Hi all! We've reached Week 12! My friend David has written a reflection for us this week on his journey with prayer. David and I met when I spent some time out in Guatemala in 2018 which is where he was living at the time, working in an international school. As we discussed him writing a piece for Hope Hour, David pointed out to me that was six years ago which I am sure just can't be true. David is a Scottish Maths teacher, currently living in Romania, with an aim to visit every country in Europe before he moves to Asia later this year.
In David's words...
My cousin was recently diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer and, of course, the call went out for everyone to pray. Jesus told his disciples that “if you have faith and do not doubt… you can say to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and it will be done. If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.” [Matthew 21:21-22]. While we know that God is capable of restoring my cousin to complete health, having heard many stories of God’s miraculous healing in the past, we also know that sometimes He chooses not to. We believe that God always answers prayer, but we know that His answer is often ‘no’ or ‘not yet’.
I am grateful that Paul tells us about his thorn in the flesh in 2 Corinthians 12:7-9: “Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me, but He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’” It helps me keep the faith while dealing with my own ‘thorn’. I have prayed fervently for things in the past to which God replied ‘no’, and so now I generally only feel comfortable asking Him to do the things which He seems willing to do for every one of his children. That means I am happy to ask God to take away my cousin’s anxiety and fill her with peace, and joy, and patience; indeed to grow in her all the fruits of the Spirit and make her more like Jesus. To use this painful experience to bring about her ultimate good and use her testimony to bring glory to Himself. While I do thank God for the certain hope of ultimate healing, and an eternity with neither pain nor sorrow nor death, I don’t usually feel inclined to ask Him to heal people before the Resurrection.
One of the things I'm most looking forward to about life after the Resurrection is hearing from God exactly what He did in answer to my prayers, and hearing stories from others about what He did in answer to theirs. Meeting people I never met in this life who were impacted because I prayed for them and also meeting those whom God was able to bless because He said no to some of the things I asked for. I'm expecting it to be an eternity of discovery, making connections, and increasing in understanding. Every new revelation from God will help me better comprehend why things in this life had to be the way they were, and give me an unending string of new reasons to thank Him for everything He did and didn’t do, including all the things that I don’t appreciate now. And I’m realising that the more I pray in this life, the more cool stories I’m going to get to enjoy in the next... and I'm now starting to wonder if some of the most glorious stories we hear around the throne might begin with "do you remember asking me for this? Well, let me tell you why I said no..."
I know that God is at work in every situation and I’m trying to take that as encouragement to start praying for miracles again: big, crazy, wonderful things that I know He probably won’t do. Because either He will do it, which would be amazing, or I'll get to play an even bigger part in the greatest story ever told.
Thank you all so much for reading this story of God connecting with his people. Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
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Until next week,
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