One friend of mine, a retired pastor, has often drawn attention to the way how believers try to command God. Instead of just asking and blessing, the prayers seem too often to be commands where God is told how He should act. I am convinced that those praying think they are asking, not knowingly trying to command God, but the prayers sound like commands to God (‘Lord, do this’). That does not sound good.
I have noted and experienced that the way how God answers to prayers is often different than the way we had in mind when we prayed. There is a need, followed by a prayer to get an answer to the need. In many cases, we have an idea of how God should give the answer to the need and we may pray that God acts in that way. Instead, God may give an answer to the need in another way - we got what we needed but not as we imagined how God would answer.
After that, we may start to wonder whether we got an answer to our prayer - God gave us what we needed and asked but not in the exact way how we described in the prayer that God should act.
I could tell many examples but here is one:
I was working during a rainy weekend far from inhabited areas. The continuous rain turned the ground soft and my car slid and sank too deep into an agricultural field. I tried to get the car out but had no way to move it. I was far from the closest farm, I had not seen other people during that day and did not have a mobile phone with me. I had a need to get my car to the nearest field road but did not know how to do it.
As a young believer, I decided to pray that God would help. I did not have any good solutions, so I figured the only way to get the heavy car lifted back to the road was that God would send an angel to lift the car. After praying, I thought that if God sends an angel to lift the car, the angel can lift also me with the car, so I went into the car and continued praying.
After less than 15 minutes I heard a knock on the door. There was a man asking if I would need help. A car with several strong men ‘happened’ to drive past along the small field road and after seeing my car stuck, stopped to ask if I needed help. It took the powers of all men and their car to get my car back to the field road.
Was it an answer to my prayer? I had a need, I prayed help for the need and I got it surprisingly fast. I had not seen other people during that rainy weekend day but just after I had prayed, a car with several strong men ‘happened’ to drive past and stop to help. These points suggest that I got an answer to my prayer.
On the other hand, those helping were men, not angels (as far as I could observe). As I did not have a better solution, I prayed that God would send an angel to lift the car. A critical reviewer could say that I did not get exactly what I prayed and therefore, I did not get an answer to my prayer.
Whatever a critical watcher would say, I was thankful and praised God for the help I received.
If God would have sent a shining angel to lift the car, I could claim that it was a miraculous answer to my prayer. But I got the help through humans that ‘happened’ to come just at the needed moment. Help through humans - that cannot be counted as a miraculous answer, can it?
, and 
). They both contain miracles of God’s providence, but they are not of the sort you specifically disallow. I will not exclude God’s working in other ways, though. I should reread Metaxas’ book. (I don’t remember if speaking in tongues was in it – I’m sure there was a vision and a healing in it.) I agree about prophecies, snakes and poison.
