A CUP OF COLD WATER

 

The Lessons I Learnt Through Prayer.

after i was saved in 1985 in Benin City, Nigeria, I was discipled by a group of students from Scripture Union, University of Benin. They taught me how to have daily communion with God through worship, reading the Holy Bible and praying. They invited me to campus fellowship meetings in which prayer played a central role, and it was in one of those meetings I received the baptism of the Holy Spirit. They taught me the basics of prayer: pray in faith; learn to pray by praying; and pray with your own words. In those early days of learning how to pray, my prayers felt short and uncoordinated. At times I wished I could just study their prayers and use them, instead of praying prayers of my own. In retrospect, they laid the foundation for my desire to pray. My praying has evolved over the years due to the many lessons learnt, some of which I now share with you.

Lesson 1—God is sovereign and He answers our prayers according to His will.

I call this Prayer 101. God sees what lies ahead of us, while we only see what is around us. I cannot count how many times I have prayed and was certain God would give me the answer I desired, only for things to turn out differently.

One experience that shocked me into realising God is sovereign and, to a large extent, changed my view of prayer, was when I was part of a team praying for a pastor’s wife who suddenly took ill. We were sure that our prayers would heal her, but she died. I thought, “What explanation does God have for allowing a pastor’s wife to die despite our fervent prayers? What testimony do we have now? After all, her husband is his servant, and she was the only saved person in her family.”

In countries with large Muslim populations, converts to the Christian faith face severe persecutions, including threats of death, and dealing with that can be a challenge. A dear convert was diagnosed with cancer, and we prayed for her healing as she was undergoing chemotherapy. My motive for praying was for God to heal her to prove to her family and the faith she left that He alone is Healer, which He is, and able to help her. So, you can imagine the pain and sadness I felt when she passed on. I felt God had missed an opportunity to showcase His healing power and thereby save other members of her family.

In both instances, I realised that my heart had a will of its own, and I did not seek God with regards to the situations we were praying for. I have since learnt that my heart should always be ready to seek and accept the Lord’s will whatever it is. For our dear sisters, their passing ushered them right into the arms of Jesus, because, for followers of Jesus, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:8). From these and many other examples in which I had prayed for a situation to go one way, only for it to turn out another way, I learnt that God is sovereign. His judgments are unsearchable, His ways past finding out, no one knows His mind unless He reveals it to you and He does not have a counsellor (Romans 11:33-36). He answers our prayers according to the counsel of His will because He sees and knows the big picture of our lives (Ephesians 1:11).