Prayer Changes Things

While some Christians believe that prayer is simply communication between God and man with no impact on the course of history, I am convinced that prayer does in fact change things. 

During the last months of high school, I had no idea how I would afford to go to college or how the coming years would pan out. I felt helpless.

It was during this time that someone shared a photo on Instagram of a car they had been spontaneously gifted, with a caption explaining their recent conviction to pray "bigger and more boldly," thus resulting in a car. 

She had a need, she prayed, and God provided.

"Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them." Mark 11:24

This testimony majorly impacted my prayer life (and life in general) over the next few months. I knew what the Bible said about prayer, but I hadn't lived as though I truly believed God's promises were true.

James 5:13-18 describes various situations in which believers may find themselves and repeatedly exhorts them to pray to God over these matters.

I have seen God open countless doors, provide for me financially on numerous occasions, answer prayers for spiritual growth and gifts, and place exactly the right people in my life just when I asked for them.

I can point you to nearly everything in my life and tell you the story of when I or someone close to me was once praying for those things. Today, I'm thanking God for them.

• College expenses - I didn't think I was qualified to get full funding/scholarships. I took the leap and came to college without this financial security. But over the years, God has truly provided. I now have excess scholarship funds.

• The car that I drive -  freshman year I hitched rides all over the state to get where I needed to go. God provided the job and funds necessary to purchase a vehicle of my own at the start of sophomore year.

• The ring on my finger - last August I was fervently praying for God to send a man of His ways to pursue a godly marriage with me. Our first date was the next month and now we're planning a December wedding.

• Understanding of Scripture - one week I was silently praying for the gift of illumination described in Ephesians 1:17-18 and the next I was sitting under the biblical counseling of three women I had never met and they used the exact phrasing of my unspoken prayer to acknowledge that what I had spoken was a truly a gift in understanding God's Word.

I tell you all of this not to say that God has answered every prayer I've ever prayed and that life if full of rainbows and butterflies. It isn't. 

There are much heavier things I'm praying for that God has yet to answer, but I trust that He hears. I trust that His ways are higher and better and mightier than mine. I trust that He holds the future. I trust that He is sovereign over all things.

SOLI DEO GLORIA

"Don't pray when you feel like it. Have an appointment with the Lord and keep it. A man is powerful on his knees." - Corrie Ten Boom

"Prayer – secret, fervent, believing prayer – lies at the root of all personal godliness." - William Carey