what does an answered prayer look like?
This might be one of the most important lessons we learn this year. In order for us to move forward in our relationship with the Lord, we must understand how God answers our prayers, so our faith in Him might increase and be strengthened. Do you have prayers that have been unanswered? Are you waiting for something that was promised to you, but you have yet to receive it? Have you asked God to teach you how to love more or be more forgiving, but it feels like you are still struggling with both? Have you asked God to grace you with His patience or show you how to trust in Him more, but you find yourself still lacking the faith to believe? The Father answers our prayers, but not exactly in the way that we might expect of Him. I will give you an example of how this works by sharing with you a prayer I have prayed, and how the Lord has answered me.
I have been praying and asking the Father to reveal Himself to me these past two years. Through the Word and the Spirit, He has shown me that His very essence is love, and if I wanted to be more like Him, I would need to learn to let His essence of love flow through me. I need to be love because He is love. Because He lives in me, I have the ability to be perfect in love as the Father is perfect. Jesus said, if we love Him, we will obey His commandments, and one of His commandments in Matthew 5:48 was to be perfect in love like the Father.
To guide me along the way, the Father has been having me focus on the two most important commandments in the scriptures that are also centered on love. In Matthew 22:37-40, Jesus said, “‘YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.’ Upon these two commandments hang the whole Law and the Prophets.” This has been my prayer, and a few days ago, I realized that He has been answering my prayer even though I didn’t fully understand it at the time.
By nature, I am a “doer.” It is very difficult for me to sit quietly and wait for something to occur on its own. If I can help something along, I usually will. After all, didn’t someone once say, “God helps those who help themselves?” I figured, if we were seeking the Father’s will and we were doing things that we were told to do in the scriptures, we couldn’t be outside the will of God. Right?
In the past, when I have prayed for God to do something for me or to give something to me, my mind had me believe there were basically two ways for God to answer me. One way was to immediately and supernaturally do it on His own. This was my preferred method because it required no effort on my part and the answer did not require me to wait. The second way was for God to give me His plan and let me help Him manifest an answer. I considered this way effective only if I could hear Him audibly tell me His plan so I could be very clear on what He wanted me to do, or I could also pursue His plan if I had a say in the way things got accomplished. I have never heard an audible voice while awake, so I usually found myself more involved in the problem-solving process than I should have been.
Jesus reminded me of a dream He had given me last year where I had a chance to meet the Lord. He lovingly corrected me on this very subject, but apparently that loving correction was not enough to get His point across to my stubborn mind. I will not recount the entire experience here because I wrote about it on June 3, 2023, in one my messages titled “My Encounter with Jesus.” You can read the entirety of it there if you would like. Interestingly enough, the dream was about waiting on the Father’s answers to my prayers. Jesus told me that even though it was out of my love for Him that I prayed the way I had, it was more important for me to minister to the Father and wait on His timing for the answers to my prayers. He wanted me to know that my prayers were being heard, and there was a time coming when they would be answered. He wanted me to not force the timing, but instead, to wait upon the Father. He told me He knew that I prayed and did things for Him because I loved Him, but He was not always in those things. As He was reminding me of this, I suddenly realized how He had been answering my prayer to be able to love as He loves.
Recently, I have found myself in a place of waiting upon the Lord for almost everything that I have been seeking from Him. Everyday prayers seem to take a very long time to be answered. My wife and I have been waiting absurd amounts of time for refund checks from businesses we have contracted. This is money we are owed for unperformed services and should have been returned to us over a month ago. We have been waiting for repairs to our home that have dragged on for almost a year now, and we have even had to struggle with the post office in obtaining packages we desperately needed that were somehow lost in the system. These are just the tip of the iceberg of the waiting list of things we have prayed about and been trusting God to resolve for us. There are even more important and pressing matters though as I have sought the Lord for things of the Spirit that seem to have also gotten lost in the mail system of heaven. “When are you going to answer me, Lord?” has been a cry of mine for some time now. The other day in prayer, the Lord answered me.
He told me to read 1 Corinthians 13. “Now, we are getting somewhere,” I thought. I have been asking Him to help me love as He loves, so maybe this was the moment that He was going to do something about it. What I didn’t know but would soon find out was that I was asking Him to just immediately and supernaturally answer me. I just wanted Him to instantly make me love as He loves.
I thought I was doing a good job of waiting for Him to answer me until I read “Love is patient, love is kind, it is not jealous; love does not brag, it is not arrogant. It does not act disgracefully, it does not seek its own benefit; it is not provoked, does not keep an account of a wrong suffered, it does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; it keeps every confidence, it believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” I have read this scripture many times before, but this time my mind began to ponder about how impatiently I have been handling those people who owed me money and services. I began to wonder if I was being impatient with the Father as well by not fully trusting in His timing. My mind began to replay the two greatest commandments. Was I loving God with my whole heart, soul, and mind? Was I loving my neighbor as myself? Suddenly, I realized it. He was answering my most important prayer by making me wait to have all of the other prayers answered in order to teach me a deeper lesson. Instead of allowing me the simple satisfaction of immediate gratification, He wanted me to understand the essence of His love. He was showing me how to love as He does.
It was once said, “Give a Man a Fish, and You Feed Him for a Day. Teach a Man To Fish, and You Feed Him for a Lifetime.” God can choose to answer our prayers by simply feeding us...by simply giving us what we are asking. Jesus did it in the bible many times with the masses of people who followed Him asking for healings or to be fed, but afterwards, He chose to take the time to teach His disciples the deeper lessons behind the answered prayer. Do we want to simply be a part of the masses, or do we want to be His disciples and learn from Him? He wants us to know the deeper meanings behind His answers to our prayers.
I made an effort to show love to my neighbors by patiently waiting for them to respond justly. I even asked some to forgive me for not being patient or for not loving them. I made sure that my character and behavior matched the Word of God’s definition of love as it reads in 1 Corinthians 13 because John 1:1 says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” If I want to love as God loves, I must embody the Word because the Word is God. I asked the Father to forgive me for not being patient with Him and for not waiting and trusting in His timing. As soon as I recognized that my impatience was actually a lack of love towards God and my neighbor, I repented for it, and my other prayers began to be answered. The Father had taught me that patience is love and love is patient. It believes, hopes, and endures all things. He had answered my prayer and transformed me into His love by allowing me to understand His answers are not always manifested in a way we believe they should be. I thank God for His wisdom and patience is the way He transforms me into the image of the Son. That is what an answered prayer from God looks like in my life.
You can read more about this and other truths by obtaining a copy of “Prodigal to Prince” by Beau Walsh at BarnesandNoble.com or Amazon.com.
