When I first came to faith the pastor of the church told me a (true) story about prayer.
He took a young girl (in age and faith) to a Christian bookstore to help her find something to challenge and grow her faith. The girl came across a book called something like "When God doesn't answer prayer", which shocked her because she did not know that God might say no to prayer, it was contrary to her experience of prayer.
In a few weeks time I will be speaking to my new church on the topic of prayer and I so I've been reflecting on the kinds of prayer that in my experience God always answers.
The first prayer that God always seems to answer is Grow Me.
Grow me, stretch me, move me. Whatever way you choose to phrase it, whenever we ask Him to take us out of the comfortable place God obliges us quickly. My "Grow Me" prayer used to be "God, place someone in my path for me today who I can share about Jesus with". Any morning that I prayed those words I would encounter someone later in the day who I could establish a conversation with, share their burdens and then share with them hope.
In actual fact I would have most likely run into that same person during the day (although I certainly believe that God brought some of us together in extraordinary circumstances). So did my prayer achieve anything? If I was going to bump into the person in the lunch queue at work, or still sit next to them on the train anyway, did my prayer change the circumstances at all?
Quite simply the answer is yes, because prayer changes us. When I prayed for someone to share my faith with in the morning I had not only asked something of God but I had prepared myself for it to occur. My thoughts during the day were, "is that the person God?", I lived with the anticipation that James shares with us in his letter to the early church: "But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind" (James 1:6)
Grow me, is a prayer always answered, and it's a dangerous thing to ask of God. Try it today.