Prayers

When I was in third grade, there was a raffle every day in our classroom, and the winner got to choose 7 pieces of candy. Whenever I won, I chose all Smarties.

And I often prayed before the drawing that I would win. Despite the selfishness of my prayer, it worked.  I won an inordinate amount. So one day my classmate asked me why I won so often. And I told her I prayed that I'd win. She asked me to pray for her to win that day, so I did. And she won.

Now looking back, I know those prayers were completely selfishly motivated. But God did use them to help me show a classmate the power of prayer.

Last week I was reading up on Gideon. And I noticed that unlike the judges preceding him, Gideon never seemed to be motivated by protecting the Israelites. Every time he went after the Philistines, it was always for the sake of revenge against something personal they'd done to him.

We do a lot of things for selfish, greedy reasons. But the good news is that God can take even our selfish actions and turn them into something good, whether that's protection from the enemy Philistines or spreading the truth of his power by an answered prayer for candy.