Behind the curtain

The other day I was thinking about prayer and I began to wonder about something. We know that prayer is communicating with God. Say a negative circumstance comes up in our lives that only God can fix. We go to God and ask Him to intervene; we beg Him to fix this thing; we plead for answers. Our prayer seems to come from a place of desperation.  I believe there are times in all our lives when we’ve prayed this way and we are not alone. King David often prayed this way. He prayed in Psalm  4:1: “Answer me when I call to you, O my righteous God. Give me relief from my distress; be merciful to me and hear my prayer.” Or Psalm 5:1: “Give ear to my words, O Lord, consider my sighing. Listen to my cry for help.” Then there’s Psalm 10:1: “Why, O Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” How about when we’ve brought the trouble on ourselves through messing up just as David did in Psalm 6:1: “O Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger or discipline me in your wrath.” These prayers were coming from a place of desperation and David shows us how he felt at that time.

On the flip side, people who receive from God what they want, often say: “God answered my prayer!” This gives the impression that God only answers us when we get what we want and He doesn’t answer us if we don’t. I don’t believe that’s true. Would you as a good parent, simply ignore your child if they were truly distressed? Just walk away and let them suffer? No, you’d start comforting them. Maybe you couldn’t give them what they want for good reasons, but you would immediately try to help them see that through one avenue or another.

The truth I firmly believe is this:  Every single time you or I pray, Heaven responds. Not necessarily right away (although that does happen too), not in our timetable, not the way we think the response should be, not even the way we’d like the response to be. Perhaps the answer will be a no.  But, God does respond to us every time we pray, and every response is just full of His love for us, and our good just like the good parent He is.
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Our process for prayer is to often ask God for things. Then wait for these things to happen. When they do, our joy overflows and we thank God. But, do we only thank and praise Him after we receive the thing we wanted? Imagine if you will, if you could look behind the curtain while you are earnestly praying like David did. I believe the moment he prayed, Heaven was on it; God was putting in place the answers; the way; the timetable; other facets of orchestrating His kid’s future whom He loved so very much. And David wasn’t perfect either; he royally messed up during his life.  But he didn’t stay in that place of desperation above. Look at how he ended his prayers: Psalm 4: 7,8: “You have filled my heart with greater joy than when their (his enemies) grain and new wine abound. I will lie down and sleep in peace, for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.” Psalm 5:12: “For surely, O Lord, you bless the righteous; you surround them with your favor as with a shield.” Psalm 10:17 says: “You hear, O Lord, the desire of the afflicted; you encourage them, and you listen to their cry.” Even when he’d messed up, Psalm 6:8,9: “…for the Lord has heard my weeping. The Lord has heard my cry for mercy; the Lord accepts my prayer.

My point in saying all this, is that we should be thanking the Lord for everything that is happening behind the curtain before our situation is resolved, not just when it is. But if it isn't, we still need to thank Him for the things that He is putting in place that we  cannot see at the time, but will end up for our best future yet. When we see what He was doing for us later, there will be no end to our gratitude and praise.

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