We all have a list of things we want and have feelings of what we think we deserve in life. We have a plan of how things are supposed to go and when things don’t go our way, we turn to the complaint department. The one who gets bombarded with the complaints is God.
God please give me this, please heal me, please take this challenge away from me. Prayer is a wonderful thing to do, but we need to understand the right way to pray and what to expect from it. We don’t pray to change God’s mind or ask God to fulfill our own plans. Prayer is meant to help us better understand God’s mind and His plan for us. God definitely wants the best for us, but what we think is best for us is not always the best. Even hardships, such as a major illness or loss of a loved one, may open our eyes to see the world in a different light. A loss may, over time, bring us closer to Heaven. God doesn’t want our loved ones to get sick or die either, but we can’t expect to just pray away all hardships in life.
When Jesus was in the desert, He was tempted to do what He wanted and to use God’s power to make His own life easier and seemingly greater. Jesus said no to the temptation and chose to follow His Father’s plan. We can look back and realize that God’s plan for Jesus lifted Him up to become much greater than Satan’s temptation for Him. God has a great plan for each of us, but He needs us to cooperate with Him and trust Him, for everything to work.
When we are lost in life, don’t pray for God to lead us to a certain destination, but pray for direction and that God will lead us to where He wants us to go. When we are in pain, not only pray for comfort and relief, but also how to best offer up our suffering to bring us or others closer to Heaven. No matter what we are going through in life, always pray that our Father will reveal more of Himself to us and that we can grow closer to Him. When we keep the great love of God close to us and trust Him, we will find the comfort we seek.
