When I was a child, I used to love to use flowers to play a common game. If there was a particular boy that I liked, I would take the first petal off a flower and say, “He loves me” and then as the next petal hit the ground I would say, “He loves me not”. This would continue until I got to the last remaining petal and if I saw that this petal would inform me that he didn’t love me, I would cheat and only pull half of the petal off to make sure I could say he loved me with the final half of a petal. Yes, I probably should have gone to counseling for this
Oh, the joys of being a child. This was really nothing more than a wishing game; a game where I “wished” for a happy ending. When I was young this was a harmless game of make believe. I knew my wish wasn’t going to change anything or make someone love me and I really don’t think I expected anything more.
I think what is sad is the fact that many of us carry these same thoughts into our prayer life as adults. Oh, we pray and ask God for this or that; but we consider our words to be more wishes than true, heartfelt requests.
I have this tagline at the bottom of my emails, “If answered prayer surprises you, your praying may be more wishing than believing”. How often do we pray, never really expecting God to answer? Do we believe that our God is big enough to handle our requests or have we diminished God to be our size? Are we so in tune with Him that our requests are what He would want to hear?
Too often I think our fears get in the way and we neglect to step out and be bold in our prayers, asking for those things that have been laid on our hearts. I wonder what would happen this week if each of us would fervently pray and believe that God will answer us. Not just throwing wishes up in the air, but heartfelt, specific prayers said to the One who is more powerful than any other. Our God is able. Our God is powerful. Our God is waiting for us to approach His throne.
I would love for you to join me in being intentional this week in praying and believing that He will answer. Will He always give us the answer we are expecting? Probably not. But I am confident that as long as we trust Him…His answer will be exactly what we need.
“So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God.
There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace
to help us when we need it most.”
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