Romans 12:12
"Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer."
Recently in church my pastor talked about prayer and the importance of it. As Christians, it almost seems silly that we would need to be reminded to pray. It's like needing a reminder to talk to your best friend, or a reminder to talk to the person standing next to you that you see everyday. Silly. How is it that we come to ignore communication with God so much? I know I find myself lacking in my prayer time all the time. Thankfully God isn't like that way with me.
So, why don't we pray? I think a lot of us have come to think that God only answers prayers that really good people pray. That only the super Christians and such get their prayers answers because God is pleased with them. When we realize that our faith and intentional communication with God has been lacking we sometimes assume that even if we prayer God wouldn't do anything because we haven't been Christian enough for Him lately. Why should He do favors for people who don't always take Him seriously?
Unfortunately, this has been my thinking on more than one occasion. But the thing is, God doesn't just do favors. God always acts in a way that benefits those He loves whether you pray for it or not. If you need something, ASK for it! God wants to bless you. God does not bless on conditions. God does not say "If you do your quiet time consistently for 2 straight weeks I will give you whatever you ask for in my name." No, not how He works.
God wants to spend time with us. God wants to bless us. God does not base his blessings on good works we've done. And thank goodness! Because if He did than I would never have gotten a single prayer answered because my bad works outweigh my good works by a long shot.
So..how specifically can we pray? Does God care about details??
So specifically! Yes details! Last Saturday night I received a text message from one of my friends that is still in high school. She is helping with leadership on an upcoming youth retreat from her church and has been really excited about it. The text she sent me asked if I could pray that they get more people to sign up for the retreat because they needed a minimum of 15 people or they would have to cancel it. They only had 10 and since the deadline was soon it was looking a little on the sad side. I told her of course I would like to pray for that and at first was thinking I'd ask Jesus for 6 people to sign up just to make it more awesome when MORE than 5 signed up.. but than I thought.. why 6? Do really think it would be that hard for God to find people to go on this retreat? So I texted her back saying I would ask Jesus for 7 people to sign up because He likes the number 7 and it sounded like a good number to me.
I spent some time praying for it and thanked Jesus that he could do awesome things like that.
My friend was still a little worried cuz there was only a few days but of course I know that Jesus can do way big miracles in a couple of days... especially after Brazil and the visas.
The next day I received a text from her again saying "We have enough!!"
I was excited at this.. but also curious. If it was just 15 people than it wasn't enough because I prayed for 7 and so unless there were 17 people signed up for that retreat Jesus wasn't done working. So I texted back and asked if it was 5 more enough or 7 more enough.
Her response was this "She has 16 apps right now...and I still have one to give her..so that makes 17..thats so weird!!"
:D I had a grand time praising Jesus for that. I love when Jesus does that.
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