July 10
Prayer
“pray without ceasing;” 1 Thes. 5:17 KJV
I developed most of prayer disciplines when I was a young child. I began the morning by thanking God for my blessings, prayed whenever a worry or a problem came to mind and had times of extended prayer while I rode the bus to and from school. The last person I’d speak to every night was my Heavenly Father. Over the years, prayer has been almost like background music—I know it is there, but it is so woven into the fabric of my life that I don’t really notice that I’m praying most of the time. I’m not sure if that is what Paul meant when he wrote, “pray without ceasing,” but it has been the way I’ve practiced this scripture.
While there are moments that prayer is so much a part of my life that I hardly noticed it happening, there are other times when prayer becomes the primary focus of my spiritual existence. Today, my soul is throbbing. I have a friend, an ex staff member, whose cancer has reoccurred two years after the doctor pronounced him healed. As a result of the surgery, he’s lost the hearing in one of his ears and will have one side of his face paralyzed for at least a year and a half. When I heard about the reoccurance, I knew that this wasn’t a prayer I could pray while driving to school or right before I went to sleep, I had a need to touch his family physically while I prayed for them.
So after church a couple weeks ago, Susan & I drove up to where he lives and spent the night in a hotel so we could be fresh when we went to visit with them the next day. Before we left, we had prayer together. It wasn’t a casual prayer, it was intense. I don’t know if anything will be different for my friend because I prayed for him or what God will do with the prayer, but I do know that it helped me. Because sometimes the least we can do is the most we can do—Pray.
Jim L. Wilson, Fresh Start Devotionals (Fresno, CA: Willow City Press, 2009).
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