Praying God's Will For Your Life Order Printed Copy

Author: Stormie Omartian
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About the Book

"Praying God's Will For Your Life" by Stormie Omartian explores the power of prayer and how it can align our lives with God's purpose. The book provides practical guidance on how to pray effectively, surrendering to God's plan and seeking His will in all aspects of our lives. Through personal anecdotes and scriptures, Omartian encourages readers to trust in God's timing and direction, leading to a more fulfilling and purposeful life.

St. Patrick

St. Patrick, (flourished 5th century, Britain and Ireland; feast day March 17), patron saint and national apostle of Ireland, credited with bringing Christianity to Ireland and probably responsible in part for the Christianization of the Picts and Anglo-Saxons. He is known only from two short works, the Confessio, a spiritual autobiography, and his Letter to Coroticus, a denunciation of British mistreatment of Irish Christians. Patrick was born in Britain of a Romanized family. At age 16 he was torn by Irish raiders from the villa of his father, Calpurnius, a deacon and minor local official, and carried into slavery in Ireland. He spent six bleak years there as a herdsman, during which he turned with fervour to his faith. Upon dreaming that the ship in which he was to escape was ready, he fled his master and found passage to Britain. There he came near to starvation and suffered a second brief captivity before he was reunited with his family. Thereafter, he may have paid a short visit to the Continent. The best known passage in the Confessio tells of a dream, after his return to Britain, in which one Victoricus delivered him a letter headed “The Voice of the Irish.” As he read it, he seemed to hear a certain company of Irish beseeching him to walk once more among them. “Deeply moved,” he says, “I could read no more.” Nevertheless, because of the shortcomings of his education, he was reluctant for a long time to respond to the call. Even on the eve of reembarkation for Ireland he was beset by doubts of his fitness for the task. Once in the field, however, his hesitations vanished. Utterly confident in the Lord, he journeyed far and wide, baptizing and confirming with untiring zeal. In diplomatic fashion he brought gifts to a kinglet here and a lawgiver there but accepted none from any. On at least one occasion, he was cast into chains. On another, he addressed with lyrical pathos a last farewell to his converts who had been slain or kidnapped by the soldiers of Coroticus. Careful to deal fairly with the non-Christian Irish, he nevertheless lived in constant danger of martyrdom. The evocation of such incidents of what he called his “laborious episcopate” was his reply to a charge, to his great grief endorsed by his ecclesiastical superiors in Britain, that he had originally sought office for the sake of office. In point of fact, he was a most humble-minded man, pouring forth a continuous paean of thanks to his Maker for having chosen him as the instrument whereby multitudes who had worshipped “idols and unclean things” had become “the people of God.” The phenomenal success of Patrick’s mission is not, however, the full measure of his personality. Since his writings have come to be better understood, it is increasingly recognized that, despite their occasional incoherence, they mirror a truth and a simplicity of the rarest quality. Not since St. Augustine of Hippo had any religious diarist bared his inmost soul as Patrick did in his writings. As D.A. Binchy, the most austerely critical of Patrician (i.e., of Patrick) scholars, put it, “The moral and spiritual greatness of the man shines through every stumbling sentence of his ‘rustic’ Latin.” It is not possible to say with any assurance when Patrick was born. There are, however, a number of pointers to his missionary career having lain within the second half of the 5th century. In the Coroticus letter, his mention of the Franks as still “heathen” indicates that the letter must have been written between 451, the date generally accepted as that of the Franks’ irruption into Gaul as far as the Somme River, and 496, when they were baptized en masse. Patrick, who speaks of himself as having evangelized heathen Ireland, is not to be confused with Palladius, sent by Pope Celestine I in 431 as “first bishop to the Irish believers in Christ.” Toward the end of his life, he retired to Saul, where he may have written his Confessio. It is said that an angel conveyed to him that he was to die at Saul, the site of his first church, despite his wishes to die within the ecclesiastical metropolis of Ireland. His last rites were administered by St. Tussach (also spelled Tassach or Tassac). Legends Before the end of the 7th century, Patrick had become a legendary figure, and the legends have continued to grow. One of these would have it that he drove the snakes of Ireland into the sea to their destruction. Patrick himself wrote that he raised people from the dead, and a 12th-century hagiography places this number at 33 men, some of whom are said to have been deceased for many years. He also reportedly prayed for the provision of food for hungry sailors traveling by land through a desolate area, and a herd of swine miraculously appeared. Another legend, probably the most popular, is that of the shamrock, which has him explain the concept of the Holy Trinity, three persons in one God, to an unbeliever by showing him the three-leaved plant with one stalk. Traditionally, Irishmen have worn shamrocks, the national flower of Ireland, in their lapels on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17.

Will You Praise Him While You Wait

I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. (Psalm 13:5) If faith is the beating heart of a Christian’s spiritual anatomy, then praise is the healthy pulse. When faith looks back upon God’s wondrous deeds of redemption, we cannot help but praise. We praise him for parting the Red Sea with a word. We praise him for felling giants with a shepherd’s sling. We praise him for sending his Son to suffer and die. We praise him for raising Christ from the grave. “If faith is the beating heart of a Christian’s spiritual anatomy, then praise is the healthy pulse.” Yet faith goes further still. Not content to praise God only on the far side of deliverance, faith teaches us to praise him before deliverance even comes: not only after he’s parted the Red Sea, but while the Egyptian army still presses in; not only after Goliath lies slain, but as he still taunts the hosts of Israel; not only after the stone rolls away from the tomb, but during the Sabbath silence of Holy Saturday. As David shows us in Psalm 13, such praise does not arise effortlessly. Often, it comes on the other side of agonizing prayer. How Long, O Lord? Without introduction or preamble, Psalm 13 opens in anguish: “How long, O Lord?” The question is a familiar one for most, even if our straits have not been quite so dire as David’s. Pressure builds. Prayer apparently goes unheard. All the while, God’s promises rest unfulfilled. No matter where David looks, comfort eludes him. Above, a wall of clouds hides God’s face (Psalm 13:1). Within, cares and sorrows swirl (Psalm 13:2). Around, enemies threaten the tottering king (Psalm 13:2). Four times in two verses, David repeats his question: “How long? . . . How long? . . . How long? . . . How long?” Yet even here, faith has not forsaken him. For all the misery wrapped up in David’s question, he knows that God’s intervention is a matter not of if, but of when — not of “Will you?” but of “How long?” His is no cry of despair thrown up into a godless sky, but rather the song of distressed trust. ‘Consider and Answer Me’ With each breath in the psalm, faith grows firmer. By verse 3, God is not only “O Lord,” but “O Lord my God.” At the same time, lament gives way to petition: “Consider and answer me . . . light up my eyes” (Psalm 13:3). Genuine faith may often speak the language of lament and complaint, but eventually it takes up the language of specific request. David follows his prayers to be seen, answered, and revived with three reasons: “Lest I sleep the sleep of death, lest my enemy say, ‘I have prevailed over him,’ lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken” (Psalm 13:3–4). These reasons may seem, at first, simply like the logic of desperation: “Answer me or I will die!” But more is going on here than that. “When we merely give vent to the chaos within us, our prayers often leave us right where we started.” David, desperate as he may be, is appealing to God on the basis of his own promises. Early in David’s public life, God pledged that the shepherd boy would sit on the throne of Israel. Then he sealed that pledge with covenant promises: “I will make for you a great name. . . . I will give you rest from all your enemies. . . . When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you” (2 Samuel 7:9, 11–12). In Psalm 13, those promises seem to be in jeopardy. So David sends them back to God, wrapped in prayer. When we merely give vent to the chaos within us, our prayers often leave us right where we started. But when we pray in the slipstream of God’s promises, we often find, with David, faith slowly rising. ‘I Will Sing to the Lord’ Many Christians are familiar with the famous “But God” statements of the New Testament (Ephesians 2:4, for example). Yet we can look not only at our sin and say, “But God”; we can look also at our despair and say, “But I”: But I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt bountifully with me. (Psalm 13:5–6) No circumstance has changed; no prayer has been answered; no deliverance has arrived. Yet in a moment, enemies grow small, sorrow and care loosen their grip, and lament gives way to praise. Why? Because David’s prayerful meditation on God’s promises has reminded him of something more powerful than his enemies, more certain than his sorrow: “your steadfast love.” Another psalm of David shows us why steadfast love had such an effect on the fainting king. From the perspective of time, the steadfast love of the Lord is “from everlasting to everlasting”; from the perspective of space, it is “as high as the heavens are above the earth”; from the perspective of God’s character, it flows from him with abundance (Psalm 103:8, 11, 17). Such steadfast love is the pledge of all God’s promises. No wonder David sings. Today, we have even greater assurances of God’s steadfast love: a bloody cross, an empty tomb, and a Savior who sits on the throne. And if this steadfast love is ours, then we too can sing with abandon, far before deliverance comes. For if Christ has come, and if we are in him by faith alone, then God will not fail to deal bountifully with us. Article by Scott Hubbard