Credit: setonparish.org

Pastor Joe Bennett of Bimini Bay Church (Mondays at biminibayhomes.com) speaks often of the kind of prayer God responds to.  Because we are His kids, He doesn’t respond to ‘begging’ prayers but to those spoken with confident assurance that our Father knows and sees our pain and is willing to answer us!

Pastor Joe told me that God was holding back to answer some prayers of mine because I was approaching Him the wrong way: begging.  If He answered prayers asked from this position, He’d be affirming that I was His slave, not His child.

Learning this principle thrilled me because after pleading with Him for certain things and not getting answers, I began believing He didn’t care about areas closest to my heart.  This hindered our relationship and devastated me personally… a dangerous place to be in!  I desperately needed to know my Father wasn’t leaving me alone in my circumstances.  A recent email from Pastor Joe echoes this same sentiment:

I would like to encourage each of you today concerning your confidence in the Lord.   The very basis of God’s relationship with man is His love.  According to the first epistle of John our confidence is rooted in this principal alone.  Knowing, believing and understanding that it was God that FIRST loved us.  If this fundamental principal is not established in our hearts then we will always fall prey to a performance based relationship with God where either pride or guilt and condemnation will rule.

Remember, (Romans 5), it was while we were sinners that Christ died for the ungodly and thus demonstrated the measure of Gods love toward man.  It was while we were enemies that we were reconciled through His death.  Romans 8:32 basically says that if God did not spare His own son for us, then shall he not also freely gives us all things?

Be encouraged today.  Your heavenly Father knows where you are and what you are going through.  He does not want you to beg Him for an answer, a response or beg to supply a need.  He wants you to come before His throne of Grace with confidence that He will hear you and supply you with the grace to help you in time of need.  Being confident of His love for you, knowing that He has PROMISED saying:  “I will never leave you or forsake you.”