The Power Of Prayer

My daughters and the Lord taught me something again today. I was shown quite clearly that sometimes I don't give enough credit to the power of prayer.

Now, I do pray. I will tell you what I pray about, but I do that only to share and provide context, not to try to look good to whoever may read this.

I thank God for the many blessings in our lives. I thank him for the atoning sacrifice of Jesus. I thank him for adopting us into his family. I ask him to make me an instrument and do good through me. I ask him to help me always know and speak the truth, stand up for what is right, and tell other people about the gospel of Jesus Christ. I ask him to show me the sin in my life and help me stamp it out more and more. I ask him to forgive me when I give in to sin. I ask him to help me know his will and do it, and to show me when I am in the wrong about what his will for me is. I ask that his will be done.

Those are the most common more abstract things I say to the Lord in prayer. I also sometimes ask for help with specific things throughout the day. Not always and probably not often enough.

I can say with absolute certainty that the Lord has demonstrated his faithfulness to me and has responded to every single one of the things I have listed above, and some things I did not list. There is no doubt in my mind that he responds to the prayers of his children.

However, tonight, and other times, I glossed over the power of prayer. I heard on the radio a pastor talking about helping missionaries in various parts of the world by praying for them. I admit, shamefully, that I thought at the time "what's that going to do?" Our church has held gatherings, related to specific events we were engaged in, for people to come in and pray together. I admit, shamefully again, that I thought at the time "I'd rather show up at the thing where we DO something." Tonight I did it again with a very small thing, but the Lord opened up my eyes to my attitude in a very big way, which I did not before realize.

My laptop power supply had died. The new one arrived today. I plugged it in. I didn't work. Trinity said she would pray for me that it would start to work. Novalee joined her. My girls are awesome, but I admit, very shamefully now, that I thought "that's not going to do anything, it's just broken." Then I wiggled the cable and it started to work. Soon after I realized the problem was part of the connector was too big and it wasn't going in all the way; sandpaper fixed it straight away and its working great now.

Thank you girls; you're faith at such a young age impresses me. They get it. When you're in a bind, don't get all bent out of shape and give up -- turn to God in prayer.

Thank you Father, for using such a small incident to show me a big flaw in my attitude toward prayer, especially with so much evidence of its effectiveness in my own life.

As I wrote this I realized one more great proof of its effectiveness comes from my brother in Christ David. Thank you David for praying so long that God would make himself real to me. He has in so many ways and I am so thankful for it. The evidence from prayer about me needs to go to the top of the list.

Grace to you and peace my brothers and sisters. I pray that you do not doubt the effectiveness of prayer like I did, and, if you do, I pray that it is shown to you as clearly as it has been shown to me.