I read something a while back in a book by Philip Yancey on prayer. It's a powerful, prayer changing thought. Chew on it a while and then try to digest it.
You and I both know that God is timeless. He is beyond time. We experience time in sequence. There is a beginning a middle and an end. With God there is no sequential time. He is timeless.
Philip Yancey writes - and chew on this and let me know what you think:
"How does God's timelessness affect prayer? C.S. Lewis decided it altogether reasonable to pray at noon for a medical consultation that might have been conducted at ten o'clock as long as we do not know the final result before we pray. "The event certainly has been decided - in a sense it was decided 'before all worlds." But one of the things taken into account in deciding it, and therefore one of the things that really cause it to happen, may be this very prayer that we are not offering." Lewis notes such a notion would be less shocking to modern scientist than to non scientists."
The implications of this are incredible!
If I understand C.S. Lewis right, I can pray for something that has already taken place, and see God's hand move as long as I don't know the answer to my prayer in the present.
If I am praying about the results from a test at the doctor's, and if I don't know the test results yet, I can continue to pray that they will be positive up until the time the doctor shares the results with me.
If I go in for an interview for a job and the interview takes place, and I don't know whether I have the job or not, I can continue to pray that my resume and interview will be granted favor in the mind of the person giving the interview - again, up until I find out whether I have the job or not.
Perhaps this is part of what Jesus means by being persistent in prayer.
Why not begin to practice this today?
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