Predetermined Answers To Prayer

I am going to take a guess and say that the vast majority of you who read this blog are people who pray. Some do not , at least not with conscious knowledge that they are doing so, but I would say when things are difficult we all find our own way to talk to God and to petition Him for whatever it is we are seeking. But what is it that you are really asking from God?

Somebody dear to me just recently died after having suffered for many years from various ailments and diseases. For many years my prayers, and this sounds horrible, was for her suffering to end and to let her die peacefully in her sleep. This person hated being a burden to others but at the same time was a blessing to not only those who helped her out but she was a blessing to many people just by her unerring faith in God. Now what if my petition to God had been answered long before she actually died? A whole lot of people might have missed out on a great blessing.

I think that some of the problem is that when we pray, and petition God, we tend to take “thy will be done” to actually mean “ my will be done.” Makes me wonder how many times a prayer has been answered but those making the prayer didn't realize it because it wasn't the predetermined results that they were looking for.

In the book of Jeremiah you also have a story of a group of Jews, survivors of the Babylonian invasion, coming to Jeremiah and asking him to petition God on their behalf as to what they should do. Jeremiah 41-42.They gave their petition to Jeremiah and stated what ever God tells us to do we will do it. Jeremiah could only take them at their word and went and prayed on their behalf. The problem was, that they already had a predetermined outcome, meaning that they had already decided what they were going to do regardless of what the prophet told them. Their plan was to get as far away as they could and go to Egypt so that they could avoid war and pestilence and continue in their practices that caused them all the problems in the first place. What they should have realized is that they were greatly blessed already by God because they had been allowed to survive when many had been destroyed and they still had the opportunity to prosper. God had influenced king and he had ordered his men to let the people, particularly the poor, to stay in the land to prosper. God answered them 10 days later.

The Lord has said concerning you, O remnant of Judah, ‘Do not go to Egypt!’ Know certainly that I have admonished you this day. For you were hypocrites in your hearts when you sent me to the Lord your God, saying, ‘Pray for us to the Lord our God, and according to all that the Lord your God says, so declare to us and we will do it.’And I have this day declared it to you, but you have not obeyed the voice of the Lord your God, or anything which He has sent you by me. Now therefore, know certainly that you shall die by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence in the place where you desire to go to dwell.” Jeremiah 42: 19-22

After they heard this from Jeremiah they became angry with him ( see chapter 43 ) and decided that he was lying to them and they headed off to Egypt. In the end ,because they continued in their evil ways, they were destroyed with Egypt and missed out on the blessings of starting over in their own God given land.

So I guess, at least for me, the moral of the story is that you can't ever assume that you know what the will of God is. Certainly you can make your petitions to God and well you should, but you can't assume that the answer that you are seeking, how ever good it might seem to you, is what the will of God is or even where the greatest blessings are to be found. Keep your eyes open because the opposite of your desire may actually be where the greatest blessing is to be found.

Shalom.

Things About Race I Learned From My Mother

There are a few things that I learned from my mother that I hadn't really considered until just recently and I would like to share one of them with you. It's not what she said so much as her example. She didn't hate people. It didn't seem to matter to her what a person looked like or their skin color or their nationality. She admittedly had some issues with gay marriage but she still had gay friends and family members whom she cared for deeply. The bottom line though was she never paid any attention to the outside of a person, she instead looked at the heart.

She some how managed to pass that on to me.

After the Zimmerman verdict,as many of the various talking heads were crying racism, I started writing a post on some of my own experiences as I grew up, but the further I went in writing the more I realized just how lucky I have been ,and it is thanks, in part, to my mother.

You see she never taught me to hate people or to put any kind label on them. I was a sophomore in high school before I even began to understand that there were any issues or labels to be had. I remember one man , in the town I grew up in, calling me a “spic” but it meant nothing to me because I hadn't been taught it at home it so it carried no meaning.

So, as I was writing and recalling the experiences and the friendships I have had, I came to realize just how blessed I have been and still am. Just looking at my FB page I came to realize that I have friends from just about every race that I know of. Black, White, Spanish, Asian, Native American. I have friends and family who are straight, gay, and lesbian. I have friends that are Christian, Jews, Wiccans and atheists. All points of view are represented and I have had the privilege to break bread with most of you at one time or another and even argue the points that we might not agree on.

The point is is that I was never taught prejudice and hate and so it is a foreign concept to me.

It's not a lack of experiencing it, I have, and it comes from all sides, I just simply don't understand it. Why hate an entire race of people because there are a few idiots who cause problems? Why even focus on those few when there are so many others doing good things?

Do you want to stop racism? Here are two suggestions first; Stop talking about it. Stop letting the media determine ,and I mean all forms of the media, determine what is racism in this country and what isn't because to them everything is about race. Second, and this is more important than the first, educate your children, teach them not to hate based on skin color ,religion, handicap,sexual orientation or whatever other category that you can come up with. Teach them morals and that life has value and that all persons, no matter who they are, have the same rights as you do.

If we did those two things it wouldn't take long before our country and likely the world would change.

Thanks Mom.

Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it. Proverbs 22:6