YOUR WILL IS MY WILL
34 out of 43
I don't like to ask God for things. I
feel that God has already given me so much more than I could ever
deserve, so it seems rather ungrateful for me to ask for even more.
A supplication prayer suggests that I am unsatisfied and discontent
with what He has already given me. But I claim that I don't need
anything except God, and I don't want anything except to see
His will be
done. I have been in a relationship with God for five years now,
and I have only prayed 48 supplication prayers. For 5 of them I am
still waiting to see if God will answer them. But out of the other 43,
God answered 33 of them and partially answered 2 others. And some of
them were so
remarkable that they satisfied my definition of "miracle"!
The first time I ever asked God for anything was about four months after our relationship began. One night, I received a desparate phone call from a very good friend of mine. She was a single mother who had just discovered that she was pregnant again, and she didn't know what to do. Then the next morning, she called again, even more distressed, because she was frightened by a number of disturbing physical problems she was experiencing. When we hung up, she went to the doctor, and I submitted my first supplication prayer to God. I asked God to do whatever He thought was best, but to please let my friend be okay. And the outcome was probably the best way to solve both of her problems: She had a miscarriage.
My second supplication prayer was for a friend who was diagnosed with
brain cancer in October of 2005. I asked for God to heal her
completely, with no lingering physical effects. At the time, I didn't
realize how badly the odds were against that happening. Well, my
friend proved to be in the small minority. After undergoing brain
surgery
multiple times, she returned home in the Spring, and less than a year
after that, her recovery was complete when the doctor permitted her to
drive a car again. Today she is perfectly healthy. It's true that
she believes she still has mental problems, as she gets tired
during the day, and she has trouble remembering things and
concentrating. But these are symptoms of anyone in their 30s, and if
she thinks she has it worse than other
people, I believe it's merely psychological. In any event, she no
longer complains about those things anymore.
However, she did have some very unfortunate nonphysical side effects
that I hadn't considered when I made my prayer. She lost her job, all
of her friends abandoned her, and she plunged into debt. But God seems
to have extended my request without me even asking. In 2007, she got a
much better job than the one she had before, and later that year, she
was promoted! That enabled her to pay off her debts. And, in June,
2007, this girl who was so lonely 12 months earlier got married! I
would say that my prayer was completely answered and then some.
My relationship with God had lasted two and a half years before I prayed my third supplication prayer: In my job, we charge our hours to the
different projects we work on, like lawyers do. But in the middle of
December, 2006, one
of my projects ended, so I suddenly found myself with only one project,
and it only covered 40% of my time. I immediately made sure my group
lead knew I needed to find work, as it was his job to make sure
everybody in his group was fully covered. I expected that this problem
wouldn't last too long. In the meantime, I "borrowed" hours from my one
project, intending to pay them back when I got a new project. But weeks
passed, and my group lead didn't find any
work for me. I kept meeting with him periodically, and I was doing my
own job hunting too,
speaking with over twenty people about my problem. And meanwhile, I was
sinking
deeper and deeper in debt to my one project.
After six weeks of this, I was terribly frustrated.
It was clear that I was unable to solve this problem on my own. These
are the times, I was told, when I'm supposed to solicit God for his
help. So I finally decided to bite the bullet and pray to God to help
me. I requested that I would have a project by the following Monday,
which
would be the beginning of week #8. Immediately I felt surprisingly
confident that my prayer was going to be answered.
Throughout the week, I told people about my prayer and how certain I was that I would
have new work by Monday. And lo and behold, on Friday, at 4:30pm (close
of business), I
was hired to work on a new project that would cover the necessary 60%
of my time.
If that wasn't enough to call it a miracle, there's
more. But first, you'll need to read this to understand why pennies and
dimes are very important to me. So when I emptied my pockets that
Friday evening, I found three pennies in
my front left pocket. This was extremely unusual. It's true that I often
put pennies and dimes in my pocket at the beginning
of the day. But three pennies and no dimes in my front left pocket was
inexplicable, because:
1. I almost always put the pennies and dimes in my back left pocket.
2. Usually, I
carried the same number of dimes and pennies. with one penny and one
dime being the most common.
3. On the rare occasions when I chose unequal numbers of
dimes and pennies, it was almost always more dimes than
pennies.
4. On the very rare occasions when I carried more pennies than
dimes, the difference was only 1. I couldn't remember ever having two more
pennies than dimes.
But on the evening of the day that my prayer was answered, there were three pennies and no dimes in my front-left pocket. The following day, I wore a different pair of pants. And at the end of the day, in my back-left pocket, I found four pennies and no dimes. So it is clear to me that God was telling me He had answered my prayer. It was not a coincidence.
At about this time, one of my Bible study groups looked at verses like:
Naturally, I was highly
skeptical about such incredible guarantees. Then, later, I learned that God actually wants
us to
ask Him for things, because our prayers give Him opportunities to
demonstrate His power and receive glory. (See this parable.) So, I decided to give it a
try. In 2007, when God still had a perfect record in answering my
prayers, I made nine supplication prayers, eight of which were
answered. But four of them were relatively small, and can be explained psychologically, because they depended only on me. For example: I had had an appointment with my
dentist, in which she repeatedly asked me not to swallow while she was working on me. But
try as I might, I was unable to comply. I couldn't help it. So, a
couple of weeks later, as I was driving to the dentist again, I asked
God to keep me from swallowing. Well, as it turned out, this
appointment was much shorter than I expected, and I didn't swallow at
all. However, I don't see the need to invoke God
in order to explain this, because it was enough for me to truly believe
that my prayer would be answered. After all, this one was completely
under my control.
One day, I drove to a meeting that started at 3:00. But I left my home
late --- very
late. I gave myself only 30 minutes to make a 45-minute drive. So, it
was unlikely that I would make it to the meeting by 3:00, but not
inconceivable. If the traffic was good, so I could maintain a 69 mph
speed on the highway, I could make up the time.
The traffic on Route 495 wasn't too bad, although I couldn't get up to
69 mph. Fortunately, I only had to stay on 495 for a couple of exits. The highway
that would take me most of the way was Route 66. That was where it was
important to go fast.
When I first got on Route 66, the traffic
was about the same as on Route 495. I was thinking that it needed to
get better soon if I was going to meet my goal. But it didn't get better. It
got worse. The cars slowed down. And then they slowed down some more.
And then everyone stopped. We weren't moving at all. We weren't crawling.
It wasn't stop and go traffic. It was a parking lot. As far ahead
as I could see, all of the brake lights were on. And the digital clock
in my car said 2:45. It was at this point that I resigned. Clearly, I wasn't going to make it to my meeting on time.
While I sat there, I started think about the Bible verses
that claimed that God would answer every prayer. I still couldn't
believe that the
Lord would really answer each and every prayer of supplication. But
while I was sitting there in a parking lot, I thought, "What harm
could it do to ask?" After all, the worst that could happen was that I
would get to my meeting late, and that was surely going to happen
anyway. So I said, "Dear Lord, how would you like to put on a show and
impress me yet again. Of course, it's not really a big deal. It
wouldn't be devastating if you didn't do it. But just for
fun, I'll ask
anyway: Please make me arrive at the meeting by the time that the clock
in my car says 3:00, if you will. It
would certainly be unbelievable if you did it. But if you did, I would
tell people about it, bringing you as much glory as I can. And, I claim that it is in your holy name I pray, whatever that means.
Amen."
Now I want to take a moment here to say something to you,
the reader. You probably think that I wouldn't be telling this story if
God didn't answer my prayer. Well, don't be so sure. I think you'll
find the ending of this little story to be quite surprising...
So, when I completed my prayer, immediately, the traffic began
moving... NOT! No, we all remained completely stopped. And as the
minutes passed, I found myself feeling a little disappointed that God wasn't going to answer my prayer.
When we finally started moving, the clock read 2:49.
Soon we were moving at a good speed, though I never did get up to
69 mph. As I was exiting the highway, I glanced at the clock: 2:53.
That surprised me, as it had felt like significantly more than
four minutes. But it wasn't good enough. I still had to get
through a few stop lights, and then there were the little streets with
the slow speed limits. And by the way, I had never before gone to
this destination without making at least one wrong turn.
The
first couple of lights were green, but then I reached the light where I
needed to make a left turn, and it was red. As I waited for the light
to change, I noticed that the clock said 2:58. I smiled, thinking, "Well,
technically, it's not over yet..."
Then I got on the 25 mph roads.
And, although I could have gone faster, I didn't go over 34 mph. I
really didn't think it was worth it to risk getting a ticket. Then I
reached an intersection where I wasn't sure which way to turn. So I
made my best guess and crossed my fingers. And all the while, I kept
glancing at the clock. Every time I looked, it still said 2:58. I
didn't know what to make of that. Was the clock broken?
When I made the last turn to
enter the home stretch, the clock said 2:59. For the first time since I prayed, I started to think that I
might actually get there on time after all. But it was still unlikely. I had a good distance to go on
this road, and I refused to drive too fast.
Finally, I reached my destination and turned to the right to enter the
parking lot. I looped around, stopped in a parking space, turned off
the car, and looked at the clock.
I was stunned!
I was amazed!!!
It was absolutely unbelievable!!!
3:00.
It was one of the most incredible things I have ever witnessed. It certainly qualified as
a miracle. Now, I view those Bible verses with an entirely different
perspective.
So after parking the car, I entered the building. However, everybody
else was late, so the meeting didn't actually begin until 3:45. (By the
way, that's the surprise ending that I was referring to earlier.)
Oh, and as a side note, several months later, it took me an hour and
fifteen minutes to get to that destination.
On Christmas Eve, 2007, I lost my cell phone --- not an uncommon
occurrence. The next morning, I began looking for it. There really
weren't that many places it could be. After all, I had made a phone
call at 4:30pm the previous day, and then I couldn't find it when I
went to bed at 11:00pm that night, and I hadn't gone anywhere between
those two times. But I looked everywhere I could think of and I
couldn't find it. I even looked in my car, which was ridiculous, since
I hadn't gone anywhere near the car the previous night. But while
I was in the car, I thought of one more place the phone might be.
Sometimes when I sit in my La-Z-Boy chair, things slip out of my
pockets and fall down into the sides of the seat cushion. I was sure it
had to be there, because I had already checked everyplace else. But before I went back indoors, I asked God to let the
phone be in the chair. I figured this would be a pretty easy prayer to
answer.
First I checked under the chair to see if the phone had slipped all the
way through to the floor. It wasn't there. Next I checked the right
side of the cushion, and as I was doing that, I realized how silly this
was, because I always keep the phone in my left
pocket. So I checked the left side. Nothing. But I don't remember
being disappointed at that moment. I just remember having a desire to
to see God succeed, so I checked the back of the cushion. Afterwards I realized how silly it was to look there. I had
never checked the back of the cushion before. I can't even imagine how
anything could fall in there, because when I'm sitting in the chair,
I'm blocking that area. And yet, near the middle of the back of the
cushion, there was my phone!
It seems to me that
God often does this sort of thing. After all, if the phone had been on
the left side of the cushion, it would be hard to claim that
God did it, because my phone had fallen there several times before. But for it to be
in the back of the cushion forces me to think that something unusual was
going on.
One day I lost my wallet. Yes, I do lose things a lot. But they usually
turn up again eventually. However, "eventually" sometimes means more
than a month. I certainly couldn't get by for a month without my credit
cards and driver's license. I was okay with driving without a
license, being very careful not to get a police officer's
attention. But in three days, I was planning to go to a car dealer and
possibly buy a car. I expected I would need my wallet to do
that.
So I looked in the places where I usually
keep my wallet: the top section in my backpack, my nightstand, the
pockets of the pants I had worn the day before, etc. But I didn't find
it in any of the usual places.
Next I began looking in unusual places. Despite the fact that I thought it was too large to fall out of my
pocket while I was sitting down, I looked around the cushion of my
La-Z-Boy chair, my car, and the other places I had sat down in the last
24 hours.
When I didn't find it, and I couldn't
think of anywhere else to look, I realized that my only option was to
wait for it to turn up. But I would need to start replacing my credit
cards and driver's license before long.
The
following morning I still couldn't think of any other places it might
be. So when I was praying, I decided to ask God to show me where my
wallet was before I went to the car dealer in two days.
Six hours later I found it in the front section of my backpack.
A couple of weeks later, I lost my cell phone again. (Okay, okay. Leave
me alone!) As I was retracing my steps and searching for it, I was
thinking, "Why don't I just go ahead and ask God to help me? That would
save me some time and effort." But it seems to me that it's important
to search for it until I give up, because if I asked God to lead me to
my cell phone, and then I found it in an obvious place, it wouldn't
seem all that amazing. It would be difficult to conclude that God was
even involved at all. So I searched and searched and searched. And when
I couldn't think of anyplace else, I sat down and submitted my request
to God. I asked Him to lead me to it by Friday night. (When I prayed,
it was Thursday morning, and I had lost the phone on Wednesday.)
Less than an hour later, I found out where my cell phone was, and I went to get it back later that day.
Then, about a week later, on Tuesday, I lost my cell phone and my car
keys. (Perhaps God was hiding my things to convince me that He wanted
me to pray for things more often.) Again, I insisted on searching
everywhere I could think of. Eventually I found the car keys under my
La-Z-Boy chair. And just in case I might try to take credit for finding
them myself, God left evidence that He was responsible: Next to the
cell phone were two pennies. (I explain the significance of pennies here.)
However, my cell phone was still missing, and I couldn't think of
anyplace else to look for it. After more than a full day passed, I
finally decided to ask God for my phone. But this time I thought I
would try to bring more glory to God when He answered my prayer. I
asked God to lead me to my cell phone, but not to do it today
(Thursday) or tomorrow (Friday). Instead, I requested that He lead me
to my phone on Saturday, Sunday, or Monday. My thought was that, after
the phone hadn't turned up for three or four days, it was rather
unlikely that I would find it any time soon. (For example, three years
after Jesus ascended, people probably thought that he was likely to
return within a year. But now that he has been gone for nearly two
thousand years, we aren't really expecting him to return this
year.)
Well anyway, less than an hour later, I
learned where it was. And I got it back on Friday morning. So although
I got what I wanted (the phone), I guess technically this has to count
as an unanswered prayer. I have decided to count it as a half-answered
prayer.
I was planning to attend a wedding, so I bought a greeting card. But on
the morning of the wedding, I couldn't find it. The last time I had
seen it, I was dropping it into my backpack, but I checked all of the
pockets and couldn't find it. After searching throughout my hotel room,
I decided I must have taken the card out when I was hanging out in my
cousin's hotel room the night before. Unfortunately, she was out.
So I left her a voice mail message asking her to let me into her
room. Then I prayed for God to give me the card before 3:00pm, the time
when I had to leave for the wedding. Then I sat down and started
working on my laptop computer.
Well, as the clock
approached 3:00, I still hadn't heard from my cousin. So I went to my
aunt and uncle's hotel room, because they had adjoining rooms with my
cousin. But unfortunately, the door connecting the two rooms was
locked. So there was nothing more I could do. Oh well. Chalk it up as
an unanswered prayer.
So I told my aunt and uncle
that I was heading off to the wedding and I'd see them there. But
my aunt said, "Why are you going so early?" "Early? It's 3:00." "No it
isn't." Soon I figured out that the clock in my hotel room was fast. It
was actually 2:15pm. The story wasn't over yet.
I
returned to my hotel room and pulled a book out of my backpack. I note
that, if my clock had been correct, I would have continued working on
the computer until 3:00pm. There is practically no chance that I would
have opened that book. So I wouldn't have found the card hiding inside
that book. God had answered a prayer for me after I had decided the
prayer was unanswered.
The next time I lost something, it was at a huge amusement park. And
thing I lost was... everything! Earlier, before playing a game of
physical skill, I had emptied my pockets into a bag. That bag had both
of my wallets, all of my keys, my cell phone, and some other things.
And I only had about five minutes to find it before I needed to return
to meet with my friends, who would be ready to go home.
Well this time, I didn't deliberate about whether or not I should make
a supplication prayer. I quickly asked God to lead me to the bag in the
next five minutes and then began retracing my steps. I did find the
bag, but it wasn't actually on my path. Somebody must have moved it.
Thank goodness they didn't steal it.
When I was on vacation at the World Boardgaming Championships, a gaming
extravaganza, my car key inadvertently disappeared. It is not a good
thing to lose your car key when you are 300 miles away from home,
particularly if your spare kes is at said home. Quite inconvenient.
I realized that my key was lost on Wednesday night, and by Thursday
morning, I decided that I needed to pray for this one. If I couldn't
find my key, I was going to have serious problems, particularly since
it was an electronic key. So I asked for God to give me my car key back by noon on Sunday, which was when I was planning to head home.
So then I tore my hotel room apart, scouring every inch of the floor. I
found a couple of interesting things and a couple of not-so-interesting
things, but no keys. Next, I went to the hotel registration desk to ask
if anybody had turned in my key. I thought this was reasonably likely,
because I had spent the previous day gaming in various hotel conference
rooms. But, no. No car key.
Much as I trusted
that God would return my key to me, I needed to cover my bases. The
process of getting a replacement electronic key was bound to be
difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. So if I was going to go home
in just three days, I needed to get the process started. So I called a
couple of roadside assistance numbers and got a bit of a runaround. But
I didn't find this to be stressful and frustrating as I usually would.
I suppose that the confidence I had in God answering my prayer made it
all much less important. I mean, it would be irresponsible for me to do
nothing, but at the same time, it didn't feel like it was really
necessary for me to succeed. I kind of thought that God was impeding my
progress so that I wouldn't start spending money before he gave me my
keys back.
But the next morning, Friday morning,
I checked for the keys at the hotel registration desk, to no avail. At
this point, I realized that I should have given God an earlier
deadline, since I was going to need to begin committing my money pretty
soon. After another slew of phone calls, I determined that I needed to
get my car towed to the local Toyota dealer (which was sure to be
expensive), find out what my key code was from the Toyota dealer at
home, get the local dealer to make me a new key with that code (which
would undoubtably be very expensive), and then somehow get the
replacement key and my car back into my possession (which would cost
even more money). I called the Toyota dealer at home, got passed around
from one person to another for a little while, and eventually got the
key code. Then I called the local dealer, but... their parts department
had just closed! I was less than five minutes late. If I had called
five minutess earlier, I would surely have given them a credit card
number. But as it was, I had to wait until Saturday morning to start
spending.
And Saturday morning, naturally, my key was at the hotel registration desk! I love You, God!!!
I took my dogs to the leashless dog park where we stayed for about an hour. Then when we got home, I reached into my pocket to find my house keys... and they weren't there. What else is new, huh? There was a hole in the bottom of that pocket, but it was too small for the keys to fit through. The obvious culprit was the plastic bags in that pocket. I figured that the keys flew out when I pulled one of those bags out of my pocket to pick up after the dogs. That meant my keys must have been on the ground of the dog park somewhere.
I didn't want to go back to the dog park, as it was a fifteen-minute drive each way. And I wouldn't have worried about my house keys, because I have copies of them. But on that keychain, there were also keys to a secure site where I work, and those keys would not be easy to replace. In addition, I had been planning to go to that site later in the day. So I really needed those keys.
So I put the dogs back in the car and drove out to the dog park. On the way there, I thought about asking God to give me my keys. It was really a pointless prayer. I mean where else could they be? I had them when I locked the door of my home. Then I drove to the park. Then I drove back. And that's when I discovered the keys were missing. So they must be somewhere on the ground of that park. The ground of the dog park is nice and flat, and my keychain had a bright blue rectangle attached to it. I really didn't need God's help this time, did I? Well, I finally decided that, since finding the keys was so very important, I should play it safe. So I asked God to lead me to my keys before I gave up and left the dog park.
When we arrived, I started walking inside the park next to the fence, because, when we were there before, I had walked round and round the edge of the park. I hadn't gone in the middle of the park at all, so my keys had to be somewhere near the fence. Based on this logic, I started getting concerned when I completed the loop without finding my keys. But I moved inward a few feet and started walking around the park again. And while I was walking, I was talking to God. "You never seem to want to make it easy, do you? I mean, would it be so bad if I just found the keys where I expected to find them?"
After the second walk around the park, things were looking dim. But based on past experience, God seems to like making me think He is going to fail me so that He can surprise me when He does answer my prayer. So, not knowing what else to do, I moved in another few feet and started walking around the park a third time.
About halfway around the third loop, I was struggling to figure out where else the keys might be. I thought about that hole in my pocket. I supposed that, if the keys oriented themselves just right, they might be able to slip through that hole. But then they would just fall on the ground, so I should still have found them. And as I was thinking about the keys falling through the pocket, down my leg, and onto the ground, I was looking at my leg. When my eyes reached the bottom of my pants, I stopped. I was wearing sweatpants, and the bottom of the leg was elastic, so it was hugging my leg. No way, I thought as I reached down and pulled my keys out of the leg of my pants.
The thing is, I would have found my keys anyway when I took off my pants to go to bed. It really didn't matter if I couldn't find them while I was at still the dog park, and God knew it. But I had prayed to find them before leaving the park, so God made it happen. But if I had chosen a deadline two days away (which I had considered doing), would I have left the park before finding my keys?
It had been quite a while since I had made a supplication prayer when I lost my work badge. I'm usually so careful with my badge, so I rarely lose it. I always put it in the same pocket in my backpack, a pocket within a pocket, and I clip it to the side of pocket. But on this particular morning, in my car on the way to work, there was nothing clipped to the side of the pocket. I checked every pocket in the backpack and came up with nothing. I would have to get a temporary badge, so I wouldn't be able to get into the secure lab unless somebody opened the door for me. About a week before this, I worked for a few hours at the lab in the middle of the night. Without my badge, I couldn't do that. Fortunately, I wasn't planning to work late on this particular day.
Losing my badge reminded me of my supplication prayers, since I had prayed to find lost things so many times. So, there in the parking lot of my office, I prayed for God to return my badge for me before I needed it to enter the building on the following day. That was a rather tight deadline, but I felt my need for the badge was that great. And, I reasoned, it certainly wasn't too hard for the LORD to grant my request in just 1 day.
Well, the next morning arrived right on schedule, and I found myself in my office parking lot again, ready to go in to work. But where was my badge? I checked in the car around the from passenger seat, because sometimes, in haste, I leave my badge on that seat with the intention of putting it away at the next red light. I looked in the sides of the seat, the door pocket, on the floor, behind the seat, under the seat, ... no luck. So I checked the areas around the driver's seat. I kept searching, refusing to give up, not so much because I wanted my badge so badly, but because I wanted God to fulfill my request. But eventually, I had covered every place that the badge might be as well as some places that it couldn't be. (I even thought about looking under the hood, but I decided that would be too ridiculous.)
Dejected, I walked into the building and went to the security desk to request a temporary badge to use for the day. But when I reached the desk, I decided to check my backpack again. This was clearly hopeless, but I just couldn't give up. So there, with my backpack on the security desk, I emptied each pocket and ran my hand along the bottom. And when I pulled my jacket out of the second-to-last pocket, my badge fell out on to the counter. I was so thrilled, and I was praising God with thanksgiving. LORD you are so faithful.
Later that same day, I lost my wallet. This was much more serious. And I was going to need the ID card in my wallet in just a couple of hours when I went out to the church. So I prayed for God to give me back my wallet before I left for church. And He did. Two for two in a single day. Isn't the LORD great?
To
date, God has answered 79% (34/43) of my prayers, and I want to help
Him maintain a good record, so I'm still quite selective in
deciding when it is time to make a supplication prayer. I
know somebody who claims that he prays for a good parking space each time he goes to the
mall. But as for me, I'd rather take a bad parking space and walk to
the mall. I just don't think that's important enough to bother
God.
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