I was having my prayer time the other day as I usually do. For me it's early in the morning, with a cup of coffee, my bible and some soft worship music playing quietly in the background. After a while as I prayed I began to thank God for the many blessings my wife and are enjoying at this season of our lives. As I did I remembered the many years of life that I have seen. Throughout the years we have had times of real joy and blessing, as well as times of struggle, stress and serious issues and decisions to make. In short, many of the pressures that most people are called to face as we live and work our way through life's challenges.
But as I sat and considered where we are at this point of life I can say with gratitude that we have all we need and more beside. We have health, a solid marriage, money in the bank, our children are grown and doing well, and yes, the grand babies are coming! The Lord has created a ministry for me that I wouldn't have envisioned but it is tailor made for me. We are at a season of blessing and stability even in the midst of unstable times and are very aware that it is because of God's grace and mercy.
Now as I traced the many years leading to this point, there are not many reasons to credit myself for these good things. There have been tough calls, adversities, right decisions yes, but wrong ones to, recessions, church conflict, good presidents, foolish ones, lack of income, illness, surgeries, times when we were deep in debt, got close to losing our house, many answered prayers, many times of silence. Throughout the whole time I did what I knew to do and what I could do and tried to negotiate and work with people to find ways to navigate the various circumstances as they arose. Now, there is a great calm, and the blessings I described earlier are ours by the grace of God in Christ Jesus.
The one constant has been prayer. I have always made it the priority in my life to read the Scripture and to pray daily. It has been what we call the devotional life. It is the cultivation of relationship with God, the learning of right teaching, the relief and struggle of prayer, an insight that turns into a sermon, the whisper of His assuring voice that He is with me no matter what the circumstances look like. It is the activity that somehow engages God to act on our behalf, to His glory.
So as I sat and considered His blessings, I realized that He is faithful no matter what the culture is doing or how irresponsible and wicked our government becomes. He will fix our wrong decisions, forgive our sins, restore what the destroyer ruins, if we are constant in the discipline of prayer. Then, one day we will realize how patient He has been with us and how good he is to us. But we must pray. It is the only sane and rational thing to do in these insane and irrational times.
I'm very grateful for my times of prayer and devotion. I'm very grateful for the blessings I enjoy today. There is definitely a connection. It's not a simple thing. It's not that we pray and poof ! our wish comes true. It is the discipline to pray, trust, listen, persist, and when it turns out to be not what you would have chosen, to go God's way by faith and submission. It's God by His Holy Spirit shaping and molding you and me into His image, for life in His economy. I hope you will begin today, to cultivate a life of devotion and prayer through faith in Jesus Christ. One day you will look at your situation and say like I say, surely God is good and has been good to me.
