An evil day
It was late in the night, probably around 11:00pm. Christian wakes up to incessant and panicky prayers from his dad, his elder sister and a neighbor.
What’s going on? He looked. Lying on the bed of the one room apartment they were staying in was his sick mother.
He’s unable to tell exactly what the problem with her was. She’s been sick for some days now. No, weeks, actually. But what could be wrong this time around?
He moved close to her. ‘Moimi’, he called in his habitual way. No response. Just a jittering of the eyelids, and a slight movement of her arm.
What’s this? He called her again. Same response. That was when the prayers of the people around him made sense to him.
‘Ohun e a si. Ohun e a la. Ogun ota o ni bori e’. (May your voice open. May you speak. The enemy will not overpower you.)
She can’t talk? Enough of looking around. Christian, who was just a few months old as a christian, went down on his knees and said, ‘Father, as I lay my hands on her, let her voice open and make her talk – in Jesus name’.
A prayer answered
Christian got up and laid his hand on his mother. ‘Speak in Jesus name,’ he said over her in an almost inaudible voice. And then as if not looking forward to anything, he joined the remaining people in the room in their loud and fast prayers – even though, unlike them, he had few words with which to pray.
Shortly afterwards, he opened his eyes and beheld his father tapping his mother on the back as a way of cheering her on. Mom is sitting? She’s joined forces with us in prayer? Good.
Christian shut his eyes and continued praying. It was as if he had forgotten about the prayer he prayed. It was the following day when his mother was narrating the ordeal of the previous night to one of her friends that Christian realized God actually heard his prayer.
She reported to her friend that her voice opened up after her son (Christian) laid hands on her. “God heard my prayer?” He thought to himself. He did? Who am I and what do I even know?
This incident created a hunger in Christian to get to understand what prayer really is and how to do it rightly. And it served as a source of faith for other prayers Christian would find himself praying afterwards.
Why does God answer prayers?
Does God choose whose prayer to answer based on his mood or based on the behavior of the person praying? Beloved, the answer is not in the two.
The bible says, ‘Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God’ (Romans 5:1). It is our faith in Jesus that grants us acceptance before God and the boldness with which to make demands and have them answered.
It’s true there are different kinds of prayer and they all require different approaches. The way you go about the prayer of faith is different from the way you handle a prayer of intercession. It’s true. But before we reduce God to a robot that cannot act beyond the scope of his programming, we need to remember how he honored the prayer of Joshua for the sun to stand still even though scientifically, the prayer was wrong (Joshua 10:1-15).
God is more interested in the faith we carry in our hearts when we pray more than the vocabulary or fervor with which we make our requests.
The bible says, “The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the LORD: but the prayer of the upright is his delight.” (Proverbs 15:8)
God in the light of our earthly fathers
God delights in the prayer of His children. Like a responsible father who takes pleasure in being able to meet the needs of his children, God loves to hear His children talk to Him and answer their requests.
Remember growing up how our dads would ask what they should buy for us when coming back, and without an iota of common sense back then, we would tell them to buy us a plane as well as other goodies. And what’s their response? They’d smile and promise to get us more. When they returned home with just the goodies alone and then gave us a reason why they were unable to buy the plane, we expressed our gratitude and repeated the request the next day until common sense finally entered us and we stopped our childish whims.
That childlike continued faith is what gets to God, not spiritual formulas. It’s true He is a God of protocol but at the base of it all, He is not bound by them. That is what makes Him God. He is a God that honors the faith of His children because of the love He has for them.
[23] And in that day ye shall ask me nothing. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you.
[24] Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full. (John 16:23-24)
This is the motive behind His answers; that the joy of His children be full. No loving father loves a sourpuss for a child; hence, their effort to make their children happy. God is that way, and more.
So, when you ask, instead of letting your insufficient knowledge of the word make you feel like you have a faith deficiency problem, be at peace in the fact that God takes delight in answering your prayers – with little to no regard to how you present them.
Author – Champion Hamzat