Prayer

The topic for tonight's Bible study at church was prayer. Prayer is talking to God. It is a truly amazing gift to be able to talk with the God of the Universe! Not only are we allowed to come before Him and speak to Him but He wants us to!

We can pray every day, everywhere, about anything. We can tell God anything, He already knows everything but He still wants to hear from us! If you watched your child on a hidden camera throughout their day and knew everything that they did and said, would you not still ask them about their day when you got back together?

I loved something that someone said in my group "If you were cuddling with your child and having  a conversation with them and they fell asleep, would you be mad at them? Of course not! It's OK if you fall asleep when you are praying!"

I have been mulling over a couple of things I have learned through and about prayer in my life that I would like to share with you.

When I was 18 years old and had finished High School, I went to Indonesia to spend a couple of months working with missionaries there. There were a couple of things I needed for the trip and I prayed and asked God to provide. I waited for what seemed like a reasonable amount of time and then bought them for myself. Just a day later someone at church approached me and gave me exactly what I had been praying for only WAY nicer than what I had bought myself! If only I had waited and trusted the Lord to provide rather than jumping the gun and "providing for myself". What He has always comes on time, and is always better.

The next thing I will share is much more recent.

Last year, February of 2012, my youngest son Silas was diagnosed with cancer. I prayed and fasted and asked God to heal him. To take the cancer away and let him live. I continued to pray that for a long time, and often ended my prayers with "Your will be done". As things progressed and got worse and worse for Silas I wrestled with whether or not I was praying right. Was there sin in my life that was hindering God from answering me, from healing Silas. I confessed everything I could think of. I agonized over how to pray.

In time my prayers turned from "Please heal Silas, take away his cancer" to "Please heal Silas, in Your time, and in Your way". I was much more confident in this prayer and I began to realize that God knows better than me and I didn't know what was best in this situation. I did not stop praying but my prayers changed, I asked God to put His plan into action and do what He knew was best.

The last couple of weeks of Silas life, especially the last few days, I began to pray "Lord, please take him home". I believed this was best, I knew that God could still heal Silas in his earthly body, but I knew going to Heaven would be far better for him.

Silas prayed too. Monday, before he passed away, we listened to the song "Softly and Tenderly Jesus is calling". When the song was over Silas said "OK, I'm ready to go now". I said "go where?" He said "to go home". Tuesday he asked me to pray for Jesus to take him home (and by home, he always meant Heaven). To hear your 4 year old ask you to pray for him to "go home", to die....but I did, I prayed for him, for Jesus to take him home. On Wednesday he would wake up throughout the day and pray out loud "OK Jesus, I'm ready to go home now". He prayed several times throughout the day. Thursday he was very "out of it" and Friday evening he became unresponsive. Saturday afternoon he took his last breath. Blessed be the name of the Lord, the Lord gives and the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord.

God always answers our prayers. He teaches us through our praying. He uses our praying to conform our will to His. He never gets tired of hearing us talk to Him. He never sleeps! He's always available whenever you are ready to pray.