Answer to Prayer Phase Two

Answer to Prayer Phase Two
Psalm 30

In connection with Psalm 16, I have mentioned how a few months ago I met, fell in love with, and proposed to someone, then discovered I had prostate cancer and arranged to have surgery. We had a very moving prayer time in church, and I knew God had heard people’s prayers. It was phase one in having a prayer answered in the way the Psalms portray it. It means you start praising God for answering your prayer, but you recognize that phase one is only phase one, and you don’t stop praying. Only after phase two, when you have seen God’s answer and not merely heard it, do you stop praying and start simply praising. For me, even that process felt a bit more complicated, in that the doctors were very pleased with themselves after the surgery. In this sense you could say phase two had come, but for me, getting back to feeling normal took a few more weeks, and having the test last week that established that the level of the relevant antigen in my blood was now correct felt like the real phase two. Now I really know God answered those prayers. (Well, unless you hear in a year or two that I have died because the cancer has spread . . ..)...