God’s Providential Answers to Prayer

What are you praying for right now? If you’re like me, you have a list of requests you’ve been faithfully praying about for weeks, months, even years. Requests for provision, direction, healing, or salvation of loved ones. Have you ever wondered, “Did I miss God’s answer?”

How often do we come to Him in faith, ask with confidence, and yet don’t see the answer to our prayers? We might think God hasn’t answered. But what if God replied and we didn’t recognize it? Maybe we didn’t see the answer because we were looking in the wrong place. Or perhaps we predetermined what the answer should be, and we weren’t considering other options.

I can be slow in recognizing the relationship between God’s providence and answers to prayer. When that happens, I miss opportunities to give God glory for His work. I also miss opportunities to encourage others by sharing answers to prayer. And I miss opportunities for spiritual growth by reflecting on God’s goodness.

Years ago, I wrote a children’s picture book and received positive feedback from editors. But the book wasn’t picked up by a publisher. So I put it away and moved on to other projects. A few years later, I connected with a best-selling children’s author and mentioned the project to her. The result was a collaboration resulting in two children’s picture books published by a Christian publisher. In God’s perfect providence, my meeting with that author led to not one, but two published books in that series. And I would have missed it if I kept looking for the answer by publishing the project on my own. And more importantly, a bonus friendship was formed that has continued for more than fifteen years.

Sharpening our skills

So how can we sharpen our skills to better recognize God’s providence in answered prayer?

1. Ask the Father for the discernment to recognize His hand at work in your life. Since He is the one doing the work, He is the best Person to ask!

2. Ask boldly, but rightly. It’s important to ask, and to ask specifically, but James also reminds us to ask with right motives (James 4:3).

3. Be willing to wait. The apostle Paul reminded believers, “If we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience” (Romans 8:25 ESV).

4. Act until corrected. The book of Proverbs tells us to, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths” (Prov. 3:5-6 ESV).

5. Expect the unexpected! Let go of a predetermined mindset as to how God will respond to your needs. The prophet Isaiah wrote that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts and His ways are not our ways (Isaiah 55:8).

6. Slow down long enough to notice what God is doing. Being busy isn’t always a good thing. Take time to notice your world—and the people God has placed in your world.

7. Receive His answer. Look for, and receive, the answer when it comes. With a house full of believers praying for Peter’s release, the servant girl in Acts 12:11-17 slammed the door on answered prayer, leaving Peter standing on the doorstep!

8. Be grateful. Be grateful for however, whenever, and wherever God chooses to act in your life. Gratitude is a frequent theme in the apostle Paul’s letters—even though many of those letters were written from prison.

Thousands of answers

As we sharpen our awareness of God’s providential work, we reap endless benefits. An attitude of gratitude will permeate our approach to life. We’ll have a vertical focus —eager to give God glory for His work in our lives. The result will also strengthen our prayer life as we recognize answers to specific prayers. And our witness will be expanded as we shed light in a dark world.

George Mueller, the noted 19th-century preacher and evangelist, said he knew of 50,000 specific answers to prayer, often seeing answers in providential circumstances. May we also be able to say that we see tens of thousands of God’s providential answers to our prayers!