There was an interesting theme or thread running through many of the posts shared on the private FAM Fellowship websites today( yesterday now), which reminded me of a verse of scripture that never really seems to get the attention it should. And that’s Colossians 4:2, which in the New King James Version says, Continue earnestly in prayer, being vigilant in it with thanksgiving; More than likely, we all know what it means to pray earnestly, but seriously, continuously, purposefully and sincerely are probably good definitions.

But what does “being vigilant in it with thanksgiving” mean? First, according to what many other verses tell us, and what Jesus Himself told us SO many times; we are to believe and EXPECT to receive what we pray for! And that’s exactly what we see in Matthew 21:22, where Jesus said If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.” But then Mark 11:24 takes it even a step further, because it says Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. So Jesus tells us that we have to believe we HAVE ALREADY RECEIVED IT, which pretty much explains why we should be praying “with thanksgiving!” That’s also why it is SO IMPORTANT to share the word of our testimony in accordance with Revelation 12:10-11; because we NEVER know how God intends to use the word of our testimony, including what we believe He is going to do for us, to impact the lives of others and defeat the devil! And some of the things shared today (yesterday and now again today) REALLY make that point as nothing else could. Many of the situations shared, also make the point that when we pray earnestly, and BELIEVE that God will answer our prayers; that He has IN FACT ALREADY ANSWERED THEM, we will be vigilantly looking for the evidence and manifestation of what we’re praying for and expecting it to come to pass, just as Jesus promised! So in the same way we thank the Lord for the things we see manifested in our lives each day; we are to thank Him for the things we haven’t seen YET, JUST BECAUSE we’ve prayed for it and we KNOW God is going to answer our prayers in full accordance with His Word.

By sharing our praise testimonies as we do, we affirm the truth and power of God’s Word and encourage others that what He is doing in our lives and circumstances, He will do for them as well. When we see how the Lord has orchestrated events in our lives and in the lives of those we know, just to accomplish His plan and purpose, we are reassured and encouraged to believe that He’s working in the exact same way in our own lives and situations, which gives us the confidence to KNOW that He has ALREADY heard and answered our prayers! So now it is just a matter of being vigilant as we wait and watch to see it manifested in the natural realm. Therefore, when we pray, we must believe that God has already answered our prayers, be on the look out for the evidence proving that, and faithfully give praise and thanks to the Lord even before we see it, which ultimately brings Him glory! For instance. If we pray for something and don’t say a word to anyone about what we prayed for until After God answers the prayer, it MIGHT have some kind of positive impact. But think of the impact the same answered prayer would have if we told someone what we prayed for BEFORE seeing the answer, and expressed our faith and confidence that God was going to answer according to His Word!

As noted above, I started writing this yesterday and had every intention of finishing it, but with increased membership in the fellowship and with increased responsibilities, it is more difficult to get a post completed each day. And yesterday was no exception, because there were so many awesome praise reports and responses that needed editing! But before I continue sharing what the Lord put on my heart yesterday, I want to share a Heart To Heart post one of the FAM Fellowship members (who did not know I was working on this!) posted earlier this morning!

Praying as though it’s ALREADY answered! – By Thursa

“I know I refer to my Streams in the Desert devotionals a lot, but it’s great stuff and God has taught and led me to many different studies through these devotionals. And many times as I read them at night, one speaks to me, and I can’t wait to share it the next morning. On the 17th, I read one that I just absolutely loved. And again, I couldn’t wait to share it with all of you. But the funny thing is, that I had an overwhelming feeling I should wait. So I did and now I feel led to share this particular devotion today. Perhaps God wanted me to wait so that someone specific would hear this today rather than last week. So here it is. And I hope it speaks to you as it spoke to me; to pray as if He already has answered!

“I have faith in God that it will happen just as he told me. (Acts 27:25)

A number of years ago I went to America with a steamship captain who was a very devoted Christian. When we were off the coast of Newfoundland, he said to me, “The last time I sailed here, which was five weeks ago, something happened that revolutionized my entire Christian life. I had been on the bridge for twenty-four straight hours when George Mueller of Bristol, England, who was a passenger on board, came to me and said, ‘Captain, I need to tell you that I must be in Quebec on Saturday afternoon.’ ‘That is impossible,’ I replied. ‘Very well,’ Mueller responded, ‘if your ship cannot take me, God will find some other way, for I have never missed an engagement in fifty-seven years. Let’s go down to the chartroom to pray.’

“I looked at this man of God and thought to myself, ‘What lunatic asylum did he escape from?’ I had never encountered someone like this. ‘Mr. Mueller,’ I said, ‘do you realize how dense the fog is?’ ‘No,’ he replied. ‘My eye is not on the dense fog but on the living God, who controls every circumstance of my life.’

“He then knelt down and prayed one of the most simple prayers I’ve ever heard. When he had finished, I started to pray, but he put his hand on my shoulder and told me not to pray. He said, ‘First, you do not believe God will answer, and second, I BELIEVE HE HAS. Consequently, there is no need whatsoever for you to pray about it.’

“As I looked at him, he said, ‘Captain, I have known my Lord for fifty-seven years, and there has never been even a single day that I have failed to get an audience with the King. Get up, Captain, and open the door, and you will see that the fog is gone’ I got up, and indeed the fog was gone. And on Saturday afternoon George Mueller was in Quebec for his meeting.”

If our love were just more simple,
We would take Him at His word;
And our lives would be all sunshine,
In the sweetness of our Lord.“”

Well, that’s a pretty powerful message, and most certainly perfectly timed to illustrate the point I had hoped to make with this SOF post! But the rest of the point I wanted to make, and what the posts on the private sites have illustrated so perfectly as well, is that God is ALWAYS working out even the most minute details, and that when we are still and listen to Him and are obedient when it comes to praising Him and giving Him the thanks and glory He deserves, we never know how God can and will use us to accomplish His plan and purpose in our own lives and the lives of others, including our spouses!

So to further illustrate the point that God WILL answer our prayers and that He IS working in our lives and situations in ways we don’t even know, I want to share just a few of the testimonies shared on the private sites yesterday and today.

One of our men, who has only talked to his wife once in the past three months, felt led to call her, because he found out about some news he knew would be devastating to her and he wanted to express his concern, and to notify her that he had been temporarily laid off, which will adversely impact his ability to pay the child support he normally pays. They had a very pleasant conversation, and there’s little doubt that conversation opened the door to much better communication in the future. And just who arranged for him to be laid off at the exact time his wife received such devastating news, thereby giving him the opportunity to let her know that he still cares?! No one but God! And this man’s favorite saying is “Today is the day!”…which he always reminds us it could be!

And then one of our ladies shared how God turned around what at first seemed to be a bad experience by using it to open her husband’s eyes to the fact that his children are paying a very high price because of his decision to leave his family. He had visited them and they really didn’t pay him much attention, because they’re so used to him not being around now. But when he left, the youngest ones got very upset, and the oldest just acted like it was no big deal. He called his wife in the wee hours of the morning to say that he couldn’t sleep, because he was thinking of all of that and he said how much he just wants his life back; that he misses his family, kids and wife! But he feels “trapped” and doesn’t know how to get out of the situation he’s in. He acknowledged that his priorities have been totally mixed up, and that his kids were paying for that, and he even told his wife that he loves her! He also acknowledged that he knows the Lord has been speaking to him and even said that it would probably surprise her to know that he was praying the same things she was! And he has often told her that he knows she is praying for the restoration of their marriage, so that has to be what he meant. And all of this comes at the same time an opportunity for his wife and children to move into a place of their own approaches; and they will need his financial support to do that, which he hasn’t been giving! So God is DEFINITELY at work in that situation too! And this is one woman who most certainly believes and expects that God is and has already answered her prayers!

Then one of our other ladies shared a very powerful testimony of how God orchestrates the events in our lives…even those that “appear” to be very negative! She just got laid off last week, but she was supposed to be going out of town with one of her friends this past weekend. Sparing a lot of the details, she and her husband had a very unpleasant conversation about that, which led to a lot of unwise and regrettable words from both of them, and in the end, she didn’t go out of town as planned. Since things were so tense around the house on Saturday, she went to visit an aunt and happened to share something about Friday’s SOF post about praise, and her aunt just happened to be reading a book she really liked about praise, so she lent it to her. And it really confirmed a lot of things for her and gave her insight into some of the issues she was battling. Then as she prepared for church Sunday morning, her husband said they needed to talk when she got home, so she stayed and talked to him and went to a later service. Even though a lot of what he said could be construed as negative, she was able to pick out quite a bit of positive too. And then at church, she was very personally ministered to by the words of the music, and then a skit about a married couple and how their attitudes of selfishness led to conflict in their marriage, and then how things improved when they changed their attitudes. And then the guest speaker was a woman who had gone blind at age 54 and she shared her testimony about the challenges and doubt that caused in her faith in God, which really spoke very directly to this member’s issues too. She was still troubled by the conversation with her husband, so she went to the alter for prayer and said that she felt peace come over her immediately and was able to let all of the negatives go, and that God revealed to her that He was trying to work through her to minister to her husband! Now that’s a very important message for all of us to get, because it’s so true! There were so many things that could have happened differently, which would have kept her from getting the message and confirmation God wanted her to get, but GOD had it ALL under control and He used what seemed terrible in the natural to accomplish His good and perfect plan, which will ultimately be for His glory and the full and complete restoration of this marriage and family!

Then one of our “restored” ladies shared how she and two of her neighbors had gotten together the night before to just hang out and chit chat. One of the ladies was a new neighbor, and at one point, she said she needed to go home to get a coat, and would be just a minute. But she ended up being gone longer than expected, and when she returned, much to our member’s surprise, she blurted out her testimony about standing for her marriage and what God had been doing in the restoration of her marriage! That surprised her, because she doesn’t usually share that with people who know both her and her husband, especially someone new, because they are still working on many things. But then the new neighbor shared that the reason it had taken her so long to get her coat was because she and her husband had continued an ongoing argument and she had told him to just leave and never come back! She had been too embarrassed to tell them that until she heard our member’s marriage restoration testimony, after which she was very interested in learning more, which led to sharing a lot more about standing for marriage restoration and the Lord with her! Obviously, God was working in that too and what a perfect illustration of how He uses the word of our testimony! And now she will probably be used as an instrument for the restoration of another marriage; all for our Lord’s glory!

Then one of our members shared the numerous details about how the Lord has created circumstances delaying a move she was supposed to have made from her home by the end of May, and now it appears that her husband is not quite so eager for her to leave! We’ve all watched with total amazement as the Lord seems to create one reason for delay after another, and now it’s her husband who seems to be putting off the time of her departure…and he’s the one who insisted that she be out by the end of May! It’s been quite amazing to see all of the creative things the Lord has orchestrated, including serious health concerns requiring biopsies, which were all for naught, but to accomplish the Lord’s will and purpose…delay, delay, delay! And that’s just how the Lord works to accomplish His perfect will in His perfect time!

And then the member whose husband just told her that he wanted his life (including wife) back, posted another praise report today concerning the apartment she has a chance to get, and the opportunity the Lord provided to share her testimony with the woman at the apartments! They ended up talking for an hour, which they couldn’t have done if she had been home to receive the call yesterday, because there would have been too many people around. And the woman at the apartments ended up saying that she wants to attend our member’s Home Group meetings, which she’ll be hosting when she gets moved! And in addition to that, she had also shared how a friend of hers went to the doctor, and while she was there, the nurse just started telling her all about going through a divorce. She said all she could think of as she was listening to the woman’s story was about our member and her stand and how much that woman reminded her of her! She goes back next week and she said she is going to tell the nurse about FAM!

And then we’ve had a couple of our new members share how they had felt so alone in their stand for their marriages, which they had actually been praying about when the Lord brought them to this site. One of the ladies literally went online immediately after praying and FAM was at the top of the list of results for her Google search! So we all know that God hears and answers our prayers. They are answered immediately, but it often takes time to see the physical manifestation we so desire, but we have to believe it is indeed on its way! Just as one of the new members also shared, God answers quickly many times too! She shared how she had been praying for the Lord to send Christians into her husband’s life to speak the truth of God’s Word to him to counter all of the worldly stuff he was hearing from all of their friends. And without knowing it, he hired a man to work for him who actually attends the same church she does…right after she started praying for that! And that’s the first church going man he’s ever hired! And do any of us believe for one minute that it’s just a coincidence that he was recently separated from his wife and that they are now restored and he says that he is a much better man and husband than ever before?!

So when we pray for anything we know is in keeping with the Word of God, we can rest assured that God has ALREADY given us the answer we want, even though it may take some time to see it manifested in the physical realm we live in! All of the above testimonies just prove God’s ability and faithfulness to do exactly what His Word says in Isaiah 46:11, which says From the east I summon a bird of prey; from a far-off land, a man to fulfill my purpose. What I have said, that will I bring about; what I have planned, that will I do. We never know when, where or how God is working, but we do have to believe that He is and that He WILL answer our prayers! So I hope and pray that the word of these testimonies will bless and encourage all of us to never lose sight of the fact that God is in control of EVERYTHING and that He orchestrates our lives and situations down to the minutest detail! His will and purpose WILL BE accomplished in our lives and NOTHING can keep that from happening! As Proverbs 21:30 promises, There is no wisdom, no insight, no plan that can succeed against the LORD. But it is up to us to believe that and to believe it so certainly that we can pray earnestly and then keep a faithful and confident vigil as we await the answer God promises to give us, and give thanks to Him just because we do believe Him and put our faith and trust in the power and promise of His Word! So be blessed and encouraged as you watch for the hand of God to bring about the full and complete restoration of your marriage, because that’s what His Word says He WILL do and because you asked for it and BELIEVE it has already been done!

As Thursa pointed out when I responded to her post (above) on the private site, the following Small Straws message from Marsha Burns for today is certainly not just a coincidence:

“August 22, 2007: You’ve heard the old adage, looking for love in all the wrong places. I say that many of you, My people, are not only looking for love in the wrong places, but you are looking for answers in the wrong places. Try receiving love from Me, for it is an eternal love that will never disappoint. Try asking Me for wisdom, for I will answer every time. Try reading My Word to establish a foundation of truth in your heart, says the Lord. These are the right places that will produce everlasting life, love, joy and peace.
James 1:5-8 If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double–minded man, unstable in all his ways.
James 3:15 This wisdom does not descend from above, but is earthly, sensual, demonic. For where envy and self–seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there. But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy. Now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.”

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Posted Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007 at 9:21 pm in Seeds Of Faith.