Wait on Him and Watch for the Fulfillment of Your Prayers: Tips for Effective Communication With God, Part 7

Don’t just pray and then forget about it. If you do, you may never notice God’s hand in your life. When you pray for a special request, watch for God’s manifestation in your life during the upcoming days. You may want to write a diary of your prayer requests and the date it was answered, and don’t dismiss anything unusual as chance. God is at work on your behalf. “I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope.” (Ps 130:5 NIV); “But as for me, I watch in hope for the LORD, I wait for God my Savior; my God will hear me.” (Mic 7:7 NIV) Story: “I have an important business meeting in the morning. Would you please set the alarm for 5:30 a.m.?” I said to my wife. “Oh, that won’t be necessary. Just tell the Lord what time you want to wake up. He does it for me all the time,” my wife said. I rolled my eyes in disbelief. “Well, I’d feel more comfortable if we set the alarm.” “Okay, ye of little faith. But just to prove my point I am going to ask the Lord to wake us up just before 5:30.” The next morning I awoke before the alarm went off. I looked at the clock. It read 5:15. I looked at my wife, who had just awakened at the same time with an I-told-you-so smile. Sometimes we wrongfully view God as someone we go to for only the “big things.” The idea of “bothering God” for such a trivial matter seems foolish and presumptuous. However, when you were a child and had to get up in the morning for school, didn’t your mom or dad come wake you up? They were your parents, and you could come to them with the most trivial concerns or requests. Why would our heavenly Father be any less approachable? Perhaps our problem is that we simply have not developed a level of intimacy with God so that we feel the freedom to approach Him at these daily, routine levels. We often operate with an unwritten code that says our needs must have a certain degree of importance or crisis before we come to God with them. This is not God’s character towards us. Does the Lord desire this level of intimacy with you and me? The apostle Paul exhorted us to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:17 KJV). There is never a caution to pray only about matters of greater importance. Today, go to God with matters that you might view as trivial and would normally avoid bringing to God. Ask God to increase your level of intimacy with Him. You may even be able to get rid of your alarm clock. Excerpted with permission from the book TGIF Today God Is First, by Os Hillman, copyright 2000, Destiny Image Publishers, Reprinted by permission. For free daily email subscription to TGIF Today God Is First marketplace meditations, visit www.marketplaceleaders.org P. S. By the way, this works! This is how I wake up every morning. God is more reliable than an alarm clock, as alarm clocks can become defective or there can be a power shortage. Try it and believe. Part 8