Years ago I sat at the kitchen table and read Hannah’s words to God: “There is no one besides you” (1 Samuel 2:2).

I said aloud, “Hannah, you know something I don’t.” I wondered what it would mean for me to be able to say, “There is no one but You, God.”

According to Evelyn Christenson, prisoners who accept Christ while incarcerated often pray, “God, get me out of this hell-hole.” If God doesn’t, their response to his refusal is, “If that’s the kind of God I’m serving now, I don’t want anything to do with Him any more. He let me down.”

A large truck drove into the hospital compound and delivered over four tons of medical supplies for Dr. Helen Roseveare, a missionary in the Congo. She and her helpers sorted and stacked the bottles on to shelves but were a little disappointed that the most needed drugs were missing. Instead there were two cartons, of 24 pint-sized bottles for treating a rare type of food-poisoning. They relegated them to the back of the top shelf since such food poisoning was virtually unknown to their people.

Ruth and a college classmate did not get along. Ruth told me the story.

“Others did not know of our dislike for each other, but we both knew it. This went on for two years. I thought, I haven’t done anything; this is her fault so I don’t need to apologize.

The early church fathers wanted to understand the Trinity. How could Jesus have been both God and man? How could He be fully human and fully God? Was He more than a man but not quite God? They came up with a word to explain the Father and Son’s relationship as being one and yet they each retained their own identity.

“I love you! I love you!” my heart exclaimed repeatedly to Jesus for several days. I longed to know how I could more adequately express my love to Him.

When the Holy Spirit places His desires in our hearts, then we can and should pray until we know He has heard. It would be foolish to think that a person we are talking with can assure us she has heard our request, but to doubt that God can assure us He has heard. John implies this “knowing” is possible when He says, “This is the confidence we have in approaching God; that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have whatever we asked of him” (1 John 5:14-15).

George Matheson was recognized as an up and coming leader of the church in Scotland. But his life was filled with difficulties. He lost his sight as a young man, and had to change his plans because of his vision loss. Plus, when his fiancé learned of his disability she broke the engagement saying she did not want to go through life as the wife of a blind preacher.