Before You Ask

Before You Ask

Before he had finished praying, he saw a young woman named Rebekah coming out with her water jug on her shoulder. Genesis 24:15

ABRAHAM’S SERVANT WAS SENT BACK to the family homeland to find a bride for Isaac. When he finally arrived at the village well, he prayed for success and a very specific sign—that the right bride for Isaac would not only answer his request for a drink but offer to water his camels, too. Before he had finished praying, he saw a young woman on her way to the well. As it turned out, she was a relative of Abraham and very beautiful. The eager servant ran over to her to ask his test question, and she answered according to the sign he had prayed for. The prayer had been answered.

But the prayer had been answered well before the servant began praying. For Rebekah to make her way to the well in time to be seen by the servant just as he was concluding his prayer, she had to have gotten started before he even prayed. In fact, God had known about this servant’s prayer long before a word of it was spoken. He had known about Isaac—the son he had promised Abraham decades before he was born—and he had known Rebekah was the right wife for him. Everything was already in the works. The prayer was a catalyst for God to do what was already in his heart to do.

That’s how it works with our prayers too. We may not always see the answer forming before we finish praying—usually we don’t—but the answer has already been in the works. God knows our prayers in advance (Matthew 6:8), and he knows the faith we will attach to them. Circumstances begin converging long before we pray. They have been orchestrated before the foundation of the world by the God who knows all our days in advance (Psalm 139:16). The prayer is simply the catalyst for receiving.

Pray with that awareness. Be encouraged that you aren’t asking God to manufacture a situation he has never thought of. Expect his solutions to have already been shifting around your prayers. God has seen them—for years. And he is giving you the faith to pray them with confidence.

The thing I ask when God leads me to pray begins in that same act to come my way.