Prayer is something I will never fully understand, but I know on one level we are expected to pray with faith- i.e. the belief that our prayers actually have some power before the God of the universe and that He is capable of giving us what we ask for. I was having a hard time with this today, as I struggled to pray for some of the same things I've been praying for for ages with little to no apparent result.
It occured to me today, though, that looking at God through the eyes of faith means that we who believe have seen miracles happen by the thousands. If we look at God as though we absolutely accept His word as truth, we have virtually seen the waters of the red sea part, lived over and over again the freezing of the sun in the sky, watched as the person of the living God head raised the dead to life with a word, been amazed as the hearts of kings were changed, gotten chills as unconqurable armies are taken down by a righous few. The list goes on and on- it really doesn't matter weather or not we've seen with our litteral eyes God working so drastically in our own lives. We should KNOW what He is capable of, as surely as if we HAD seen it.
It just struck me as funny, all of the sudden, that I should be looking for experiences in my life to confirm what I was reading in the pages of the Bible. My life is such a small portion of time in such a insignificant part of a very large world... it gets lost very quickly in the vastness of eternity and all that I have had the priviledge of seeing God do within that eternity. Furthermore, how many times in the Bible did God work through simple means? How many times did people Jesus dealt with not even really get it? How dare I doubt, when such a testimony has been revealed to me?
I hope and pray that I will never become so wrapped up in the little box that is my world to forget the vastness, goodness, and potency of a God who functions totally outside of it.
Thanks for writing this. It's a great reminder. Our God is indeed so strong and mighty - why would we judge His abilities based on our faulty expectations and our limited experience!
ReplyDeleteI agree, thank you for sharing!
ReplyDeleteI struggle with prayer too. I've grown up hearing good prayers by eloquent people in churches, all my life - not saying they aren't sincere, but I never really learned to talk to God as opposed to making requests sound beautiful. And when it comes to praising Him just for who He is, I get lost.
I read this story the other day, about something Corrie Ten Boom would do to teach about perspective. She would hold a beautiful tapestry up in front of her, but with the front facing her and the back facing the people she was talking to. All they could see was all the confused threads that made a mess on the back of the cloth. And she'd say "Isn't this a beautiful picture?" And as people looked confused, she add, "Oh that's right, you can't see it from my point of view."
I like to constantly remind myself of this when I get frustrated with the world in which we live. We only see tangled threads, but God is looking at the whole beautiful picture on the other side, and since He created it I think we can trust Him even when we don't get to see all of it. :)
Ohhh, I like that. Thanks for sharring!
ReplyDeletereally cool analogy Kacy!
ReplyDeleteGreat thought Emily.
I meant thoughts
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