As I was pouring my coffee this morning I pictured Heaven being stormed by the prayers so many of you have so boldly brought before the throne of God. Claiming this and many more promises of answers. Blessed my heart to picture Your inbox, God, being flooded with requests! But sometimes, even with such an onslaught, You seem silent in Your response. Oh, I absolutely KNOW that You HEAR our prayers (first prerequisite for answers to prayer in this verse), but I get a little spun around at the second… “KNOWING that we HAVE the petitions we asked of You.” Sometimes Your answers are delightfully on the money, and sometimes quite different than what was requested! (Kinda like opening a package in the mail from China, and wondering in WHAT UNIVERSE was this the bright, shiny object you ordered 6 months ago!) Is this an “Oh you of little faith” response? Or a Jesus-inspired, “Not my will but Yours be done,” openness to Your plan over my own? Perhaps the determining factor in this verse is in “asking according to YOUR will.” That can be seen as “wiggle room” to excuse You from no answer, or an undesirable one. But it also can be a very genuine act of SURRENDER to Your right to call the shots in my life. Retrospect has convinced me of the latter! I’ve seen TOO MANY times when what I was praying for, totally upstaged by what You had in mind! So even now as we pray for miraculous healing from this creepy cancer, I am interspersing the condition, “according to Your will,” in our prayer assault in Heaven. Surprise us all with an answer that is even better than our requests!