I wonder if there is some people reading this who feel that their prayers, though very sincere, seem to be unanswered and wonder if there is anything in it after all. Perhaps God HAS answered, but said “NO” because it just wouldn’t be good for you. Can say at the close of your prayer “If is it Thy Will”, and should it not be answered as you desired, accept that it is not God’s will to give it to you that way?
You always close with the words. “For Jesus Sake” (this is what AMEN means) but how often we don’t really mean it? If we stop to think about it, our prayers are often for something we want or think should happen and Jesus hardly comes into it at all.
Jesus said If ye shall ask anything IN MY NAME I will do “For His sake”. “Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.” John 16:24.
Do we ever ask what does He want? Is it “Me” or “HIM” that I’m most concerned about. If we are strictly honest its mostly “ME” and therefore I fail to receive the answer I want. God’s will is to free us from “self” and to find a full life in Him, so that we can sing “All that thrills my soul is Jesus”. This is life at its best and fullest. Perhaps a story will help us to understand a little better.
The Broken Sugar Bowl
This Story is about a mother who was having a real tea party. She set the table with her best tablecloth, her best coffee set, best cups, saucers and plates and even put flowers on the table.
This mother had a little girl, who really loved sugar, really loved sugar, she would eat by the spoonful and sometimes she would even dip her finger in the sugar and then lick her finger. Now her daughter was to be part of this real tea party as well and she was really excited. So, when everything was ready her mother went off to do some things while they waited for their friend to arrive. As she left the room she said to her daughter. “Please don’t touch anything and especially the sugar.”
Well! The little girl looked at the table and the sugar and thought.
“One taste shouldn’t hurt” so she tasted the sugar and then she thought
“Oh, just one more”
but then the next thing she realised was that the sugar bowl was empty – and at the same time she remembered what her mother had said to her as she left the room.
“Please don’t touch anything and especially the sugar”.
“Oh dear, how am I going to fix this” she thought. “I will have to put more sugar in the bowl and then mum won’t know that I have disobeyed her.”
Can you guess where this girls’ mother kept the sugar. That right way up high so that she could not reach it and eat it all. So in order to try and fill the sugar bowl she climbed onto a chair and stretched up to reach the sugar but as she stretched the chair she was standing on wobbled and she let go of the sugar bowl and it crashed to the floor and broke.
Now she was in real bother, not only was there no sugar in the bowl but it was also broken and it was the good one that belonged to the coffee set. What would her mother say?
Then she remembered something that her Sunday school Teacher had said at Sunday School and that was the Jesus could do anything. Oh, good she thought I just ask Jesus to fix the sugar bowl and then maybe He will even put sugar in it too! So, she sat on the floor and closed her eyes and prayed “Dear Jesus please fix Mums sugar bowl:” and she opened her eyes and what do you think she saw.
Was the sugar bowl fixed. NO!
"Well," she thought "maybe Jesus just didn’t hear me properly", so she prayed again but when she opened her eyes again, the bowl was still broken.
“Now that’s not fair”, she said to herself and started to cry.
When her mother came back into the room she saw how upset her daughter was and asked her why she was crying.
"The teacher at Sunday School was wrong", she cried through her tears.
“What makes you say that?” asked her mother.
“Well I asked Jesus to fix your sugar bowl and he didn’t.” she cried.
“You know if Jesus wanted to He could, but He won’t”, replied her mother.
The little girl looked at her mother in surprise and asked “Why not?”
“Because if He had, then He would have helped you to cover up a sin, and Jesus doesn’t like sin. He really wants us to confess our sins so that He can forgive us. If you had asked Jesus to help you stay away from the sugar then He would have helped you. And even after the sugar bowl was broken, if you had asked Him to help you tell me about it, then he would have helped you! But you asked Him to help you hide what you did that was wrong and Jesus won’t do that.” The bible says in 1 John 1:9 “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
Some of our prayers are only asking God to cover up the sins we’ve committed without our confessing and forsaking them and of course God cannot do that and still be the pure, holy and just God that He is.
If your life is getting in a mess remember the sugar basin and instead of looking for an escape from the consequences of your wrong doing, take all your sins to Jesus tell Him all your failures and ask for forgiveness and cleansing. He has promised to do this for all who ask. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” 1 John 1:9.
Will you take Him at His word right now and be clean from all the things in your life that are not God’s will for you?
My mother, Jean Morris, was called to preach God's word in 1950. This was firstly through the Salvation Army. It was a calling that God used until her death in 2014.
I have been reading through some of her notes and I have decided to adapt them in order to prolong her ministry into the future.