Unanswered prayers

Garth Brooks sings a song called Unanswered Prayers that speaks volumes of Truth. How often God is protecting us from ourselves by answering our prayers, not in the way we assured Him was the best way or the easiest for our desires...but His way. Which is why, over the years, I have learned to pray for His will to be done rather than something specific at times.

I was thinking of that Sunday as I pondered the sermon on the way home. I had asked God for healing for my husband, instead He opened the door for him to be approved for Social Security Disability. That particular road led us to the lifestyle we live in the country and into even further simplicity than we thought we wanted. However, the more I see His leading, the more I know He desires our good.

So, I had to smile when I read the following in my devotional this morning...

"Living a life of faith means never knowing where you are being led. But it does mean loving and knowing the One who is leading. It is literally a life of faith, not of understanding and reason--a life of knowing Him who calls us to go. Faith is rooted in the knowledge of a Person, and one of the biggest traps we fall into is the belief that if we have faith, God will surely lead us to success in the world.

The final stage in the life of faith is the attainment of character, and we encounter many changes in the process. We feel the presence of God around us when we pray, yet we are only momentarily changed. We tend to keep going back to our everyday ways and the glory vanishes. A life of faith is not a life of one glorious mountaintop experience after another, like soaring on eagles' wings, but is a life of day-in and day-out consistency; a life of walking without fainting (see Isaiah 40:31)...
My Utmost For His Highest, Updated Edition...March 19th