Prayer and Timing

"In my distress I called to the LORD; I cried to my God for help. From his temple he heard my voice; my cry came before him, into his ears." Psalm 18:6

I know sometimes, people think God isn't listening, God doesn't care, or God is too busy with something else that He can't be bothered with them. That is not true. I want to share a couple verses today that speak to prayer, and they're both out of the Old Testament, which is a bit unusual for me.

First of all, if you read this verse, you can see that the author truly believed God heard his cry, God heard his prayer. I just did a quick search on Bible Gateway about heard prayer and got several examples of prayers being heard. So, you can either believe that God hears prayers, or that the Bible just managed to get the examples of when prayers have been heard, I choose to believe that God hears prayers. I believe that, because I've had prayers answered.

Check out this other passage..."A thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night." Psalm 90:4

God is outside of time. If God waits a thousand years, it's like no time at all to Him. The same holds true for a hundred years, a decade, a year, a month, a week, a day, an hour, a minute, a second, since God is outside of time, man-made measurements of time mean nothing to Him.

Our problem is that we're too often like Veruca Salt from Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory, saying "I want (insert thing wanted here), Daddy and I want it now!" We want immediate gratification, we're too often not willing to wait even a second for it. We're almost under the impression that since God already knows out hearts, He should already provide our want before we even have to pray for it.

First, I'd be willing to say that God does fill many of our needs before we even know we need something, but since we don't realize it, we don't attribute anything to God. Also, I'm pretty convinced that prayer is mostly for us, not for God, He doesn't need reminding of what we need or want. We pray because the Bible commands us to (see 1 Thessalonians 5:17) and because it changes us, not God's mind.

I've written before about God's permissive will; nothing happens without God's knowledge and without god letting it. He doesn't cause everything to happen (because God cannot cause evil) but He does allow everything to happen. Since God knows everything, and knows us better than we even know ourselves, doesn't it stand to reason that He knows what's best for us?

I'm sorry, I've gotten a bit rambly today, so let me sum up what I was trying to get to...God hears your prayers, God answers your prayers but in His timing, not ours and God's timing is perfect. Remember, sometimes God's answer is "no" because that's not what best for us. But most of all, God loves you.