A Prayer Filled Life

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.  Phil 4:6  


I've been asked how I come up with a topic to write about, or where I get my ideas.  I have a list of go to topics I developed, but many times they just come to me, or better put, I believe God places them on my heart.  Today's topic came to me about two weeks before I started writing and I was very hesitant to tackle the subject. 

I am a self proclaimed novice when it comes to A Prayer Filled Life and didn't feel very qualified writing about it.  Then I looked at the next lesson in our Foundations course, which I am leading.  It's titled "Building My Relationship With God Through Prayer".  The day before I started writing this, I received an email titled "10 Tips For Praying As A Couple".  And then this morning, as I was about to get started and was looking for some references, I realized the last two classes I lead in the Asbury Class were about prayer.  After all of those "hints", I believe the next thought that came to me was, duh.  You know that soft still voice you hear people talk about that got them to do something, obviously that doesn't always work well with me. 

So after being hit over the head with a prayer hammer, guess what I'm going to write about today, you guessed it, prayer!!  

When Vicky first asked me if I would like to do a blog on our church web site, I wasn't sure I wanted to do that.  So what did I do, I prayed about it for quite some time.  And in the midst of those prayers, I remembered another prayer I had prayed many times prior to her asking me about the blog and it went something like this, or at least a variation of this, "God, I want more.  I want to do more.  I don't exactly know what that more is or what it looks like, but I feel the need to do more". 

You know the old saying, be careful what you pray for.  I asked for more and there it was, right in front of me.  Just when I was in a nice comfy spot in my faith, actually, complacent might be a better description, God, in His time, decides to answer my first prayer as well.  I think I should have specified "more"!!  I didn't mean that much more.  Geez!!  For many, that might not be a big thing to pray about, but for me it was.  It meant putting my feelings and faith out there for more people to read than I was comfortable with. 

So what's the lesson here?  Only pray for the big things in life?? Actually, I believe it be the exact opposite. 

Pray about everything, big or small.  I know it sounds odd, but in doing so, my prayer life became much more active and regular than ever before.  I found from my own personal experience that if I only prayed for the big things, whatever they were, I ran into some long prayer dry spells.  That might not be true for you, but it was for me.  And though this is truly a work in progress in my life, with prayer dry spells or ruts still occurring, they are now much less frequent.  We have often discussed in Sunday school and bible study about how foolish it seems taking things we feel are trivial, nominal or not truly prayer worthy to God, but it's not.  He wants us to!  He tells us to!!  And that is why I started this entry with the passage from Philippians.   

So here's my challenge to each of you.  Take it all to God.  He can handle it, whether life shattering or minuscule.  And in doing so, there is no way that your prayer life won't be fuller, it has to be.  Think of all the things going on in your life right now.  If you took them all to God in prayer, there is no way you won't be praying more often.  

 Your prayer doesn't have to be in some formal type of format or wording.  Just talk to God.  He knows what's on your heart.  Take it all to Him, whether good or not so good, whether for your own request, or on behalf of another.  He's waiting right now to hear from you.  He's waiting right now for you to reach out to Him. 

Go ahead, give it a try.  Take it all to Him in prayer. 

Let me know how it goes in the comments below.

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