I believe in prayer. I believe God is always listening to hear the prayers of those who belong to Him. I believe that He answers prayers according to what is best for us. Prayer brings our thinking more inline with God’s.
Prayer is conversation with God. It is not contemplation or even meditation. Prayer is a direct address to Him. It may be spoken out loud or it may be silent, but it is a pouring out of the soul to Him and beseeching the Lord for His favor.
To believe in prayer…you must believe in God. You must believe in His abilities. You must believe in His control of all things, and of all his creatures and all their actions. You must believe that He wants to communicate with us.
Our prayers must be sincere. They must be offered with reverence and humility. And, they must be offered in the faith that God will hear and answer…that He will keep His promises.
[References: Ex. 32:11, 1 Sam 1:15, 2 Cor.32:20, Job 8:5, Ps. 73:28, Eph. 3:14, Hebrews 10:22, Matt. 7-8, 1 Peter 2:5, John 14:13-14] ….The Bible Encyclopedia*****************************************************************************************************
I believe the above with all my heart. And, I know so many of you do, too. It was amazing and so, so comforting for all 3 of us when we started getting messages, and e-mails, and tweets, and FB messages, and phone calls, and text messages. They started, and they kept on coming and coming and coming. Each time, we would share what was said with each other. My 2 best friends called each other and prayed together for us…then called us. With each word of support, we felt the arms of our Lord holding us tighter and tighter. And, our hearts….felt more and more peaceful.
You did this for us. Even though there was an ocean between us….we felt you were as close as next door. You did it because you carry the love of God in your heart as well. And, with sincere and humble hearts, you carried our dilemma to the Father.
Thank you so very much. We are eternally grateful. From Patty, Joy, and myself….’mahalo’ from the bottom of our hearts.
(MAHALO…thank-you)
SO TRUE!!
I so vividly remember when in 1996 a doctor came to the waiting room to tell me that without doubt he found a malignant tumor in Dick’s hip. When he left me I went to the bathroom and started to cry, truly feeling like I would never be able to stop.
Eventually I pulled myself together enough to make three phone calls – my dad, Dick’s dad, my school. I know that from those three calls many more a phone calls were made and hundreds of prayers began ascending to God on our behalf.
After about ten minutes a calmness came over me and I began working on lesson plans for school. I thought, “This is crazy. I’ve just been told my husband has cancer, and I’m sitting here doing lesson plans.”
Then it occured to me – people are praying for me!!
Looks like I’d better write this on my own blog instead of trying to make it into a comment on yours!
The power of prayer! It amazes me anew each time I feel it or hear of it! Our God is an amazing God who reaches down to us, sinful though we are! I sure needed to hear that today! He also does that! 🙂