Are You Missing Your Blessings?

Anna: A Story of Hopeful Expectation 

The Prophecy of Anna

³⁶ Anna, a prophet, was also there in the Temple. She was the daughter of Phanuel from the tribe of Asher, and she was very old. Her husband died when they had been married only seven years. ³⁷ Then she lived as a widow to the age of eighty-four.^[a] She never left the Temple but stayed there day and night, worshiping God with fasting and prayer. ³⁸ She came along just as Simeon was talking with Mary and Joseph, and she began praising God. She talked about the child to everyone who had been waiting expectantly for God to rescue Jerusalem.  Luke 2:36-38 (NLT)

Anna lived in the temple, after her husband passed away, worshipping God, day and night through fasting and prayer.  I can not begin to imagine the many prayers that she sent to God's throne through the sweet aroma of prayer in the decades that she lived in the Temple. But, I can imagine that she was praying for The Messiah.  

I  dont know about you, but a lot of times my prayers enter the throne room with my wishes and expectations attached.  The "How I would Like To See This Prayer Answered" for God's benefit.  When prayers aren't answered according to my specifications, I get angry at God and can deny His existence.

Enter the story of Anna, who met her Savior is swaddling clothes. I wonder, in the 84 years of prayer, if she began to imagine what the Messiah would look like. Did she begin to anticipate a knight in shining armor....or at least, a man? Who could have foreseen the Savior of the world as a baby? Anna was so in tune with God, she met her world through holy expectation and hopeful anticipation, allowing the unimaginable to become tangible.

Do we reject God's answers to prayer because it is not what we thought it would look like? Do we miss our blessings because we are only watching and waiting for things as we think they should look? Ephesians 3:20 says that God will do MORE than we can fathom or imagine - why put Him in a box? With prayerful heart and faith,  allow Him to explode your paradigms today and show up in the unexpected!