My experience with prayer as a child was very basic, child like prayers and I knew my parents were members of “prayer groups” they met with regularly but that was for adults only. It really wasn’t until High School that I started understanding the power of prayer and that prayers didn’t have to be “perfect”.
I
was very involved with my church choir as a High School student at Trinity
United Methodist, Homewood. We were a
large group led by some amazing God-Filled adults that taught us so much more
than music. We traveled frequently for
concerts and choir tours and always by bus.
Well, we all know that back in the 70s, most churches didn’t purchase
brand new buses, they were usually old school busses and required lots of “TLC”. Anyway, I vividly remember one trip, on our
way home on a Sunday evening and one of our two buses started sputtering and
our Director immediately yelled out to all of us, “Stop what you are doing and
PRAY”! She started praying out loud for
the bus to get us home. Well, the bus
did breakdown and we just loaded up the second bus and made our way home. Was our prayer answered? Maybe not the way our young minds thought it
would be but the impact of that moment made me realize Prayer is just conversation
with God. And it’s ok to pray about
ANYTHING that is on your heart!
Fast
forward to our years of raising teenagers.
Shawn and I have a grown daughter and son and we went through the
typical “testing boundaries” with each of them.
It was a period that the bad decisions kept coming one after the other
and I’d talked myself clear out of words with our daughter. On my way to work one morning, I was
literally crying out to the Lord to help me know what to say, to help her
remember who they belonged to and to think first, and that’s when I audibly
heard the Lord speak to me and he said, “I got ‘em’. I heard it as clear as day and I could have
kicked myself for not crying out sooner but maybe I wasn’t ready to receive HIS
Word until then. This is where my
favorite verse came from: 2 Corinthians 12:9
“Each time he said, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my
weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me.”
One
last experience I want to share is the impact of having a community of prayer
warriors, praying on your behalf. In
2016, we had a family event that brought our daughter home from Auburn where
she was living. The early morning after
she arrived home, she woke up with chest pains but she was only 26 at the time
so the idea of a heart attack was far from what we were thinking. I left Shawn at home and she and I headed to
the ER. Some might ask why didn’t you
tell Shawn but honestly, I just had this peace about the situation that
whatever the outcome, we were going to be ok.
Plus, we had no idea what the diagnosis was yet so no need to worry
folks until we knew more. A few hours
into the day, we started getting information that her condition was way more
serious than we suspected. Her heart was
enlarged and not functioning as it should be so that’s when I started calling
out to our praying friends and Shawn was reaching out to family. Through that ordeal, I saw God’s hand at work
by first, bringing her home when He did, placing medical staff in our path that
we knew personally that could talk us through what was going on and friends and
church family that prayed fervently for Blake and us as we walked this
journey. I won’t deny there were a few scary
moments but that’s really all they were, “moments” because I knew we were being
held by our Heavenly Father and being loved deeply by our family and friends
who were praying along with us.
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