Outside the Time Box
What if you pray for an event, then it never takes place. What happens to those prayers?
Fun Example: You're told your manuscript is going before a publishing board on Thursday morning. You figure the amount of time it takes to eat doughnuts, schmooze, discuss the upcoming weekend's planned frivolities, and also for the actual 5 minutes of business that will be tackled. Ought to be about an hour. So you round up all your buddies on Thursday, don head coverings and prayer shawls, then drop to your knees at 10:00 a.m. sharp and pray like nutty-nuts until 11:00. Whew! That should do it, right?
Not so much. You find out the following week that the meeting had been cancelled.
Serious Example: You're asked to pray for a meeting between your adult child and pastor...who's going to confront said child for their ungodly lifestyle choices. The outcome will either be repentance and a renewed relationship with God, or an angry stiff-arming toward the church and hardened heart. As a parent, you're desperate, so you call everyone you know and ask them to pray.
Then find out later that night that the child never showed up at the meeting.
My question is...what happened to all those prayers? Were they in vain? Are they wasted? Do they even count for anything at all?
I'm no theologian, but here's my take on it. God is timeless. Whether an event happens or not, it's the heart we have for an issue that He listens to, and is powerful enough to take into consideration if/when the event really does happen. In His own words, He is I AM.
When I think about that, my brain hurts. I don't understand this whole everlasting, existing all the time kind of thing, but honestly, I don't need to. God needs to, and I trust that He does. Because of faith in His being, His power, and His mercy, I can say with assurance that no prayer is ever a waste of time. After all, we are commanded to pray.
Pray constantly. Ephesians 5:17
Pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord's people. Ephesians 6:18
Pray without ceasing. 1 Thessalonians 5:17
The future is yet to be lived for us here in Humansville, but God is sovereign. Put your trust in Him, not in your petitions, or the clock on the wall, or the 'scheduled' meetings.
Either He's in charge or He's not. You decide.
