WHEN YOU PRAY, GIVE GOD THE PROBLEM
Faith Believes God Will Answer—Trust Allows Him to Decide How
“Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.” — Mark 11:24
I believe God answers prayer.
I don't merely believe it because I have read about prayer in the Bible. I believe it because I have seen God answer prayer.
I have seen Him work in my own life.
I have watched Him move in my family.
I have witnessed His hand through years of ministry.
And I have heard testimony after testimony from people around the world who prayed when circumstances looked impossible—and somehow, some way, God made a way.
But I need to quantify something when I say, “God answers prayer.”
God has not always answered my prayers the way I asked Him to.
And He certainly has not always answered them when I wanted Him to.
Does that sound contradictory?
Not at all.
It means I have learned something about prayer that sometimes takes us years to understand:
GOD ANSWERS PRAYER—BUT GOD IS STILL GOD
Prayer is not giving God instructions.
Prayer is not handing Heaven our preferred solution and asking God to sign His name at the bottom.
Prayer is not saying:
“Lord, here is my problem, here is how You need to fix it, here is who You need to use, and here is when I need it completed.”
That isn't faith.
That's trying to maintain control while asking God to help.
True prayer eventually brings us to a very different place:
“Father, this is where I am. This is what I am facing. This is what I desire. But I give this situation completely to You. Please take care of it Your way and in Your time. I trust You, and I release it to You.”
That changes everything.
“BELIEVE THAT YE RECEIVE THEM”
Mark 11:24 is one of the most powerful promises concerning prayer in Scripture:
“What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.”
Notice the emphasis upon believing.
Jesus calls us to pray in faith.
But faith does not mean forcing God into our timetable.
Faith means trusting God enough to believe that once the matter has been placed into His hands, He knows what to do with it.
Sometimes His answer will be exactly what we requested.
Sometimes His answer will be greater than what we requested.
Sometimes He will answer differently than we expected.
Sometimes the answer will be:
Yes.
Sometimes:
Not yet.
Sometimes:
No.
And sometimes we will not understand what God is doing until much later.
But none of those responses changes this truth:
God heard you.
WE WANT GOD'S POWER—BUT SOMETIMES WE ALSO WANT CONTROL
Here is where prayer becomes difficult.
We want God to handle the problem, but we also want to tell Him how to handle it.
We pray about the marriage, then try to manipulate the spouse.
We pray about the finances, then spend the night worrying about the money.
We pray about our children, then attempt to control every circumstance surrounding them.
We pray about the job, then become frustrated because the door we wanted remains closed.
We pray for healing, provision, direction, restoration, or deliverance—and then spend the next several days checking whether God is doing it according to our schedule.
We say:
“Lord, I give it to You.”
Then fifteen minutes later, we pick it back up.
Sound familiar?
I've done it.
Perhaps you have too.
But eventually we have to decide:
Who is carrying this—the Lord or me?
GOD NEEDS TOTAL AUTONOMY
When I say God needs total autonomy, I am not suggesting that God somehow lacks authority unless we grant it to Him. God is sovereign whether we acknowledge His sovereignty or not.
What I mean is that we must willingly surrender our attempts to control the outcome.
If you ask God to handle something while continually refusing to release your grip upon it, you are fighting the very surrender your prayer requires.
You cannot say:
“Lord, take it,”
while spiritually holding onto it with both hands.
There comes a point when prayer has to become:
“Father, I've told You what I desire. I've told You what hurts. I've told You what frightens me. I've told You what I think needs to happen. Now I place it into Your hands.”
And then comes perhaps the hardest sentence:
“Your way, Lord—not mine.”
JESUS SHOWED US WHAT SURRENDERED PRAYER LOOKS LIKE
If anyone had the right to demand a particular outcome, surely it was Jesus Christ.
Yet in Gethsemane, facing the Cross, Jesus prayed:
“Father, if Thou be willing, remove this cup from Me: nevertheless not My will, but Thine, be done.” — Luke 22:42
Think about that.
Jesus expressed His desire.
He did not pretend the suffering wasn't real.
He didn't hide the agony.
He brought it before His Father.
But then He surrendered the outcome:
“Nevertheless not My will, but Thine, be done.”
That is not weak faith.
That is extraordinary faith.
Real faith isn't merely believing God can give us what we want.
Real faith is trusting God when He chooses something different from what we wanted.
THE WAYS OF THE LORD ARE RIGHT
The Bible declares:
“The ways of the LORD are right.” — Hosea 14:9
That means God's way remains right even when I don't understand it.
God's way is right when the door opens.
God's way is right when the door closes.
God's way is right when the answer comes immediately.
God's way is right when I have been waiting for months.
God's way is right when everything makes sense.
And God's way is still right when nothing makes sense to me at all.
That is where trust begins to mature.
Anybody can praise God when the answer arrives exactly as requested.
But what happens when you prayed for A, and God gives you B?
What happens when you prayed for the door to open and God shuts it?
What happens when you prayed for someone to remain in your life and they leave?
What happens when you prayed for immediate relief and instead God gives you strength to endure?
Do we still believe the ways of the Lord are right?
SOMETIMES GOD CHANGES THE SITUATION—SOMETIMES HE CHANGES US
We often enter prayer asking God to change something around us.
Sometimes He does.
But sometimes, while we are waiting for the situation to change, we discover that God has been changing us.
We asked Him to remove the pressure.
He developed endurance.
We asked Him to remove the difficult person.
He taught us patience.
We asked Him to eliminate uncertainty.
He taught us faith.
We asked Him to immediately open the door.
He taught us how to wait.
We asked Him to change everybody else.
And somewhere during all that praying, He started changing us.
That doesn't mean the original prayer was wrong.
It means God saw more than we could see.
GOD SEES THE ENTIRE PICTURE
We see today.
God sees tomorrow.
We see the problem.
God sees everything connected to the problem.
We see the closed door.
God sees what is behind it.
We see the person who walked away.
God sees where that relationship would have led.
We see the opportunity we lost.
God sees the danger from which He may have protected us.
We see the delay.
God sees what still needs to be prepared.
Isaiah reminds us:
“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, saith the LORD.” — Isaiah 55:8
Our prayer may be sincere.
Our desire may even be good.
But our knowledge is limited.
God's is not.
DON'T CONFUSE DELAY WITH DENIAL
One of the greatest challenges in prayer is God's timing.
We live by clocks.
Calendars.
Deadlines.
Schedules.
Appointments.
God does not panic because Tuesday arrived and nothing has changed.
He isn't nervously looking at Heaven's clock wondering whether He can finish your miracle before midnight.
What looks late to us may be exactly on schedule with God.
Remember Lazarus.
When Jesus heard that Lazarus was sick, He did not immediately rush to Bethany. By the time Jesus arrived, Lazarus had been dead four days.
From a human perspective:
Too late.
From God's perspective:
Right on time.
Jesus stood before the tomb and cried:
“Lazarus, come forth.” — John 11:43
And Lazarus walked out.
Never mistake God's silence for God's absence.
And never automatically interpret God's delay as God's refusal.
God may be doing something you cannot yet see.
PRAYER IS NOT ABOUT MAKING GOD TRUST US
It's about learning to trust Him.
That is the heart of the matter.
When we pray, we aren't trying to convince God that our plan is best.
We are bringing our need before the One who already knows the beginning from the end.
Proverbs tells us:
“Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.” — Proverbs 3:5
That little phrase can become very difficult:
“Lean not unto thine own understanding.”
Because we like understanding.
We want explanations.
We want dates.
We want reasons.
We want to know why.
We want to know when.
We want God to show us the complete plan.
But sometimes God's answer is simply:
“Trust Me.”
PRAY—BELIEVE—RELEASE
Perhaps we have made prayer more complicated than it needs to be.
Bring the matter honestly before God.
Tell Him what hurts.
Tell Him what you need.
Tell Him what you desire.
Ask boldly.
Believe wholeheartedly.
And then:
RELEASE IT.
You have prayed.
Now let God be God.
Stop digging up the seed every morning to see whether it has started growing.
Stop measuring God's faithfulness by today's circumstances.
Stop assuming nothing is happening simply because you cannot see anything happening.
Faith doesn't require constant visible evidence.
“For we walk by faith, not by sight.” — 2 Corinthians 5:7
WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN REFUSING TO RELEASE?
Maybe that's the question God wants someone reading this to confront today.
What have you prayed about repeatedly but never actually surrendered?
Your child?
Your marriage?
Your health?
Your finances?
Your ministry?
Your future?
Your job?
Your loneliness?
Your grief?
Your unanswered question?
Your impossible situation?
Perhaps you don't need another twenty-minute prayer explaining the problem to God.
He already knows.
Maybe today your prayer simply needs to be:
“Father, I trust You.”
“I give this completely to You.”
“Handle it Your way.”
“Handle it in Your time.”
“And whatever You decide, give me the faith to trust that Your way is right.”
I STILL BELIEVE GOD ANSWERS PRAYER
After all these years of walking with the Lord, I still believe it.
After answers I understood—and answers I didn't.
After doors that opened—and doors that remained closed.
After prayers answered quickly—and prayers that required waiting.
After times when God did exactly what I asked—and times when He did something completely different.
I still believe God answers prayer.
But I have also learned this:
I don't need God to do everything my way in order to believe He heard me.
I don't need Him to follow my timetable in order to believe He loves me.
And I don't have to understand everything He's doing in order to trust Him.
Mark 11:24 tells me to pray and believe.
Experience has taught me what comes next:
Pray. Believe. Release. Trust.
Because once I truly place the matter into God's hands, I am saying:
“Father, this is where I am, and this is the problem I'm facing. You know what I need better than I do. Please take care of it Your way and in Your time. I trust You. I release it to You.”
Then—
leave it there.
God heard you.
God sees you.
God knows what you cannot see.
God knows what tomorrow holds.
And above all:
THE WAYS OF THE LORD ARE RIGHT.
Pilgrim Outreach Ministries International
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