Some days start and end before I can hardly get started. Today was one of those days. So, here I am at 8:30pm doing my daily devotion or better yet my evening devotion. If you are like me, you have a couple different bibles that you read from daily. I have them in every room in our home as well as our vehicle. This evening I chose to read from my bible that I received in 1993 from my church family upon my graduation from high school. It's in pretty rough shape...worn edges, highlighted passages, ink writings, of course old bulletins...if you have anything in your bible it will be a plethora of church bulletins.
As I begin to turn the pages, trying to find my devotion for the day I ran across many folded pieces of paper...even more than the bulletins if that is even possible. Several years ago, our family attended a small country baptist church. During our Sunday School time, we would write down our prayer requests on these tiny pieces of paper and then fold them, place them in a basket and then send the basket around the room, drawing a folded paper...these were the special prayer requests that we were to pray for throughout the upcoming week. Here are a few of those prayer requests: our preacher, our youth, spiritually lost souls, prayers for the peace of Jerusalem, prayers for our country, prayers for an alcoholic husband, prayers for a drug addicted daughter, prayers for a fourteen year old pregnant granddaughter, prayers that a family will not be evicted from their home, prayers for a husband to learn self-control and of course many prayers for specifically named individuals that I will not disclose.
I Thessalonians 5:17 simply states to never stop praying. As I sit here thinking about all those prayers, I naturally start wondering "where are they now?" Many never survived the illnesses and surgeries that we prayed for at that time. While many souls have been saved over the years, many are still lost. Do you ever wonder if God is listening? I like to think that I never stop praying. I would be lying though if I said that I didn't wonder from time to time if God is truly listening. It would be nice if I said a prayer and then received a "ping" or "ding" type of notification from God letting me know "hey girl! It's God...fyi I hear ya!"
I believe that is this hardest thing about praying... there isn't an instant reply or confirmation so to speak...and we all know that if we don't get instant confirmation on something we have done then we wonder if it is truly worth our time. You see the disciple of prayer isn't suppose to offer easy solutions to the worries in our life. Prayers are meant to be laid at the feet of Jesus so that we can live life without worry. Clearly, it is not a time to test God's response time.
(This picture was the most suitable of the day...explaining to kids the importance of prayer and not looking for instant gratification, but giving our burdens to Jesus so that we can live without worry isn't easy but completely doable. Definitely a discipline that we must continue to work on daily.)
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