In recent months, I have been busy in attending several task forces at my work place. There is an interesting phenomenon that I observed during these task force meetings. Usually, a lot of discussions would take place first and then several to-do items would be distributed to some of the “lucky” team members for further analysis. Due to its urgent nature, the turn-around time usually is very short. Therefore, the dependency on other team members to provide necessary information / data to you in order to complete the requested analysis is relatively high, if you are happened to be one of the lucky members. The trouble then comes when the person whom you depend upon didn’t do his / her part in giving you what you need. Consequently, you would be look bad for not doing your job at follow up meeting. From this kind of experience, I learned that a critical factor of success in requesting “timely” information from other member is having a good working relationship with him / her. Without the good working relationship, you will find yourself frequently in an awkward position because you are at a lower priority to him / her than others.

As we all know, a relationship has to be built from both directions. A good relationship, in particular, would require time and effort to cultivate it. Last week, I shared with you it is our responsibility to plead for help from God when we are in difficult situations. From another perspective, pray for God’s help could also be viewed as a relationship building process too.  In order to build a good relationship with God through praying, I personally think there are three steps we need to take. The first step is to have faith in Him. The second one is to pray / plead to His heart earnestly. Finally, we must also be willing to do whatever we can, using whatever means He gives.

The author of the book of Hebrews taught us that “…. without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists (He is I AM who I AM) and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” 人非有信就不能得神的喜悅‧因為到神面前來的人，必須信有神，且信他賞賜那尋求他的人‧ (Hebrews 11:6)

Corrie ten Boom, the author of “The hiding place”, once said, “Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.” Her words once again indicate the importance of trusting our future to God.

As faith in God enables us to entrust our future to Him, we also need to learn how to know His will better in order to pray effectively. God will always answer our prayers except He may not always grant what we want. This is up to God’s sovereignty and His character attributes to decide.  We have seen a lot of teachings in praying, from our Lord Jesus in the New Testament. One of them well known to us is the “Lord’s prayer” (Matthew 6:9-13). It teaches us to pray for His kingdom come and His will be done first, then pray for ourselves. Through this way, we learn to pray to God’s heart and we are likely to develop a closer relationship with Him accordingly.

Lastly, to build a good relationship with God through praying is to do the part that God wants us to do or to take. There is a good example in the Old Testament – Naaman healed of leprosy (2 Kings 5).  The story is very fascinating. To me, the climax of the story is on verses 13-14.

Naaman’s servants went to him and said, “My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, ‘Wash and be cleansed’!” So he went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy. 他的僕人進前來，對他說，我父阿，先知若吩咐你作一件大事，你豈不作麼‧何況說你去沐浴而得潔淨呢‧於是乃縵下去、照著神人的話．在約但河裡沐浴七回、他的肉復原、好像小孩子的肉、他就潔淨了。(2 Kings 5:13-14)

Think about this: a great commander of army would be willing to listen to his servant’s suggestion and humble himself before a foreign prophet Elisha, isn’t this worth us to learn? From this story, we can see Naaman’s faith in God and God’s answer to Naaman via Elisha’s intercession prayer. Finally, Naaman did his part by following God’s order through Elisha – dipped himself in the Jordan river seven times. This is called an act of “submission” and is crucial to our Christian life.

My dear brothers and sisters, God is sovereign and almighty. He spoke, and it came to be; He commanded, and it stood firm. (祂說有，就有‧命立，就立. (Psalm 33:9)) He does not need us to do anything in order to fulfill His will or command. However, it is His grace that we can be part of His plan and He desires to have a relationship with us (Isaiah 7:14). Therefore, it is up to us to do our part, my dear brothers and sisters.