Prayer II - How to get confidence? ...

Tuesday, September 6, 2011. How do we gain confidence in our prayer? Are we confident and what does it mean? What are our expectations?

Prayer expectations …

When I started to pray, I did not expect much. Somehow I knew that God had his own agenda anyway. I knew that he was larger than me, that his horizon was much beyond anything I could imagine. How could I expect that God would do what I would ask for?

When I started to pray, I basically said nothing. It was a long time, when I mainly listened to the Lord. I chose a quiet place, and then I sat there and listened to the silence, to my thoughts and to all the thoughts which I knew they were lined to the Lord. I spend quite some time to study the bible, and I learned what God did and said there … a sound basis for prayer, to talk and to listen, indeed!

I had to learn quickly that my own greed or my own wishes are not a good guidance for prayer. God does not want prayer to be a tool to satisfy our own desires. He showed this to me quite clearly … most prayers whith this type of content did not get far. It took years for some to be answered. Many were clearly rejected. But I talk about wishes, not about needs. God always listens to our needs, and he answers these prayers (though this also sometimes takes time and patience). All this, by the way, is also clearly stated in the biblical books. It took me years of experience to be able to listen carefully to the bible in these questions.

Confidence in …

So if you know what you should NOT pray for, what SHOULD you pray for? Everything which is linked to his great love and his great plan is a good topic to pray for. Truth and justice is good for prayer. The fate of the people around us is a good topic for prayer. When we are sad and full of worries, we are commanded by Jesus to come to the Lord. We can be confident that he sees every tear and listens to all our lamentations.

We can also be confident that he is interested in our personal development. He wants us to grow in faith, and every step of faith is worth to pray for. When we continue to pray for faith in and around us, we will soon and with growing success realize that he hears and answers our prayers.

But the most important point to gain confidence in the Lord is not to see prayers answered. That is blind, we only see the facts. But it is better to get to know the Lord, his trustworthyness, his sincerity, his love and his humility. When we get to know him, that will give us much more confidence than any single event as an answer to our prayers ever can. (Roland Potthast) ... more texts