The Expectant Prayer

Learning to pray expectantly is not always an easy thing for us.  We often talk about praying with such a spirit while we harbor doubt in our hearts.  We are asked to pray for someone's healing and we do so, but sometimes the prayers are more perfunctory than hopeful and faith filled.  We ask for God to keep us safe through an upcoming journey and forget at the end that we have arrived without harm.  We pray for a growing sense of God's presence in our daily lives, but we walk through the day without paying attention to the many possible means of manifestation which are alongside our path.    

The New Testament writing which carries the name of James has a Word for us as we pray such prayers, "But, ask in faith, never doubting...for the doubter, being double minded and unstable in every way, must not expect to receive anything from the Lord."  (James 1:6. 8).  Is it not true that we often receive that for which we ask?  Did not Jesus say in the Sermon on the Mount, "Ask, and it will be given..."  (Matthew 7:7)  Is it not true that we are often afraid to pray such bold expectant prayers?  And if we do dare to pray them, is not also true that we pray those prayers silently lest someone hear and think we are practicing a kind of foolish praying?    

Praying expectantly is something most of us have to learn.  We have to practice those prayers.  We have to come to a place where we are able to turn loose our fear of not being heard, or of praying prayers that receive no response from God.  We have to come to a place where the answer or the response to our praying is not the goal, but instead the goal is laying before the Father a heart that truly desires something good for one of His own.  What we have to come to terms with in our journey toward expectant praying is that we are not responsible for the way God chooses to use our praying.  Our only responsibility is to do the praying.