Together in Prayer

Why doesn't God answer prayer immediately?  Why does he seem at times to hold back, to keep us in difficult circumstances when he could bring healing, relief, finances, reconciliation, and more - all with just a word?

There is no "one-size-fits-all" answer to this question.  First and foremost, we must acknowledge and agree with God that His ways and His thoughts are higher than ours, and we're not going to understand them all the time (Isaiah 55:9).  With Paul, we cry out, "Oh, the…

Crisis situations often make us wonder if God sees our suffering or hears our cries.  God can seem distant and unconcerned with our troubles.  But Scripture shows us over and over that nothing could be further from the truth.

Joseph must have wondered if God cared about his ordeals as he was carried off into slavery and again as he languished in prison.  He must have questioned why God would allow his brothers to sell him into slavery, why the lies of Potiphar's wife could land him in…

Perhaps the most famous cry of "Why" in the Bible came from the mouth of our Savior as he was dying on the cross.  "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46)

Jesus was quoting the beginning to Psalm 22, which we looked at previously.  In Jesus' case, of course, he had known in advance the agony he would suffer; in fact, he had prayed earnestly that he could be spared that agony (Matthew 26:36-42) - not just the physical agony of torture and crucifixion, but I suspect…

The Presidential Prayer Team daily prayer page today mentions that it's 100 days to the mid-term elections.  With division in our country running so high and questions still surrounding alleged attempts to interfere with the 2016 elections, we need God's intervention both to protect our election process and to put in place leaders who will honor him.  How should we then pray?  This is the first of a series of posts with thoughts on how to pray for our upcoming…

David suffered much in his life - some of it the result of the sinfulness of others (as in King Saul's pursuit of him) and some of it the result of his own sin (for example, in the episode with Bathsheba or the counting of the army).  Sometimes David understood why he suffered; at other times he cried out in desperation and confusion to God.  Psalm 22 is one of these latter occasions.

"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?", he begins.  (We'll discuss Jesus' similar prayer in the…

If you're in the habit of pasting information and prayer requests here at Pray.Network (as I am), here's a tip:  Use Google Chrome rather than Internet Explorer or Edge browsers.  I have found that with IE/Edge, pasted copy often gets cut off on the right-hand side, reformatted in ways I don't expect, and pictures often don't come out well.

I've noticed since switching over to Chrome that none of these problems are present in that browser.  Chrome does do a little reformatting, but…

The wind and the waves threatened to capsize the fishing boat. Though seasoned on the water, the men…