Pocket Answer

Seeking God and waiting on Him for His answer to specific prayer

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So once upon a time I was in a situation where I wanted to tell one of my friends something, but I wasn't sure how to go about it. I wasn't sure what to say, but most of all I wasn't sure if I should say anything at all. So to calm my nerves I began to write down what I would say and a few possible responses that my friend might say. After just a couple of lines, what I was going to say turned into a monologue of what I was thinking. It wasn't like I was really talking to my friend anymore because I hadn't planned on being honest with my friend about how I truly felt, but I found that as I wrote I was pouring all my feelings and honest thoughts onto the page. When I was finished, on the side of the paper I wrote a question, to God, about the situation and the problem that I was facing. I even wrote that I wanted a response by a certain day that week. I had wanted a written answer. I figured that as it is written, "I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you." Matthew 17:20

WELL, when that day came to pass....I didn't get an answer and I was enraged, because I really believed that the answer would be there. The problem was that in the verse Christians were commanding mountains, and I was trying to command God.

I'll have to say that I didn't exactly understand why it didn’t all work out at first. After I didn't get my answer I grew rebellious and I wouldn't pray, and I even went to the point of saying I lost my faith in God. I said this to my best friend, who was a Christian, and he was shocked. I was on a walk with him, telling him what had happened. I lost it - I was yelling and screaming at God as I was walking - and then I reached down in my pocket and pulled something out. It was a slip of paper that I had torn out of a daily devotional that comes to me in the mail. It read,

“How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord,

Is laid for your faith in his excellent Word!

What more can he say than to you he hath said,

To you who for refuge to Jesus have fled?

Fear not, I am with thee; O be not dismayed,

For I am thy God, and will still give thee aid;

I'll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand,

Upheld by my righteous, omnipotent hand."

This is exactly what I needed to hear, it was my answer, right there in my pocket. I don't know who wrote it but it had originally inspired me so I must have put it in my pant's pocket a long time before and had forgotten all about it. When I found it again, I knew that God had put it there on that night so that I would find it on my walk.

If God wouldn't have shown me that I can't boss Him around I wouldn't have learned to obey Him, I would still be yelling at Him and barking out orders. God takes time to answer our prayers because He is molding us into who He wants us to be, He makes new creatures and for me He was working on my patience as well.

Since then I read Scripture more carefully, I realize that in that verse God was giving us permission to command mountains and such, not to command Him. I hear people say that God doesn't answer prayers, and I kind of laugh just thinking, "Oh, yes He does!" I think back fondly of that experience, after all I have learned a lot. I don't doubt God nearly as much as I used to, my faith and trust in Him as grown significantly, and it helps sometimes to remind myself to keep my pride in check.