Acts 10:30-33\u00a0<\/b>\u2013\u00a0Cornelius answered: \u201cThree days ago I was in my house praying at this hour, at three in the afternoon. Suddenly a man in shining clothes stood before me\u00a031\u00a0and said, \u2018Cornelius, God has heard your prayer and remembered your gifts to the poor.\u00a032\u00a0Send to Joppa for Simon who is called Peter. He is a guest in the home of Simon the tanner, who lives by the sea.\u2019\u00a033\u00a0So I sent for you immediately, and it was good of you to come. Now we are all here in the presence of God to listen to everything the Lord has commanded you to tell us.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
When we need to hear from God, pray.\u00a0 Cornelius daily sought God.\u00a0 He cried out to God like his heart, his mind and his sanity depended on it.\u00a0 He was an officer in the Roman army, commanding one hundred men.\u00a0 He had a family who loved and respected him, and he was a man of influence among his friends (obvious from his crowded house).\u00a0 He did not know God, but oh he wanted to.\u00a0 He had lived a life he hoped would please God.\u00a0 He took care of the poor.\u00a0 He gave them gifts.\u00a0 He made them feel loved and remembered.\u00a0 Don\u2019t we all want that?\u00a0 This was a man who showed up with food at the doorstep of those who were hungry, sick and lonely.\u00a0 When people were praying to someone in the sky that they didn\u2019t know, Cornelius, with his wife, or children, showed up to help and let them know that the God they pleaded to, that he also did not personally know, was hearing them.\u00a0 He reminded them to not lose hope.\u00a0 How many times had Cornelius called out God!\u00a0 After hundreds or thousands of prayers, maybe tens of thousands, when it felt hopeless and when he felt frustrated, he continued to rebuff frustration and hopelessness and refused to not believe in a God who was good and loving and did not create man for no reason, but had a purpose.\u00a0 This man searched out for one true God among his people who had no idea who the one true God was.\u00a0 They didn\u2019t even have a street preacher holding up, or shouting out, verses from a bible.\u00a0 It was easy for people to live in hopelessness of never finding the truth.\u00a0 But this kind and good man did not listen to the naysayers.\u00a0 He cared not about those who mocked his faith as he walked away.\u00a0 Cornelius wanted with all his heart and with all his mind to know God.<\/p>\n
God was hearing his prayers.\u00a0 In fact, God was the one who saw a heart, so disheveled from living in a filthy world, yet a heart that would respond.\u00a0 It was God who touched his heart and God who drew him in.\u00a0 He has done that for all of us who call ourselves by the name of Jesus Christ.\u00a0 Cornelius did not give up and the day came when a plan that God had already worked out, though unbeknown to Cornelius, was revealed to him.\u00a0 The loving and good God, with a plan for his soft and seeking heart, sent an angel from heaven to send for one of His own to light a candle in the heart of this desperate-for-God man.\u00a0 The day, the best day of his life was about to happen.\u00a0 God was about to lovingly move into his heart.\u00a0 And not only his, but also the hearts of his family and friends.\u00a0 Yes, God heard every prayer and true to Cornelius\u2019 belief about Him, God had a plan.<\/p>\n
Family, when we call out to our God, and we are tempted to think that praying is of no use, we must know that praying is exactly what we should be doing.\u00a0 Let our hearts and minds be humble and continue, for as long as it takes, to call out to God.\u00a0 He always, yes always, answers.\u00a0 We must remember that God answers in ways that should please us most.\u00a0 Some may say that God didn\u2019t hear their prayer and so a parent, or a child, died.\u00a0 We must remember that God knows what we most want for the sick loved one.\u00a0 We want the best for them.\u00a0 We want them to have fulfillment, love and happiness.\u00a0 Then they die and we don\u2019t stop to consider that God took them home to spare them from love and suffering (Isaiah 57:1<\/b>).\u00a0 We may become angry because we no longer have the loved one with us.\u00a0 Yet who has loved the loved one more?\u00a0 Us who selfishly want the loved one with us, or God who knows that the best for the loved one is to be spared evil and to live in beauty, peace and satisfaction.\u00a0 Let us trust God more than self.\u00a0 Let us pray to God and trust that He is good and loving and that He has a plan.\u00a0 God is hearing our prayers.\u00a0 All of them.\u00a0 And because we know beyond any doubt or imagination that He is good and that He loves us, we also know that God is answering our prayer and we can have peace in our heart from the moment the prayer is prayed.\u00a0 He needn\u2019t prove it to us (though sometimes He will). Because of His Word, because of His Spirit bringing His Word alive to us, we can know beyond feelings that God is always and forever good and loving to us.\u00a0 So when prayers seem like they fell from our lips like a leaf from a tree to die on the ground, let us not trust feelings, but rely on the Word of God.\u00a0 It is always true.\u00a0 God is good, and loving, and He does have plan.\u00a0 Always pray and always know that God will answer our anguished prayers at the right time, and the right way, that will satisfy the love we pray them with, even when we don\u2019t understand.\u00a0 Why, because He is always good and He always loves.\u00a0 Always He is and always He does.\u00a0 Praise God!<\/p>\n
Psalm 150:6<\/b>\u00a0–\u00a0Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.\u00a0 Praise the Lord!<\/i><\/p>\n
Micah 7:7<\/b>\u00a0–\u00a0But as for me, I watch\u00a0in hope\u00a0for the\u00a0Lord, I wait for God my Savior; my God will hear\u00a0me.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n
Micah 6:8<\/b>\u00a0–\u00a0He has shown You, O man, what\u00a0is\u00a0good; And what does the\u00a0Lord\u00a0require of You but to do justly, to love mercy, And to walk humbly with Your God.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Acts 10:30-33\u00a0\u2013\u00a0Cornelius answered: \u201cThree days ago I was in my house praying at this hour, at three in the afternoon. Suddenly a man in shining clothes stood before me\u00a031\u00a0and said, \u2018Cornelius, God has heard your prayer and remembered your gifts to the poor.\u00a032\u00a0Send to Joppa for Simon who is called Peter. He is a guest…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1192],"tags":[82,103,94,17],"class_list":["post-1628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-devotion","tag-acts","tag-isaiah","tag-micah","tag-psalm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.Bob4God.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.Bob4God.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.Bob4God.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.Bob4God.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.Bob4God.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1628"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.Bob4God.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1629,"href":"http:\/\/www.Bob4God.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1628\/revisions\/1629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.Bob4God.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.Bob4God.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.Bob4God.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}