A teenage boy heard his pastor preaching about prayer. The pastor told the congregation they ought to believe that God is in the business of answering prayers. And because God is in the business of answering prayers, they ought to visualize what God’s answered prayers would look like.
A few days later, the mom of the teenage boy found a bikini hanging on the boy’s door. Confused by the presence of a bikini on the boy’s door, his mom asked him what that was all about.
The boy responded by saying that he was putting into practice what the preacher had said about prayer – He was praying and visualizing God answering his prayer – “God, please fill this bikini!”
God answers all prayers. There is not a prayer that goes unheard or unanswered.
When the request is wrong, God’s answer to our prayers is “No.”
When the timing is wrong, God’s answer to our prayers is, “Wait.”
When we are wrong, when we are asking with wrong motives, when we are asking from the position of immaturity, God says “Grow up.”
God may certainly want to provide this boy with a God-honoring woman when he grows up. But what that boy will need when he is a man is much more than a body to fill a bikini, but a woman who will help him to grow and mature in his faith and a woman who will encourage him to become the man God created him to be.
When we are wrong, when we are asking with the wrong motives, when we are asking from a position of immaturity, God says, “Grow up.”
