Prayer

I pray a lot. It’s true. The simple fact is that not “all day, everyday” is spent reading the Bible, writing, and telling others about Jesus. True, these activities consume vast quantities of my time, but prayer consumes the most significant amount of my time. I pray for every member of the Bridge every day. At this point we only have a handful of members, so it’s not hard to do. I also pray for many of those of you who have not joined the Bridge. I also pray on Sunday for you guys. I get up early before church, and lift most of you up in prayer before God. Different prayer requests come across my desk, and I dutifully write them down in my prayer notebook, and make mention of those requests throughout the week. Prayer works. I’ve seen amazing things happen, and all I did was pray. I couldn’t even count the number of times that I’ve been faced with an incredibly difficult situation that I dreaded; having to do something to resolve the issue at hand, I lifted it to God. I asked Him to intervene first, so that I wouldn’t have to, and amazingly He took care of it. He has worked in miraculous ways on countless occasions. 

Sometimes it’s even spooky. I pray. I say “Amen,” and as soon as the word is silently formed in my mind -the phone rings. Someone is on the other line with the answer to my prayer request. This has happened to me dozens of times. It’s way too often to be merely a coincidence. I write the request down in my prayer notebook, and I always go back and write the date that the prayer was answered.

I have found that God answers my prayers 100% of the time. Seriously. I was looking through my prayer notebook today at old requests in my notebook, filling in approximate dates that certian requests were answered, and I decided to review my journal for the past two years. Every one of my prayer requests was answered going back two years. Amazing! Sometimes God granted my request. Sometimes my heart changed in the matter, and I found that my prayer request changed, and God would grant my amended request. Somtimes, I found that the things I thought I needed – I didn’t really need them after all. And God never gave me those things that I really didn’t need anyway. So He has answered me. His answer was either, “Yes,” “No,” or ”You’re not asking for the right thing. Keep thinking about it, and let Me know when you’ve got it figured out what it is that you want Me to do.”

1 John 5:14-15 is completely true. I tell you all of this about my prayer life for a reason. A friend asked me about prayer last week, and he seemed doubtful that a person could pray everyday. It seemed incredible to me that a Christian should not pray every day. But I began to ponder: Do the members of the Bridge pray every day? I don’t honestly know. I’ve never asked you guys about it before.  But I wanted to write and tell you that He hears you! He listens! And He values the time that you spend talking with Him. And He answers… this is the most important thing. If you’re lacking in your daily walk… if you feel distant, lonely, far away from God…  it’s probably because you’re not talking to Him. You can talk to Him, and you should. He is waiting to hear from you.

Look forward to a series of blogs detailing prayer. I think I’m going to take a break from blogging about Baptism for awhile and talk about prayer. I may start writing about prayer. Stay tuned.