LARGE PRAYERS

The scriptures would seem to indicate that we should make our prayer requests large, so large in fact, that when they are answered we will know it has to be an act of God. Most of us don't offer large prayers because our knowledge of God is too small. We somehow think that He is too busy looking after the affairs of this great universe to be concerned with our requests, so we make them small. However this is a misunderstanding of scripture, in fact it is completely opposite to what Jesus taught in His "sermon on the mount" recorded in Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 7. For example read and believe (Matt 6:33)

I recently read a story of a young boy who wanted a small toy stage coach for Christmas, that he had seen in a store. He begged his mother to buy it for him, no other one would do. So on Christmas morning, sure enough, that little stage coach was there for him. His older brother said to him "you did a dumb thing to insist on that little coach, mom had bought a larger one for you, but when you insisted on that one, she took the larger one back and exchanged it for that smaller one". Suddenly the small stage coach didn't seem so appealing!

Sometimes we are like that with God. We think we want something, and beg and plead for it until finally He might give us what we begged for, when He really had something much larger in mind for us. Phillips Brooks once said "Pray the largest prayers. You cannot think a prayer so large that God, in answering it, will not wish you had made it larger". Large asking results in large receiving!

"Do not presume to know what's best

When you begin to pray;

But say to God 'your will be done'

Then trust His perfect way."---Sper

This thought is based on the devotional from Our Daily Bread for April 4, 2007.

Sincerely submitted.

Gramp