Welcome to Week 3 of the “Conversations” series! July is flying by fast. If you’re just joining us, click the links below to catch up!
Any glance through my old journals reveals that I was very calm, but persistent in praying to God about the man I would marry. I prayed about meeting him. I prayed about the qualities I desired in him. I prayed about my desires to be in a relationship and get married. I prayed for his future family. And I prayed for “him,” though I didn’t have a face or a name yet.
Years and years of prayer went into our relationship before it even began. In “Change the Conversation,” I also talk about a specific quiet time when I truly laid my request before the Lord about meeting a husband. I talk more about it in this post here, which coincidentally happened five years ago today!
We also prayed during our dating relationship that we would glorify God. We prayed to make good decisions, set boundaries, and meet needs.
I hope you are catching a pattern here. Prayer, when activated, reaps much fruit in every area of our lives. Paraphrasing a quote from “Streams in the Desert,” a Christian can hardly accomplish more than when immersed in prayer.
I don’t know what you’re walking through in your own life right now. Maybe you are praying for job opportunities to open up. Maybe you are praying about funding for a mission trip. Maybe you are praying about the person you will marry. Maybe you are praying for a child. Maybe you are praying that God would heal deep hurts in your heart.
Whatever it is, pray.
Pray quietly, pray out loud, write your prayers out in a journal, share them with a friend, whatever you need to do, lift your requests before the Lord. Pray through scriptures. Pray with songs. Whatever you do, pray. Don’t make it more complicated than it needs to be.
As my husband and I are walking through fertility treatments, we’ve prayed a lot. And by a lot, I mean a lot. Some of have been angry prayers. Some have been tired prayers. A lot have been tearful prayers. But the point is, pray. We don’t see the full fruit of those prayers yet, but I can look back on a long history of answered prayer, and that informs and shapes my future.
Are all my questions answered? No. Is every “what if” satisfied? Definitely not. Do I come before the Lord with perfect faith and patience every time? Ha, NOPE.
But I do come, and I can rest assured today that by faith, my prayers are accounted for and the Lord does hear me. And he hears you, too. Don’t discount the power of prayer.
The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. James 5:16b
