PrayerPower

Two Kinds of Faith Connections

I love flowers. Hate watering, weeding, fertilizing. Takes time, my yard’s huge.

However, I’ve found time savers. Soaker hoses with pop-in connectors to main hoses and timers that water automatically. Weed and Feed fertilizes and keeps the weeds out if regularly applied.

Without those helps my flowerbeds become labor intensive, dry, dead, weedy.

Without the help of Jesus life becomes labor intensive too. I need a connector hooking me to God’s soaking love and his heavenly ‘weed and feed.’ That connector is faith that believes “… he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” Hebrews 11:6 With out faith connecting me to Jesus, my spirit dries, fills with ‘sin’ weeds and I die spiritually.

Two Kinds of Faith Connections

If the faith connection is present - the Lord hears two kinds of prayer.

1. A Seeking Unbeliever admitting his need to God and praying for help is always answered. Although he hasn’t fully trusted Jesus as Savior yet, he’s at the end of self-effort. God’s the last hope. Unbeliever needs to know – Is God real? Will He answer me? Unless God shows up, all is lost. So, this desperate seeker with his faith connection just forming, risks. Gasping, “Lord, if you’re real, help me!” he leaps off the edge of his known world. God, who always answers the cry of the needy, catches him in free fall. God is real.

For he will deliver the needy who cry out…. Psalm 72:12

2. The Believing Christian’s prayers are always heard and answered by Father God.

He gives the answer or grace to wait until the answer comes.

“… to you who believe in the name of the Son of God. … if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us – whatever we ask – we know that we have what we asked of him.” 1 John 5:13-15

Sovereign God’s Exceptions

Jehovah - incredible God of loving-kindness.

Scripture’s filled with his miraculous interventions in man’s behalf. The Lord passionately loves and pursues us, sometimes intervening in the lives of unwilling unbelievers, whether they’ve sought him and prayed or not. “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness.” Jeremiah 31:3

Unbelieving Paul was intercepted by God. Acts 9 The Samaritan woman wasn’t seeking the Jewish Messiah, but he found her. John 4 Scripture holds many such examples. But generally God does not communicate with those praying to false gods, agnostics, atheists, or the self-sufficient. They are not seeking him.

Jesus, Master Gardener

‘Faith connection’ to God provides a Master Gardener in Christ. Great Gardener soaks us daily with the water of the Word, refreshing dry, barren places. Sprinkling the blood of Christ - heavenly ‘weed and feed’ - Jesus cultivates Christians. Beautiful! Bouquets from those watered Edens provide sensational witness of God’s love to a weary world.

Got a ‘faith connector’?

No? Take mine. I give you faith in Jesus. Get connected. Grow.

Petey Prater writes from Beaverton, Oregon. peteyprater@yahoo.com