Mark 11:24 says, “Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.”
When I first accepted the Lord as my Savior, my friend, Lynn, was trying to disciple me in the things of the Lord. Lynn knew a few things and I didn’t know anything. At the time, we were both in high school.
Lynn said to me, “Now that you’re a Christian, you need to start reading your Bible.” But she didn’t tell me where to start reading, so I started at the most logical place: the very beginning with Genesis 1:1 and the creation. Next she told me, “You also need to start praying. You can talk to God the same way you talk to your dad.” But it seemed much too informal for me to go to God in prayer and call Him Dad. As the Creator of all things, He deserved more reverence than that, so I referred to Him as my Heavenly Father. Then Lynn told me that when I prayed, I could ask God for anything, and He’d give it to me if I believed and if it was His will. And she quoted Mark 11:24 to me. At the time, I didn’t realize that there are quite a few conditions to answered prayer, and Lynn only gave me two of them.
Well, there were two things that I really wanted. I desperately wanted to go into the United States Air Force, but due to my balance, I didn’t think I’d pass the physical. So I promised God that if He let me pass the physical, I’d know it was His will and I’d go into the Air Force. To my surprise, I passed that physical, so I enlisted in the military. But my balance was still an issue.
Remembering what Lynn had told me, I went to God in earnest prayer, requesting He heal my balance problem. I prayed and prayed and prayed. Then I believed and believed and believed. But my balance wasn’t getting any better. So I figured I didn’t have enough faith to be healed, so I kept praying.
Then one day about three years later, God spoke to my heart and said to me very clearly, “Okay, Marj, I’ll heal your balance.” That gave me an incredible peace. God heard me. He was going to heal me. I had no reason to doubt Him, so I quit petitioning Him about it. In fact, I didn’t give it another thought after that.
I’ve been saved now for almost forty years, and one day a couple of years ago, it occurred to me that I still had a balance problem. So I asked God about it. I said to Him, “Lord, you promised to heal me. What happened?” He said to me, “I will heal you. One day you’ll be with me and you will be healed for all eternity.” At this place in my spiritual development, I was okay with that.
Another condition of answered prayer is God’s timing. Living in a world of instant gratification and immediate communication where everything is speedy fast, we don’t like to wait. But God is never late. His timing is always perfect. And when He makes a promise, He keeps it in His timing; not ours.