A Noble Berean

  Understanding God's Will 9e: Humbled By Unanswered Prayer: Another problem with the “name it and claim it” interpretation is that we are tempted to bail on God, to criticize ourselves for our “weak” faith, or to question Him when we don’t get the answers that we want or thought we would get.    It confuses us, discourages us, and blows our understanding of God and His Word out of the water.    And I think that God allows this helplessness and futility so that we can learn that it’s not about us, it’s all about Him!    That He is God and we are not!    And so that we dig deeper into the Word to see who God really is and what He has to say through all of it - and not just through the few passages that we are familiar with, that tell us we get what we want when we pray.                We want to lead and have control by our prayers, whereas true faith in God says, “Whatever happens, I still believe in Yo...

  Understanding God's Will #9d: (No Calvinism stuff added to this one.  It's just some of my own thoughts.) I think that there is something else that we need to consider when it comes to our requests.    How many times do our requests and our desires for an answer become idolatrous pursuits, taking our focus from God?    I think sometimes this is why many of us end up in the furnace of refining, long waits.    To purify our hearts, to help us weed out wayward desires and idols, and to help us refocus on what we should be focused on: God!              And most of us don’t do this on our own, not when things are going good and we are getting what we want.    Because when things are going our way, we are content to float and to live self-centered, temporally-focused lives.    And we think our relationship with Him must be pretty good for things to be going along so nicely.    And so He ...