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Show rrr 7 MOST PRAYERS are petitions for God' j help. Christian faith teachei that no prayer goes unanswered. un-answered. However, that does not mean that God can be commanded to do ust what the petitioner asks. In prayer we present God with a difficulty. But we may not presume pre-sume to dictate how He will solve the difficulty. When the wine ran short at the marriage feast at Cana, the Mother Moth-er of Christ turned to Him, saying: "They have no wine." Her statement state-ment was an implicit prayer for His assistance. Mary did not know how her Son would solve the problem. prob-lem. Nor did she presume to make any suggestions. She merely made known a need. Her obvious confidence con-fidence that Christ would respond to the need made her prayer a sublime act of faith that the Savior could not Ignore. Most Christians have a great deal to learn about prayer. Often In times of some urgent need, we expect God to intervene at once. We tend to become impatient when nothing seems to happen. Worse still, we may let our disappointment disappoint-ment and discouragement turn Into spiritual weariness, not to say despair. de-spair. Prayer must not become a tug-of-war with God. We cannot dictate to God how or when He shall answer an-swer us. We cannot be sure that the thing we ask for is as good and right as we think It Is. We can never have God's knowledge of what would result from heeding some particular mundane or temporal tem-poral plea. |