian so that he and my mom would have a good marriage. And I clung so hard to that vision that I didn’t even recognize an answered prayer until last night.
My Dad is now a Christian.
He finally accepted Christ last summer while he was in a recovery program with Alcoholics Anonymous. I’m sure he felt like he’d hit rock bottom, and I am so glad that Jesus was there with him, because his life was about to get drastically worse. Over the course of the last six months, my dad has been stripped, Job-style, of almost everything he’s ever depended upon to get him through life. Looking at it, I see that God will bring great good from it because He’s teaching Dad to depend solely upon Him rather than his old worldly crutches. He now has almost nothing of his own or of the world from which to derive his personal value or the will to continue. He has told me many times lately how he just does not know what his purpose is or what he’s supposed to do now.
Not until last night did it hit me that God had answered the most fervent prayer of my childhood. My Dad is a Christian. I didn’t see it because I just knew that after my dad became a Christian and began growing more godly, that my parents’ marriage would naturally improve and that they’d work things out. For some reason (perhaps my youth), it never occurred to me that my parents’ marriage could be wrecked and my strong, capable dad reduced to a raw, bleeding soul before he became a Christian. And yet God answered my prayer. He always answers prayer.
I just need to stop limiting Him in how He chooses to do so.
Posted on March 5th, 2007 by Dove
Filed under: Learning
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