F
I think I already know the answer to this, but I'm still kind of trying to wrap my mind around it.
Something I have experienced twice in my life so far is a situation in which it would seem someone ended up suffering temporarily with the result that a prayer of mine was answered...
Let me explain the situations.
Quite a few years ago while still a teenager in youth group, I wanted to get baptized at the next scheduled baptism service at my church. However, the final deadline to pick up the intent-to-be-baptized application was the same night as the youth group meeting which was held at a different building in town. About a mile away. So I had no way to get over to the church to get the application...
I asked God to help me get the application that night, somehow, if it was really his will that I be baptized. Upon arriving at the "youth center", we were told that one of the teens in the youth band had apparently screamed, vomited, and fell to the floor while practicing! An ambulance was called and she was taken to the hospital. Therefore, the usual youth night was canceled and instead all the youth were meeting at the church to pray for her... So, I got the paperwork and she was released from the hospital very quickly in perfectly fine health. I was baptized at the next service...
Just today, I witnessed a similar situation again related to a prayer of mine. I mentioned in another post that I've been having a very hard time with a co-worker and a delivery man sharing sexual images on their phones and sometimes showing them to me unexpectedly. Valentine's Day, as I feared, was even worse. For whatever reason, this time they were looking at homosexual photos and posts which were supposed to be humorous but were just bad... So today I was dreading work, needless to say.
My co-worker always arrives after me, so this morning I got to work and immediately went to a quiet place to ask God (beg God...) to somehow keep that stuff away from me and even take my co-worker away for a time so I could recuperate spiritually and mentally from the things I heard and saw the day before.
Well, my co-worker did show up, but I had left it up to God so it didn't bother me too much. Things went normally until lunch break when suddenly he received a call from the school that one of his children had hurt herself in gym and needed to be picked up and taken home! Either that or they would call an ambulance and take her to the hospital... So he left very abruptly, and I had the rest of the day alone! When the delivery man showed up, we talked about how to kill bugs in the house and that was it!
So, it would seem that in both these two situations, God allowed someone else to experience physical pain for the sake of myself... But it doesn't really seem fair! Is this how God works, or should I be concerned that my prayers were possibly answered in this way? Maybe it wasn't God at all?...
Then I think about how God loved Israel and remember how He allowed or even directed other people's suffering for their benefit. Does He still work in this way today? I can't think of a New Testament example off the top of my head...
Something I have experienced twice in my life so far is a situation in which it would seem someone ended up suffering temporarily with the result that a prayer of mine was answered...
Let me explain the situations.
Quite a few years ago while still a teenager in youth group, I wanted to get baptized at the next scheduled baptism service at my church. However, the final deadline to pick up the intent-to-be-baptized application was the same night as the youth group meeting which was held at a different building in town. About a mile away. So I had no way to get over to the church to get the application...
I asked God to help me get the application that night, somehow, if it was really his will that I be baptized. Upon arriving at the "youth center", we were told that one of the teens in the youth band had apparently screamed, vomited, and fell to the floor while practicing! An ambulance was called and she was taken to the hospital. Therefore, the usual youth night was canceled and instead all the youth were meeting at the church to pray for her... So, I got the paperwork and she was released from the hospital very quickly in perfectly fine health. I was baptized at the next service...
Just today, I witnessed a similar situation again related to a prayer of mine. I mentioned in another post that I've been having a very hard time with a co-worker and a delivery man sharing sexual images on their phones and sometimes showing them to me unexpectedly. Valentine's Day, as I feared, was even worse. For whatever reason, this time they were looking at homosexual photos and posts which were supposed to be humorous but were just bad... So today I was dreading work, needless to say.
My co-worker always arrives after me, so this morning I got to work and immediately went to a quiet place to ask God (beg God...) to somehow keep that stuff away from me and even take my co-worker away for a time so I could recuperate spiritually and mentally from the things I heard and saw the day before.
Well, my co-worker did show up, but I had left it up to God so it didn't bother me too much. Things went normally until lunch break when suddenly he received a call from the school that one of his children had hurt herself in gym and needed to be picked up and taken home! Either that or they would call an ambulance and take her to the hospital... So he left very abruptly, and I had the rest of the day alone! When the delivery man showed up, we talked about how to kill bugs in the house and that was it!
So, it would seem that in both these two situations, God allowed someone else to experience physical pain for the sake of myself... But it doesn't really seem fair! Is this how God works, or should I be concerned that my prayers were possibly answered in this way? Maybe it wasn't God at all?...
Then I think about how God loved Israel and remember how He allowed or even directed other people's suffering for their benefit. Does He still work in this way today? I can't think of a New Testament example off the top of my head...