What God has been teaching me about prayer

In a way, God answered one of my prayers this past week. My friend who is a practicing Muslim came to my church this past week, for the 20somethings group that meets every other Tuesday. I have never tried to "convert" her, but rather share the Gospel message in a relational way, I believe in sharing the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words (ala St. Francis of Assisi).

Yet did my prayer of God to move in my friend occur overnight? By no means! Our friendship is about 6 years young and from the start we seemed well aware of the others belief systems and we broke down some walls along the way (mostly the extremist sides to Islam and the extremist sides of Christianity).


God spoke revelation to my life about prayer, and this is how it all came together in a divine "Eureka" moment:

There are times when we come to God with our prayers and petitions, we pray to God and we off him "bamboo prayers". By bamboo prayers I mean that we want to see results that spring up very quickly (bamboo is a quick growing grass), we want God's timeframe to match our timeframe.
Granted God sometimes answers our prayers in a very timely matter, we get what we ask for with a Yes/No/Wait answer quickly... and yet sometimes...

And sometimes we need to be persistant, sometimes we have to have the patience to wait on God and his timeframe over ours, we need to pray "sequoia prayers". Sequoias are massive trees! Yet they didn't get that way nearly as quickly as bamboo, they've taken literally hundreds of years to get that large. In the same way, sometimes we need to pray a long time before we see results. We should pray earnestly and never for reasons "because I have to" or "this is what I am doing" because it isn't us, it is God working through us, it is God's doing.

This is what God has revealed to me about Prayer. Prayer should be a continuous process that flows out of us, we might see results right away but sometimes it takes time. In all things, pray!

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