Prayer is the power tool for Christians to communicate to the Lord. Prayer is also a humbling way for us to acknowledge our dependency to God. Undoubtedly, we can lay our worries to God because even when we are faithless, He faithfully promised to take care of us. The Bible tells us in 2 Timothy 2:13, “If we are faithless, He remains faithful for He cannot deny Himself” and I Peter 5:7 says, “Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you.”
Let’s be honest, praying to God is really the easy part, but when we don’t experience the immediate change in our situations and/or circumstances it can get a little complicated, annoying, and uncomfortable.
I know I am not the only one to get upset and irritated with God. It’s totally human to feel some kind of way when we believe we are not getting what we faithfully prayed for.
In 2 Corinthians 12:8-9 Paul plead (prayed) to God three times and God didn’t change his circumstance. Check out what happened; “Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.” Ok, if that were me, my first response would have been….huh????
Let’s be clear, after Paul’s spiritual encounter aka conversion, Paul became a faithful man, but He was still a man. We don’t know what this metaphorical thorn was, but we do know that it generated more than mere annoyance; it generated great agony corresponding to the glory of what Paul had seen in the highest heaven. So when I place my feet in Paul’s sandals, I can see where God’s decision not to remove the thorn would have been frustrating, heart breaking, and disappointing.
However, though God didn’t change Paul’s circumstances, He changed him. He said this in verse 10, “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses [the thorn], so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
Perhaps, Paul saw two ways forward. The Lord could (1) remove the thorn, and Paul could get on with life and ministry, or (2) leave the thorn, and Paul would be forever crippled and slowed in life and ministry. The Lord responded with yet a third option: leave the thorn, but give Paul grace. And for Paul’s life and ministry, this would net out as taking Paul places in terms of divine power he could never have attained otherwise. This was and is God’s undisclosed strategy for Paul and for all of His people.
I don’t know what you have prayed for God to change in your life, but I want to encourage you to remember two things: 1.) God knows what He is doing (Isaiah 55:8-9) and 2.) Prayer may not change your circumstances, but it will change you!
4GIVEN 