Morning Devotional

July 2, 2003

“Two Wild Hogs”  

by Don Emmitte

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Then Jesus told them, "I assure you, if you have faith and don't doubt, you can do things like this and much more. You can even say to this mountain, `May God lift you up and throw you into the sea,' and it will happen. If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer." When Jesus returned to the Temple and began teaching, the leading priests and other leaders came up to him. They demanded, "By whose authority did you drive out the merchants from the Temple? Who gave you such authority?" (Matthew 21:21-23 NLV). 

A few days ago I was talking with some of my friends at work and we were joking about trapping some feral hogs to feed out and butcher. Our area has an overabundance of the animals and most people are very glad to have you rid their property of the destructive animals. We talked about getting them from the trap alive into a pen to feed them a little while to sweeten the meat before butchering. Since they really are very wild animals with a nasty temperament, we discussed everything from cattle prods to lassos and muzzles. None of us really thought that we’d actually have any hogs to deal with! We couldn’t imagine anyone really trapping the hogs. Well, I now have two wild hogs that another friend trapped for me waiting for me to do something with! He heard me talking about it and said he could easily trap some. My response was “sure, go ahead.” And, he did. 

I haven’t done anything with them yet, but that’s a story for another day. As I thought about them I was reminded of how often we don’t really believe God will answer our prayers. It is a telling fact that we often don’t even ask because we don’t believe He’ll answer. The promise of Scripture is that “if we believe, we will receive.”  

I know that some of you are already saying that you have asked in the past and God hasn’t answered your prayers. It is a common retort. And, there have been times in my life when God did not seem to answer my prayers. However, when I look back, it was not that He didn’t answer, it was that I didn’t recognize the answer when it was given.  

Perhaps the greatest illustration of this truth is in the birth of Jesus. When Jesus came, the Israelites had been praying for a savior for thousands of years. They had read God’s promises in the Scripture and prayed earnestly for Him to send someone to rescue them from their captors. In fact, if you visit Israel today, you will find many of the Jews still praying at the wall for God’s salvation and peace for their land. Their problem is not in the fact that God has not answered their prayers, but in their unwillingness to recognize the answer! Part of the reason for that is that the answer does not “look” like they expected. To a lesser degree we have repeated that mistake and then declared that God didn’t answer. When you pray, you should not only ask God to provide for you, but ask Him to help you recognize the answer. He will answer your prayers.