The Heart of Prayer - Expectation

In humility do I really expect/believe that God will act. Am I praying and eagerly anticipating God to do what He says He will do? Do I see God as big? As good? As the life giver/changer? Can I say with the Psalmist: For I hope in You , O LORD; You will answer, O LORD my God.( Psalm 38:15)

Often I do not live a life of persistent prayer, because I don't expect God to hear me and answer me when I pray; or I pray with the wrong motives. ( James 4:3 ) Which that brings me right back to pride. I do not think God answers me unless things go my own way according to my own plan. See the focus? It is on me, rather than on God. A heart filled with expectation is looking for God to act in a way that will fully demonstrate His precious glory. A heart of expectation will be looking for God to act in such way as to reveal a little more of His character to me and those around me, as well as reveal a little more of my complete dependence upon Him.

I need to see myself as a child coming before a loving, faithful and extravagantly generous father. Matthew 7:7-11 says: Ask and it will be given to you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and the door shall be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man among you who, when his son asks for a loaf, will give give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, how will not give him a snake, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him! A person filled with faith or as I have been saying it, expectation, will pray, pray, pray, because they believe God is good, he hears, and He answers. We come to God empty handed humbly and joyfully expecting to be filled.

One way I find help in cultivating a heart of expectation, is to journal. I know it is not directly commanded in the Bible to journal, but if you think about the way we have benefited from the lives of saints from the past, you will see we have learned of how God was moving and working in them, through them, and all around them, through their journals. For me, when I journal as I am reading my Bible and praying, my thoughts and applications of what God is teaching me is reiterated or made clearer to me. I am also able to look back and see how God has answered prayers I have prayed and how he answered the many requests that I have written down. So, when I am discouraged and feel like God is not listening and my faith begins to falter, I can look back and see how He has heard and answered in the past. For me this cultivates an anticipation of what God might do in the future, and it keeps me persistent.

I have 4 siblings that are not in Christ. In my feeble, proud, and small faithed mind, there are times I do not think that praying for their salvation will do anything. Then I look at how God has worked and moved in those around me and even in my family and recognize that I am benefiting from being in communion with God, and how He is constantly reminding me that it is He who saves and Him alone, so what else can I do?

Even now I look back on things I had written when Si was in the hospital and how God moved His saints to pray even when most people did not know that my little boy was getting surgery at the very moment in the middle of the night that they were moved to pray for him. James 5:16 says: Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much. When I start to forget this, I look back and go, wait a minute girl, get a grip, of course prayer is effective, because God says so, and you have seen it!

So, I am going to keep eagerly anticipating God to work through the prayers of His people. I am going to choose to believe that God delights to hear His children cry out to Him. He calls us to a life of prayer, so we need to get busy falling on our knees and expecting great things. I don't know about you, but I want to see God do things that boggle my mind, I want to see Him do abundantly beyond all I can ask or think.

Pray and expect to be wowed! Pray and expect to be able to say with the Psalmist: How blessed is the man who has made the Lord his trust, and has not turned to the proud, nor to those who lapse into falsehood. Many, O Lord my God, are the wonders which you have done, and Your thoughts toward us, there is none to compare with You. If I would declare and speak of them, they would be too numerous to count. ( Psalm 40:4-5 )