I’ve always felt led to pray for a colleague who had being trying for a child. His wife went through an ectopic pregnancy and had since miscarried twice.
On the eve of Father’s Day this year, 2013, I was at an evening service and as it was the practice in my church, all the fathers would be prayed for. It was at that moment I remembered the need of my colleague and brought it before the Lord. Perhaps I had a sensitivity to his need because I was also expecting the arrival of my fourth child, my only daughter, who arrived two weeks later.
The next morning, I received a text message greeting from him. I replied with thanks and conveyed that I would pray for him in church so that we would be able to celebrate Father’s Day next year. His reply was “hope so”.
Ok, that was a bold claim but I told myself, someone had to express faith on his behalf. That night my wife and I also interceded for my colleague and it was my hope that through the fulfilling of his need that Christ would be real to him and he could experience grace. We left the matter in God’s hand, in quietness but confident trust. I told my wife that if God was to answer our prayers, my colleague had to get busy!
About 2 months later my colleague got the news that his wife had conceived. That very day the doctor also confirmed that the conception had occurred in the right place and that everything was normal.
He was really excited when he told me about the good news. He said he was praying and pleading with God in the hospital waiting room! I was happy to hear him say that. I told him I will now continue praying for his wife and for a healthy child. I reminded him about what I said 2 months ago and he says he hopes it will come true.
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Well I do hope that God will come true too because it will be a great opportunity for him to trust God. This is one of many classic stories about our prayers of intercession to God involving a potential believer.
But I’ve often wondered, does my hope express my confidence in God or does it express my doubt? Some have opined that once we have prayed by the Word and in the Spirit it must come through. Otherwise we are shown to have doubt instead of faith. But is that request in the will or even the timing of God *. Then my request merely because something I hope for. I might have prayed using His Word whilst in the presence of the Spirit but, like in my colleagues example, it is merely my request, to God, on behalf of him. It has no scriptural basis or theological truth in it.
But my confidence is based on what I have experienced about God. I have often asked God for good things and He has answered them accordingly. I thought back and remembered that I felt led to pray for my colleague. It was not something selfish or an ulterior motive which I sought for. In my heart I always focused on meeting the need not as an end but as a means to show my colleague that God is real.
It has always been these principles that I base my prayers on knowing that it will come true. My quest for reconciling written Biblical truth and experiences with God continues and I have come to realise that experiences are neither true or false. We can make statements about them which can be true or false.
I have also always reminded myself about this fact, that none of us can tell the outcome of future time. Yes there is such a thing as prophecy. There is such a teaching as faith, to expect the outcome based on our confidence in God. But we are all human. Confession on this basis, I would opine is very dangerous because though it may be in the will of God generally (and my key word is generally) it does not mean it will occur as how we have expressed it.**
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So back to my colleague. I continue to pray that God will keep his wife in good health and the baby to be strong and healthy and that He would grant them a safe delivery. I have a strong confidence in God that this is His will for their lives. I do not feel worried or uncertain about it. Let’s wait and see, next Father’s Day.
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* (I have learnt that some requests, though they be in the will of God, have not been considered to be in the time of God. God has His reasons for meeting them on our time, and on other occasions on His time. Sometimes it takes a little waiting but sometimes it can be instantaneous that we ourselves are caught unaware. Yes when we pray, we must considered, “Is it in God’s will?”, but we must also ask, “Is it in God’s time?”)
** I have another bee in my bonnet about Confession that I would one day like to write about.
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