Prayer Notes

In reading from the study book I am working through, I found this section that really spoke to me. It is from Cynthia Heald's book "Becoming a Woman of Prayer" (c. 1996), pg. 45: "Certainly God does answer prayer. He answers in His way, in His time, for our good and His glory. Since this is true, why do we need to pray?" She then goes on to quote from Richard Halverson: ".....and this is the point of prayer: by prayer man consents to the rule of God in his life. By prayer man seeks God's will and yields to it. By prayer man asks God for that which he knows he needs and can receive only from God...prayer is that contact man has with the Heavenly Father to satisfy the deepest needs of his life." (from Perspective, vol. 25, #45, 1973)
For me, my time of praying, is the desire to know God fully and to have a deeper intimacy with Him. Sometimes He does not answer us the way we think He should. For example, I have been praying for the last 18 months for a woman I know who is the daughter of our former pastor in a church we served in for 15 years as husband and wife. My husband and I love this woman dearly and we are interceding for her. She has been suffering from lyme disease, which I had about 4 years ago so I know what she is going through. However, she also has severe depression with it and it seems as though God is not answering our prayers for healing. BUT...His ways are higher than our ways, and He knows the perfect plan for her. Meanwhile, we just keep praying for her and His answer might be different than what we think it is going to be! Although we do want to see her healed in a physical sense, we also want to see her healed emotionally and spiritually. And really, isn't that what God might want too??