Isn't prayer a wonderful thing? To be able to talk to the all-powerful God who is in control of everything, is amazing to me. And he loves to listen to us. He loves when we call on him for help. 'Cause, believe it or not, we actually can't run the universe! He is in control no matter how much we think we have it all down.
Which is a comforting truth, I think. The universe doesn't fall apart when we fail! It would be really bad if it did because we fail very, very often. We can't do it. But God can!
When we pray about trials and for help through them, we are giving our own strength up to God. We are admitting that we can't win against the devil without God's strength. I feel so safe when I cast my cares on Jesus! The enemy just can't win over the Lord!
My mom showed me Psalm 144 the other day. It's great to pray it. Sometimes I paraphrased it to match what my circumstances are when I prayed it. Here are verses 1-2, 5-11.
Blessed be the LORD, my rock,
who trains my hands for war,
and my fingers for battle;
he is my steadfast love and my fortress,
my stronghold and my deliverer,
my shield and he in whom I take refuge,
who subdues peoples under me.
Bow your heavens, O LORD, and come down!
Touch the mountains so that they smoke!
Flash forth lightning and scatter them;
send out your arrows and rout them!
Stretch out your hand from on high;
rescue me and deliver me from the many waters,
from the hand of foreigners,
whose mouths speak lies and whose right hand is a right hand of falsehood.
I will sing a new song to you, O God;
upon a ten-stringed harp I will play to you,
who gives victory to kings,
who rescues David his servant from the cruel sword.
Rescue me and deliver me from the hands of foreigners,
whose mouths speak lies and whose right hand is a right hand of falsehood.
God's power is so clearly shown in this Psalm! Especially in the middle paragraph, I think his power is shown. With a touch, he makes the mountains smoke! He can flash forth lightning! And he can rescue us from the many waters of trials.
I hope this encouraged you!
- Sarah :)
I always feel like there's never enough we can say about how awesome, literally, prayer is! What a wonderful post idea! :D
ReplyDeleteFunny story: This week at Local Missions, we have a time for personal devotions every morning. Which happens to be twenty minutes long. I really like having all that time to read the Bible and pray, but on Monday I wasn't really used to taking that long for my devotions. Anyway, after studying my "normal" passage I turned to one of my dad's favorites, the end of Job where God blows Job away with His glory and power. And I happened upon the lovely verse: "From his sneezings come great flashes of light." Guess what? I thought it was referring to God! It's actually concerning Leviathan, the mystery creature from Job. Later Ellie and I were talking about Adam and Eve running away from poor Leviathan, who trundles afterwards saying "I'm really a nice dinosaur! I just have a cold today!" :D