Back in London

Well we're back in London after a pleasant but uneventful drive home. Even the Immigration Offical was too bored to care if we were legal or not (which we are) and waved us through without even pausing to laugh at my passport picture!
Here's a weird thing though... I don't know why, but I expected things to be different when I got home. There have been some difficult circumstances in London this summer and we've been praying that there will be some breakthroughs in September. So as stupid as this sounds, I really did think that somehow, London would feel different when we got home; Perhaps I was expecting an overwhelming sense of renewed purpose or maybe I was expecting to hear immediately of some developments in the things we'd been praying about. It's ridiculous to expect so much, when I've barely been home 4 hours!
So yeah, I concede that it sounds incredibly foolish, selfish and a whole heap of other -ishes, but on the other hand, I totally believe in Jesus' promise in Matthew 21:22, that "If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer."
So I did some online reading (my English teacher would be so disappointed that 95% of my daily reading is on a computer screen and not paper) and here's a quote I stumbled across from Dr. Bright of Campus Crusade for Christ:

By faith, claim the answer to your request. If you know you are abiding in Christ and are controlled by the Holy Spirit and are praying according to the Word and will of God, you can expect God to answer your prayer. So be prepared to receive the answer. Imagine right now that you are receiving the answer to your request, and begin to thank God for it.

(If you want to read the whole article, CLICK HERE.)

So where does that leave me tonight? Well obviously, I read those conditions very carefully and ask myself if I'm meeting the criteria of (a) abiding in Christ, (b) controlled by the Holy Spirit, (c) praying according to God's will and Word. Those are three pretty hefty questions, but if I can say 'yes' to them, I have to accept that God has already answered my prayer. And perhaps the speed of the answer's delivery is proportional to the amount of faith I have in claiming it! So let's hope my faith is of the 'Fed-Ex-same-day-delivery' type and not the 'uninsured-long-haul-transatlantic-no-promises' type! That said, there's nothing I can do now, except celebrate that it's 'in the mail'!