#4 Trusting God for the Answer

In episode #5 of the Christian Gossip Show, a panel of guests are discussing the issue of trusting God in various situations described in the Bible, such as how they would have reacted if they’d been Noah facing a flood, or Daniel confronted by the lions. Or what about Paul and Silas who were thrown into jail for faithfully serving God?
Back in the early 1980’s I gained a new understanding about how we can trust God to provide for our needs, and sometimes in a most unexpected way.
My husband, Ken, and a business partner, had opened a workroom to make custom draperies for interior designers in the central Florida area. I had my own design business which was a very creative career that I had big plans of expanding into a full-scale design service. I did not want to be involved in the workroom in any way. But to make a long story short, the partnership did not work out and I had to give up my design business to help Ken full time in the workroom.
Since there was nothing creative about what I was now doing, I was miserable. After a couple of years of feeling trapped where I didn’t want to be, I sat down on my piano bench one day and begged God to give me something creative to do.
Like we often do when we ask the Lord to provide for a need in our lives, I had thoughts about how He might satisfy my need. Perhaps a new hobby like painting or some craft projects.
As soon as I had finished this desperate but genuine prayer request, I started pecking around on my piano keyboard and came up with a little 2 or 3 measure tune that I liked, so I wrote it down, something I’d never done before. By the end of the week, I had finished a whole tune and put words to it, and I realized this was the answer to the prayer I had prayed in that very spot just a few days earlier.
I began coming up with a new song about every 3 to 4 weeks over the next several years. The amazing thing about it was that I had never aspired to be a songwriter, nor had I even attempted to write one before that day. I would never have imagined God would answer my prayer by giving me the gift of songwriting. but even more than songwriting, it is a way to share the Gospel message with others. I am forever grateful for this ministry.
This experience proved to me that we shouldn’t limit God’s ability to answer our prayers only in ways that we can imagine. The Lord has a much bigger imagination than we do!!!
There are many scriptures about prayer, but 1 John 5:14 says that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. Are we limiting God’s answer to our request by praying for our will, our answer, our solution to the situation? Step aside and have enough faith to allow God to do something amazing and unexpected for you. (I have to remind myself to do this regularly!!)
‘Til we meet again, Nancy