Hannah Kerber

      Sometimes when we pray we don’t always feel like the Lord hears us and sometimes we are left hanging for a long time without any known answers from God.  I know from personal experience that it is hard to believe that the Lord hears our cries to Him when we don’t see any answers.  In fact I think it is very easy to lose trust in God and to believe that He is actually there for us when we don’t see Him in our lives!  I hope that this report will help you to see more clearly that the Lord does answer our prayers even when we don’t feel like He is listening!

      Let me summarize all I have said in the last paragraph.  We must wait and trust that the Lord will answer our prayers when the time is right!  We have no clue when our prayers will be answered. God is the only one who knows!  And we should believe that God knows what is best for us and wait on His timing for answers!!!!! Are you still with me on this? Good, I hope that you have had some time to think about what I have just said and I hope you have decided to trust in the Lords timing and to wait on Him! If you have than that’s great, you are on the right track but if you have haven’t yet than just hang in there, there is still a lot more to this than I have stated!

   You’re prayer has been answered and you feel very content!  You are glad that you waited on the Lord and that you had to wait for the Lord’s answer because you know now that the timing was perfect!!!!!  Is this you? If so than you have learned how waiting for the Lord to answer your prayers is always the best bet!  You are so happy that the Lord didn’t answer you right away and you are glad it took a while! That is what it feels like to have your prayers answered on God’s time! God’s time is not like people time! When we are on people time life gets so complicated because we are always changing our minds and changing how we feel about things! God’s time is different!  God knows how we are really feeling and He knows just what we need and when! We never need to second guess God’s timing like we do our own! How lucky are we to have a God who cares and knows so much about us that we would gladly trust Him to handle all our troubles and our desires! You see when we wait for God and have patience we can never go wrong there! Isaiah 40:31 says, “But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.” When I was little I wanted a friend so badly and I prayed to God about it.  We had moved to new house and I felt very lonely!  After waiting a while the Lord answered my prayer and a girl my age moved into the house right next to us!  She and I soon became best friends and we were for about 5 years!!!!!! The Lord answered my prayer for a friend when I was only 5 years old! Not only did he give me a friend my age but he gave me a best friend!  The Lord was good to me and I am very thankful that I had her for my childhood best friend!!!!  That was not the only time the Lord answered my prayers for a friend.  The Lord has given me a lot of different kinds of friends and I am thankful for all of them!

      Here are some true stories about people, from the Bible and from misc. sources on the internet, who have had their prayers answered by God! This is a short story I read on the internet about a foster mom who had her prayer answered in a store!  The foster mom prayed that her funds would be raised and her prayer was answered when a man, who was mysterious, went up to her in a store, after she prayed, and handed her a lot of money. The money would help her with her funds!  Here is another story I found on the internet about a couple who were trying to sell their house. The other homes that were in their neighborhood had been on the market for 6 months or more. They really needed to sell their house and they prayed to God about it.  They asked the Lord if He could send them a buyer for their home in a timely fashion!  They also asked the Lord to not allow their home to be occupied by people who were ungodly! Within three months their prayers were answered and they had two offers for their home.  The people who ended up buying their home were Christians!  Here is a small passage from the Bible where it shows the Lord answering the people’s prayers on behalf of Peter the apostle, “The night before Herod was to bring him to trial, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and sentries stood guard at the entrance.  Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell. He struck Peter on the side and woke him up. “Quick, get up!” he said, and the chains fell off Peter’s wrists. Then the angel said to him, “Put on your clothes and sandals.” And Peter did so. “Wrap your cloak around you and follow me,” the angel told him. Peter followed him out of the prison, but he had no idea that what the angel was doing was really happening; he thought he was seeing a vision.  They passed the first and second guards and came to the iron gate leading to the city. It opened for them by itself, and they went through it. When they had walked the length of one street, suddenly the angel left him. Then Peter came to himself and said, “Now I know without a doubt that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from Herod’s clutches and from everything the Jewish people were hoping would happen.” When this had dawned on him, he went to the house of Mary the mother of John, also called Mark, where many people had gathered and were praying. Peter knocked at the outer entrance, and a servant named Rhoda came to answer the door.  When she recognized Peter’s voice, she was so overjoyed she ran back without opening it and exclaimed, “Peter is at the door!” “You’re out of your mind,” they told her. When she kept insisting that it was so, they said, “It must be his angel.” But Peter kept on knocking, and when they opened the door and saw him, they were astonished.  Peter motioned with his hand for them to be quiet and described how the Lord had brought him out of prison. “Tell James and the other brothers and sisters about this,” he said, and then he left for another place.”  Another example from the Bible is Elijah’s prayer to God when the people are worshiping Bail instead of God. It is in 1 Kings 18:37-39 and it says, “Answer me, Lord, answer me, so these people will know that you, Lord, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again.” Then the fire of the Lord fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench. When all the people saw this, they fell prostrate and cried, “The Lord—He is God! The Lord—He is God!”

     Let’s go back to the waiting process for a little while and let’s talk more in depth about the three key points to waiting for the Lord!  What are the three key points?  They are trust, patience, and faith!  Without these three points it is too hard for us to believe that the Lord will answer us!

   The first key point is trust!  We must trust that the Lord has heard our prayers and that He will answer us when the time is right! Having trust isn’t easy, let me tell you that much, we must realize that when we pray to God we are trusting Him for our own desires and longings! Without trust in the Lord our prayers don’t mean much. When we pray we are trusting that the Lord knows what is best and that He will answer us!  As we wait on the Lord we must keep our trust in Him!  Trusting not only in the Lord but also in His timing is the key factor here! His timing is very important and we must not forget it!  God has perfect timing and He knows when to answer our prayers! Eccl. 3:1 says, “To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven.”

     The second key point is patience!  We need patience when waiting on the Lord! Luke 8:15 says, “… As for that in the good soil, they are those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patience.” We must try to remember that God constantly shows us patience when dealing with our issues so we must remember to have patience and wait on Him!

     The third key point is faith! We must always have faith in the Lord and in His timing!  We must also remember to have faith that the Lord will answer our prayers!   Having faith is key! I think faith is the most important thing to have when it comes to prayer!  Faith is our foundation on which we base our prayer!  It takes real faith in the Lord for us to go to Him in prayer and it takes real faith for us to trust Him to give us an answer that is based on His knowledge alone! I am going to talk a lot about faith from now on because it is really important!