Tag prayers and our faith

Table of Contents

• Tracking our Answered prayers.
  • Waiting is probably the most common answer
  • Does God answer prayers three ways?
• Tracking our in-progress prayers

How we track our prayers is probably different for each of us. I am only providing some ideas for you to pursue. We’ve already discussed “waiting” and “releasing” prayers and their parameters.

As I mentioned yesterday, this whole idea of having a way to track my prayers began as I looked back over the month of February and realized I had a lot of answered prayer that I simply forgot about. I realized I needed to design a method to track them, but that led to all kinds of possibilities.

I narrowed it down to these four: ‘Waiting,’ ‘Releasing,’ ‘Answered,’ and ‘In Progress.’ Within those, there are many nuances, however. I’ve yet to figure out the design for all of this, though. Today I’m addressing answered and in-progress prayer.

But before I do I want to include some words by E. M. Bounds, from his book PRAYER. Whe he refers to the prayer closet, he is referring not to a literal closet but wherever you have your prayer time.

There are conditions to answered prayers but I will not address that today as it warrants its own post. But I think E.M. Bounds quote says it all.

Tracking our Answered prayers.

First of all, the Bible doesn’t address unanswered prayer. Jesus never mentions unanswered prayer. He does say, though, that some situations require prayer and fasting. And remember the prayers that are referred to in the Bible are prayers prayed by true believers. God hears the prayers of His children and those who are seeking Him for the first time.

The Bible states that if we are are praying within God’s will, if our lives are righteous, (meaning we sincerely seek God’s direction, not that we’re perfect), if we pray with right motives, God hears our prayers. They then are either Yes, answered!, we are called to wait (which again has many deminisions),we release it , or the answer is forthcoming, meaning it’s in in-progress.

Waiting is probably the most common answer

to our prayers because sometimes there’s a lot of factors involved. But I do love those instant answers, don’t you? I think sometimes when we start praying for someone or some situation, we find that we refind how we’re praying as bring our prayers to God. It’s like God helps us get to that “sweet spot in prayer” where we know we are praying within his will. When we know that, we can have such confidence coming before him.

Does God answer prayers three ways?

We’ve often heard that God answers prayers in three ways, yes, no, and maybe. I disagree with the maybe. There’s no such a thing as a maybe with God, there’s a wait, but not a maybe.

A ‘no’ is an answered prayer as well and almost always means we are asking for a wrong thing or have the wrong motive. For example, if we’re praying for change in someone because it makes our lives better, that’s a wrong motive. We pray with wrong motives more often than you might think.

There’s someone I immediately think of as an example. This person is someone I pray for daily, that God would become real to them. This person can be kind of prickly if you know what I mean. I can’t pray they become a follower of Christ for me but for him. I have to genuinely want Christ’s redemption for him, not just because I’m hoping he’s less prickly.

We also pray for the wrong things. It’s not wrong to pray we get that promotion or that our book sells well, but at the bottom of it should be that it will bring glory to God somehow.

Tracking our in-progress prayers

I have a lot of in-progress prayers I pray every day. We all do. The couple I mentioned yesterday, friends with ongoing needs, wars, hunger, poverty. I believe God hears those prayers and is answering these prayers always. They are in my in-progress prayers.

The hope for some of our in-progress prayers, is that they become “released”, meaning those prayers have been answered.

I also think it’s possible that our in-progress prayers, meaning that we’re seeing some leanings in the right direction, can sometimes cause us to weaken our prayers. After all, we’re seeing progress, right? But this is probably the time to be praying even harder.

If it was that important for you to pray for in the beginning, it’s that important for you to continue until it is answered completely.

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I don’t have a clue about designing a form for this tracking. I will definitely share it with you when I do. Until then, keep praying.

God bless and have a prayer-filled day.

I’ve never done this before but I’m going to to give it a try. How would you answer this question?

Do you think tracking your prayer requests could prove valuable? Thans