Mat 21:22 And all things, whatever you shall ask in prayer, believing, you shall receive. (MKJV)

What, then, do we pray, believing? This is a very important question. If our hearts are saddened by events that seem to surround us, we must remember something else our Lord and Savior said:

Joh 7:24 Do not judge according to sight, but judge righteous judgment. (MKJV)

So, taking the two verses as the truth, we can surmise that we must not go into prayer believing that the appearances around us, which are causing our sadness, are true. Since what we pray BELIEVING will be received, we must pray believing something different from the appearances that surround us that are making us sad. How do we do this?

Our prayer life should be filled with righteous judgment. In this world we DO judge. It is just the nature of this carnal world and of our carnal bodies that we do so. But judgment that is righteous is one of the choices we can make. Righteous judgment is judgment that leads to a sense of rightness as God is handed over His authority. God is good. His judgment is righteous for His children who are eager to please Him. We must be eager to please Him in order to experience His righteous judgment.

Are we eager to please God and follow His commands as given to us by His Son, Jesus Christ? If, for some reason, we aren't ready yet to completely hand over the reigns to God and love those who are being difficult to us, then we are subject to another kind of judgment by God. He, of course, can divvy out both righteous judgment and corrective judgment. The corrective judgment comes when we refrain from forgiveness and instead, hold bitterness in our hearts toward anyone (and that could include God Himself). We are commanded by the Lord to love God with all our hearts and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. What may not be considered is that as we love others, so God loves us. In what may be an incredible contradiction, God loves us all completely and wants to give us every opportunity to come to Him for both our eternal and daily salvation. But, He will send in Satan's army to prod and even seemingly, torment us with the same kind of judgment we are imposing on others and He will do this until we choose to love others as He commanded. He is not being mean with regard to this. His goal is to mold us, like a potter molds a jar. The lump of clay we have made of ourselves, is not of value to God unless He sees Christ's reflection in it. He yearns to see more of His Son in us. Can we give the One, Who gave us life, the opportunity to mold us into someone more in the image and likeness of Himself?

When we connect the dots and put Matthew 21:22 and John 7:24 (both mentioned above), we have a powerful prayer system to use. What we pray believing, we'll get, so we will refuse to judge by appearances but only judge righteously. We see no value, any longer, in weeping to God about appearances, but instead pray to God, believing He is in charge and He will make things right again. We no longer want to pray to God with minds burdened by injustices, burdened by loss, burdened by random acts of violence, but we come to the sacred place in our hearts, praying sincerely that God (who is good) is NOW overseeing this situation. We must give up the worldly view that all is hopeless and people are mean. We must thank Him enthusiastically for the changes He can make in us. We do not ask Him to change other people but know, truly know, that He will give US a fresh perspective and wonderful insight toward the goal of joy, which can then be experienced by all involved.

As long as we are depressed because someone else is not behaving as we know they should, we are in prayer, believing this is true. Jesus said what we pray believing will be given to us. We must quit believing what we don't want. We must not judge by appearances. We must understand that people are sent by God to mold us into the image and likeness of God, Himself, so they must never be condemned, but only thought of as His children (or potential children). If someone drives us TO God, can they be from our enemy? Even if they are influenced by our enemy, Satan, they can be seen as those among the “all things which work together for our good.” Then they become a gift from God and are not in league with the devil. If we believe what Satan is trying to show us, life will no longer be worth living. If we believe thorns are solely from the enemy, we will be fighting them every step of the way as we try to change them and mold them into OUR image, and Jesus will not be able to hand us the victory in which He molds us into His image. For victory is only in Him, never in Satan, and most certainly, never in ourselves.

It is very hard to take responsibility for our lives. Indeed, ultimately, that isn't even the goal. God must be in charge, but before He can take the reigns of our lives, we must let go of the appearances that other people are the cause of all our problems. Although we are not to take charge of our lives, we are responsible for giving up assumptions (appearances) and giving them over to the One Who is in charge, God. It is safe to say that ALL appearances are incorrect. If we are interested in having perpetual sadness, perpetual anger, and perpetual judgment, we will hold onto our positions, our places, and our faces. We will always save face. We will never see that God sent others to help us let go of judgment residing in our own hearts. We will always see that others are exactly what they appear to be, which is mean-spirited, conniving, always interested in only their own welfare, completely blind to our needs, fully unable to focus on the things they should be (according to us) and only interested in getting what they can for themselves. But if we are interested in a life filled with peace, joy, love and other fruit of the Spirit, we must never see people in this light (which is really dark).

Our prayers must entail complete humbleness and complete willingness to let God show us how things really are, because we are in Christ, and no longer subject to the world's view of how things appear to be. We must not go to God, brandishing our six-irons of appearances, shooting off at the mouth all that needs to be destroyed by Him as soon as possible. He has not created people to pester us. He has created people to bring us to Him, fully.

We must get off our high horses and walk, as a child, holding onto Daddy's hand. He knows the way. We don't. What we assume to be true, He knows isn't true. But He will not usurp our determination that things are as they seem. He created us free, not shackled. He created us so that we might, of our own free will, discover Him as He really is, not how we have made Him up. He is not a God Who stands idly by, observing but not acting. He is not a God Who could care less about our trivial lives. He is not a God Who has better things to do than take care of His children. He is a God Who has laid His own life down for us, that we might have life and have it more abundantly.

When would be a good time to choose to have the abundant life Jesus promised us? How about now? Starting now, we must drop the belief that others are only out to get us. Instead, we humbly go to God and lay our problems down before Him. We do not pick them up again but praise His holy name and rest in the peace that comes when we follow God's will. Our prayer times are the times in which we release, release, release KNOWING, really KNOWING, that with God all things are possible and despite appearances, love will prevail.

Isn't it great to know that life can be so much better than it is? What an awesome God we have!

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