I hear people say it every day. “I prayed for the lottery and didn’t get it”, or, “Why doesn’t God answer any of my prayers?” or something along that line. I’m not sure that these people truly understand what God is all about. The funny thing is that it’s the people who claim to be the most Christian that are the most confused by His lack of attention to their problems. He is not a genie designed to grant all of your wishes. In fact he is not here for you at all. We are here for him.
I think the biggest reason for this is that, just like there are so many different “Christian” religions who pick and chose which parts of the Bible they want to focus on, there are just as many of those individual people belonging to each sect that picks and chooses what they want to listen to.
Yes, Jesus is our savior, sure.. you got me on that one. Jesus also died on the cross and was tortured in horrible ways beforehand. God let that happen. People always ask why God lets bad things happen as if they don’t know about Jesus and the bad that happened to him.
Of course God answers prayers. God has a plan, but both Moses and Abraham taught us that God was willing to negotiate. When God wanted to smite Sodom and Gomorrah Abraham begged God to take the innocent lives into account. Abraham repeatedly questioned God’s willingness to kill an entire city and forsake good people. God eventually agreed that if there were 10 righteous people that Gomorrah would be spared. Spoiler… there weren’t.
The point being is that God knows what can and can’t happen. You may pray that someone you are madly in love with falls madly in love with you, and they don’t…. but 5 years later you meet the love of your life and realize how wrong the other person was for you. Is that a bad thing? There’s a Garth Brooks song, “Unanswered prayers” that speaks to this. People get so obsessed with what is in front of them that they don’t think about what’s ahead for them. It’s almost as if a lot of people who claim to worship God actually think they know better.
This is not talking about people who pray for loved ones or themselves that are dying… that’s a topic for another day, but seriously what is it that makes people think that God is here to answer to you? Is that why you are Christian? Do you think that if you say that you believe in Him and that you pray to Him that He will be obligated to do your bidding, because if that’s your plan.. you are in for a rude awakening.
