Prayer, good sense and responsible action.
An edited quote from Charles Swindoll from his series "James: Hands on Christianity." "Prayer is no substitute for righteous reasoning and responsible action." The longer I live I have become convinced that Prayer was never intended to be about just "needs, requests and pleadings" though there is a justifiable place for those. Prayer from God's persepective is mostly about counsel, wisdom, direction; seeking His will and purpose. Many of us spend too much time begging God for stuff when in reality we ought to be asking him for wisdom and a plan of action to get His will accomplished. And, Oh, by the way, His will is almost always something other than what we brought to Him in the first place. Remember the passage I John 5:14-15? "This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him." The part that we skip over is the "according to His will" statement. When we begin our prayer, we typically have no idea what God's will in the situation might be. If we truly trust Him, and we should, we must by all means turn it all over to Him in prayer and let Him adjudicate the situation. God's response to my request for "His will" to be done in my life and the lives of the others I pray for may not always be the most comfortable or one that makes me or them deliriously happy. But it is never about the immediate or the present. It is always from God's perspective the eternal , timelessness of His Kingdom; never trapped in time but always a much bigger landscape than what my puny mind could ever hope for. THIS, is the beginning of wisdom, to fear the Lord and call upon His name
"“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.“ As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts. As the rain and the snow
come down from heaven,and do not return to it
without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish,
so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it." Isaiah 55:8-11