Do you ever wonder if God answers your prayers?  I do.  

Occasionally, I experience dynamic, immediate,  visible answers to prayer, but this is not a regular occurrence.   For example,  I really need to find a parking space, or get back on the right road after I’ve been lost, or I've misplaced my keys or an important document.  I pray about these needs. Sometimes, within minutes, the need is met. "How cool, it that,” I say.  Those experiences help me  see God answering my prayers.

But more often than not,  I don’t see immediate results to my prayers.  Life experience has shown me that God answers the desires of my heart, and the petitions of my mouth  over time. God is playing out these answers to prayer behind a veil, in the spiritual realm,  so to speak.  Finally, when I  see answers to long-standing intercession,  these prayers of perseverance based on faith not on  sight, it is very exciting.

This happened to me this past weekend at the Alexander United Methodist Church Women’s Retreat.

God declared himself.  The Lord showed us women how he had been  answering our prayers over the last 12 months.  One year ago the same group (approximately) came together at the same place (Camp Asbury on Silver Lake) for the same purpose (testimonies, sharing, and prayer).   In 2013 we opened up to each other about the concerns in our lives.  We revealed long-standing burdens.  We exposed our broken hearts. We declared our deep-seated desires.  We forty women came together to lay hands on and pray for one another. We promised to uphold each other throughout the year.

The Almighty has been faithful and powerful in answering our prayers. God has changed each of us over the last year.  As we women shared with each other this past weekend, in twos and threes, and also from the center stage, I saw this:

God has healed physical and spiritual wounds.  He has used disease and illness in our lives to bring glory to his name.  He has bound up our broken hearts and walked us out of dark shadows into his fields of light.

God has given us a bigger “haul” of spiritual fish, because we have “put our nets into deeper waters.”  He has increased the effectiveness of our service and expanded our ministries. He has empowered us to cultivate our faith, and that faith has grown.

God has  made his anointing over us Real, as seen by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on a consistent basis in our lives.  During those two days on retreat, the Holy Spirit was Ever Present.  The Spirit spoke through ten different women on the single theme of Women of Strength (each asked to share her “story”) and created a single message: Here is what we learned.  We are loved by the Divine Creator.  God does call us to WAIT.  His apparent  silence during the season of Waiting, is when He is doing the work.

Waiting is like the Lord’s incubator.   Just like a fertilized chicken’s egg needs to be kept warm and protected while the chick grows within, so God has done that for us.  This weekend was like the opening up of the incubator after one year. We little chickens were peeping out — some chirping and singing more loudly than others.  Some were just thrusting their tiny beaks through the shell. Others were earnestly pecking away, breaking off the shell so she could make a hole and step out into the light.  It was a marvelous experience.  But to have that experience we had to wait one whole year to really get that picture of how God had answered our prayers.  Google chicken hatching, and watch the process of the chick breaking forth into the world.  It get’s me excited!

Perhaps you are like an unborn chicken in an incubator, experiencing a period of quiet development in God’s warm, protective box, under His Light.   Your time will come soon.   Just wait.  Perhaps you have started to crack through your shell, and need to peak more.   Just wait.   Or maybe you have made the hole big enough and are ready to go. Maybe you are out but don’t know the direction.  Just wait.  God will show you the way.