These rains: Did we over-pray to God?

Matthew Chapter 7:7 says: Ask and you will receive. Malawi grew anxious that the time rains were expected to come had passed by. There was no sign of any dripping from the sky. People panicked.
President Peter Mutharika was equally concerned. He knew that if rains failed to come or came late, the planting season would be affected and the country would be hungry.
So, he appealed to Malawians to pray for rains. He urged Malawians and all religious groups to come together to pray for mercies over their beloved country. People took heed. In many churches, prayers were conducted, asking God for rains to avoid a catastrophe.
Reverends, pastors, fathers, bishops, prophets, apostles and people at large prayed to God.
From His Glorious throne, God must have been flooded with prayers for rains from different angles. What could He have done? Probably tired of these prayers, He brought the rains. In fact, God seemed to have just opened the taps and then went to work on other things.
The consequences became uncontrollable; people dying, crops and animals destroyed and houses damaged. In some parts such as Zomba, rains never stopped pouring.
Then, people started hating the rains. Firstly, because their relatives lost lives and they lost property. They believed that without the rains, many would still be alive.
Others had spent a lot of resources in their gardens hoping for a bumper harvest; to feed their families and sell the surplus to make money.
Now, some of the maize and fertilisers have been swept away.
While children were supposed to be attending classes, many stayed home because some bridges and roads were swept away.
With the rains coming beyond expectation, it begs the questions: What went wrong? Did people over-pray to the extent that God became angry?
The reverend Maurice Munthali of Livingstonia CCAP Synod does not think so. He said people asked in accordance with Bible instructions: to “ask and you will receive.”
He is, however, skeptical about whether we receive exactly what we ask from God.
“It’s our duty to ask from God what we need, just it is written in Matthew. That, however, does not mean we should be dictating what and how we should be receiving from God,” said Munthali.
But would the rains have come had we not prayed
“Yes, they would have come because God knows our problems even before we ask Him. That is why we pray when we are sick or find ourselves in problems even if God knows them,” said the Lilongwe-based reverend.
He added that prayers are not only for rains, but for anything we need.
On calamities, Munthali believes they come because of the numerous sins people commit every day.
“We should not forget that we are coming towards the end of times. The Bible says when we see a number of strange things; we should know that the world is coming to an end. All these can end if we repent,” said Munthali.
Chilimba ordained deacon in Kenya
Pius Chilimba, a Malawian Catholic pursuing priestly studies as a Comboni Missionary, was ordained deacon on January 1 2015 in north western Kenya. He was ordained to the deaconate together with John Bitia of Kisangani Archidiocese in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The pictures show some highlights of the ceremony.