Prayer

This weekend as I thought about prayer, I had a mental image in my head of writing my prayer on a piece of paper, blowing up the balloon and holding the balloon as it floats above my head. Please let the money come in for Slovakia. Please help there to be good weather on the day of our Kenya fundraiser, and to raise a ton of money to support the orphanages in Kenya. Please heal my friend Leslie from cancer, 100%, and for them to have enough money to pay for all the doctor stuff. Please show me what job/career I'm supposed to have... soon. Please let me get married...soon. Please give me patience when I see no answers or the answer is no. Please help my friends going to Bosnia for 3 months on a mission trip raise enough money. Please help me have enough money each month to pay off my loans and yet somehow save up to move out some day.

But in the cases that God says no, the needle pops the balloon and the pieces lay at my feet. Please let me get into Georgia College and State University. Please help me get a teaching job. Please let this relationship work out. Please help him to like me. Please let me sing at church again. Please let me go to Kenya again this year. Please show me where you want me to serve and how I should bring You glory because I'm not sure if I'm doing that well enough.

So then my thoughts are... why blow up the balloon in the first place? No balloon, no pieces on the ground. No specific prayer, no dissapointment.

Yet nowhere in the bible is anything written like this. Quite the opposite. It calls us to pray with persistance, with boldness, with faith, constantly, in all situations, always. Jesus uses parables and visual examples to describe what kind of attitude we should have when coming in prayer. Prayer is a conversation with the God of the universe. I sometimes imagine being in heaven and talking to Jesus... "Hey Jesus, remember that time I prayed to go to Kenya but you pushed me toward Slovakia instead? I'm so thankful you did because I was better used there - I was able to tell others about You there more. Remember that one time I asked if I could sing in church during the services and You said no through other people? Well now I can see that it's because if I were singing on stage I would be praciticing before and after, and miss interacting with people in the congregation and I see how you used me in reaching out to others." Looking back at my life at the end, with all the puzzle pieces filled in and the big picture finalized, I will see how my aim to shove a puzzle piece in the wrong section would have made the puzzle incomplete.

This still leaves me to wonder exactly what to pray for. I have prayed before with all sincerity, persistance, and boldness and God has said no. Some I'm sure it's "not yet" but others are flat out no, it could not possibly happen, the time has passed for Him to say yes. I know that sometimes I'm basically saying, "God, can you let me have that piece of junk over there? Even though it's terrible and will cause me lots of pain, I still want it. And I'm going to ask you for it every day." I don't see it as junk, but God does because it's not meant for me or God has something better, or that will bring Him more glory. Ok. So how does my prayer ever change His mind? How does it ever cause God to say yes? I know it's one of those things we will never understand... along with predestination, the trinity, hell, why He even created the bad tree in the garden of eden in the first place, etc. Until we're in heaven our brains cannot comprehend. I hope that I can learn to trust God when He says no instead of getting so upset about it. I hope I can get past the logicis and just trust.