Answers to prayer

I don't think that I am the only one who tries to answer my own prayers.

I am not saying that we pray and then do nothing - like the person who ask God, "Father, please give me a job," - and then they sit on the couch watching T.V. and eating Kettle Potato Chips.

We do have a part.

But many times, we go to the other extreme. Instead of waiting on God, we push ahead and try to bring about the answer WE want instead of what GOD wants.

Thomas Merton (the Catholic writer and mystic)once wrote, "What is the use of praying if at the very moment of prayer, we have so little confidence in God that we are busy planning our own kind of answer to our prayer?"

Good, practical words of counsel to you and I.

Faith says I bring my need to God in the first place. Confidence in God says that he will answer my prayer in a way that fits into His will for my life.

So....I pray and leave the answer in the hands of God, all the while following his direction for my life in the process of waiting.