Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Praying like I believe it WILL happen.....

God is showing off again....and I'm thankful! I am ashamed to admit that I do pray but often I don't pray believing that God will do what I ask. Lately, I have been praying for God to help me to pray like I prayed for my brother....for those of you not familiar with the events surrounding my brother...I'll summarize:
In May of 06, my brother was diagnosed with cirrhosis and told he had 6 months to live and that he wasn't a candidate for a liver transplant. I started praying for him immediately, I prayed for physical healing but even more, I prayed for spiritual healing.
In July of 06, I established a little box I call my prayer box...there is nothing magical about this box, except that I wanted to write prayers down, and then when I placed the prayer in the box, I would "consider it done" (see blog with this title). I wrote on July 21, 2006 that I wanted to see my brother in a relationship with the Lord before he left earth.
On July 20, 2007 (one day short of a year later), my brother called me to his home and told me "You don't need to worry about me, I've been talking with Jesus and I know where I am going"....he said this with such certainty. There was more peace and joy on his face than I've seen in his lifetime.
On December 9, 2007, my brother passed away. He had just been told the day before that he had been placed on the list for a liver transplant. The way I see it, he didn't have to wait long for the transplant, he got it immediately when he crossed from earth to heaven.
O.K., so I didn't do that well with summarizing, but back to my most recent prayer, to pray like I believe. Yesterday, while working at the crisis pregnancy center, I had a couple of clients that I really needed to do ultrasounds on. For those of you not familiar with these centers....we reserve ultrasounds for those clients that are abortion minded. We believe that if they can see that fetus, they may reconsider. I plugged in my ultrasound machine and waited for it to warm up as usual. Meanwhile, I brought client #1 into the room and asked questions, once I had completed this, I turned to put her information into the machine and there was blank screen. I started pushing buttons to no avail, it was frozen. I felt sick. I attempted to reboot, unplug, restart, etc.....still a frozen screen. Client #1 told me she had to go. Before Client #2 came in, one of the counselors came to me and we prayed over the machine. She told me, I am praying, believing that the machine will work before you finish interviewing the next client. Client #2 entered the seen, the machine had a blank screen again. I turned my back to the screen and faced the client (who was facing the screen)....I told her, "my machine is squirrely today, we'll see if it is working by the time I finish our paperwork." The client said, "Oh, it's working". I turned to see a machine up and running. All I can say is "Thank you God for showing off!"

2 comments:

debseveryday said...

Your blog photo is beautiful...especially when its 98 degree outside like today...I don't know why, but I pray like that sometimes...sometimes that thought is in the back of my mind..that I already have a expectation that He won't answer my prayers, then the disappointment if my prayers aren't answered the way I want is minimal...does that make any sense? For me, it comes from thinking of God as I do people...I know that people are going to fail me, just as I'm going to fail them. My problem is that I put God,
sometimes, in the same category. And I know He is not going to fail me, even when my prayers are answered completely different from how I prayed. But I unfortunately forget that very important characteristic of God sometimes.

Barb said...

What a honest thought Sue. I too often pray with doubt. Not ever that God "couldn't" do what I asked but "would" He? I often feel like I'm asking more than I should or I'm asking for or about things that are simply too trivial to God. I KNOW that this is not true and yet I find myself buying in to that thought sometimes. I'm guessing satan himself has something to do with it. He loves to cause doubt to cheat us of victory. Thanks for reminding me to pray like I BELIEVE IT WILL HAPPEN! God is faithful!