A key to answered prayer

Max Lucado wrote, “Ours is the wealthiest generation of Christians ever. We are bright, educated, and experienced. We can travel around the world in twenty-four hours or send a message in a millisecond. We have the most sophisticated research and medicines at the tips of our fingers. We have ample resources. A mere 2 percent of the world’s grain harvest would be enough, if shared, to erase the problems of hunger and malnutrition around the world. There is enough food on the planet to offer every person twenty-five hundred calories of sustenance a day. We have enough food to feed the hungry…When your grandchildren discover you lived during a day in which 1.75 billion people were poor and 1 billion were hungry, how will they judge your response?” More importantly, what will God say? When the Israelites complained that God wouldn’t answer their prayer, He told them, “What I’m interested in seeing you do is: sharing your food with the hungry, inviting the homeless poor into your homes, putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad, being available to your own families. Do this and the lights will turn on, and your lives will turn around at once…Then when you pray, God will answer. You’ll call out for help and I’ll say, ‘Here I am.’…If you are generous with the hungry and start giving yourselves to the down-and-out, your lives will begin to glow in the darkness…I will always show you where to go. I’ll give you a full life” (vv. 7-11 MSG). So instead of focusing on your own needs, focus on the needs of others. That’s a key to answered prayer.