The Courageous Prayer

I have a question for you today. When life throws you a curveball and you turn to God, what is your prayer like? Do you plead with God, ask why this has happened to you? Do you bargain with God and say you'll turn over a new leaf if only He'll pull you out of this one last jam? Do you pray boldly and ask that He deliver you from it?

I suspect we've all prayed a bunch of all of those types of prayers in our lives. I know I have prayed in just about every way imaginable and in many, many different types of circumstances. At times I hadn't paid any attention to God for quite some time and yet, when things went awry, there I was praying my prayer to be rescued. While those aren't necessarily bad prayers to pray, they didn't show a lot of courage on my part...and I believe not enough faith either.

I got to wondering if there was an example of a courageous prayer in the Bible, and I found a couple. First, when Jesus sat down on the mountainside to teach His disciples, one of the things He taught them was how to pray. In Matthew 6 He says, "This, then, is how you should pray: 'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.'

The second was the prayer Jesus prayed right before we was arrested. In Luke 22, He says, "Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done."

To pray a prayer that says, I don't like what is happening and I wish it wasn't happening, but let your will be done Lord...that seems to me like an awfully brave thing to pray. By acknowledging God's will for us, I believe we open ourselves up to experiencing His blessings in a whole new way. Could it be that by giving in and allowing Him to take over, that God might smile happily knowing full well what He has in store for us and that it's better than anything we could accomplish on our own or could even imagine?

When things don't go as expected and life hits you hard, will you have the courage to pray to God and ask Him to carry out His will for you? I pray that you do and that His blessings from doing so are so plentiful that you cannot contain them and have to share them with others!