My Three Fold Prayer

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 Chronic and degenerative diseases are a horrible thing to go through. I can tell you by experience. You kind of feel between a rock and a hard place because you don't know how to start to pray or what to pray to improve your situation. In other words, you feel lost. But today, I kind of had an epiphany. We really don't know how God is going to answer our prayers, but we do know He answers them. "Ask and ye shall receive" is the statement in John 16:24 (KJV). When we pray, we know what we want but we don't know what we're going to get. That is up to God in His immense- unmeasurable sovereignty. So God gave me a three fold prayer today. Since we don't exactly know how God is going to answer our prayers, I came up with this three fold prayer idea to kind of gauge the possibilities of how He might answer our prayers. I kind of focused my prayer on chronic or degenerative diseases since I suffer from Parkinson's and also, because I prayed for a dear friend today whom the Holy Spirit prompted me to call and pray for her as soon as I could. It's kind of divine that God put this prayer in my heart before I even knew the Holy Spirit was going to prompt me to call her and pray for her.

How does this prayer go?

First fold. God, please make it bearable. The apostle Paul asked God to take away his thorn in the flesh three times, but God each time told him no but He did say His grace was sufficient for him.                    (2 Corinthians 12:9). In other words, God told Paul: " Paul, I'm not going to take that thorn away from you, but I'm going to give you enough grace so you're pain is much more bearable for you". God's grace is enough and sometimes God gives us the necessary grace in our life to help us go through the pain without the necessity of removing it completely. Sometimes the pain is necessary for our growth. Even Peter says: "And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. (1 Peter 5:10 ESV). So, it's possible that we might need to suffer for "a little while" but in the end, He will "restore us, confirm us, strengthen us and establishes us". What a God!

Second fold. God, please make it better. Now better sounds better than bearable, doesn't it? Don't we all just want to feel better when we're sick? Yes! We all do. That's another answer God could give to our prayers. He can make our disease symptoms better or whatever bad situation we could be in. In my case, God has made my depression better. I was in a very dark place and He chose to allow my depression to get better. How did he do it? He allowed me to find better physicians that understood my condition better. Therefore, better medications were prescribed and better counseling was given. God, in His sovereign will, allowed me to get better and I thank Him everyday for that. We can pray to God to better our situation but we need understand that that is not always His plan.

Third fold. God, please make it best. God can allow our diseases to have the best outcome. Why? Because He is the "God who performs miracles" (Psalm 77:14). God, in this day and age, still performs miracles; I don't care what other people say, the Bible says so. In the case of a degenerative disease, which has no cure, God can make it best. He can perform the miracle of totally removing that disease from your body. He can make it happen in such an impactful way, that your physicians would be totally astonished. No wonder He is called the Great Physician. Who can heal better than God? Absolutely nobody! 

I remember the story of King Hezekiah. God told him he was going to die, but Hezekiah prayed and God not only healed him, but He gave him an extra fifteen years of life. What an awesome example of God making it best. It is also a great example of His unsurmountable grace. He gives us more than we deserve. " He is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us." (Ephesians 3:20 ESV)

This is my three fold prayer. We don't know what God is going to answer, but He indeed answers our prayers in His time and in His way. Don't forget, He can make it bearable, He can make it better, He can make it best. You have a blessed day!

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