“Let your requests be made known to God.” (Phil. 4:6) As Christians, we talk about prayer. As pastors, we instruct others to pray. In Sunday school, we discuss prayer. But all of this begs the question, “Do we actually pray?”
Too many times we fail to teach our children to pray. They see little difference between believers and the ‘average Joe’ on the street. We walk around without actively trusting God in prayer, bouncing through life without heavenly direction or purpose. If we will pray for and with our children, when they grow up, they will embrace it as a vital part of their life. Especially if we are careful to point out the times when the Lord answers our prayers. I would like to relate a true story.
As soon as Susanne and I realized we were going to be parents, we began to pray for our children and for their future spouses. Before they took their first breath on earth, we were breathing out prayers to the Lord. It took 24 years to see the first of them materialize, but it was a clear answer to our prayers.
Joshua, our oldest son, was away in College in South Carolina, playing on the golf team. He met this young lady named Erika. Without us knowing it, her mother had also been praying for 20 years about her daughter’s future spouse. In her prayers, Erika’s mom felt the Lord told her that Erika’s husband would be named “Josh.” Two years before Erika met our Josh, she had dated another Josh. However, Erika’s mother never felt peaceful that he was the one. Erika ended the relationship without ever knowing about her mother’s apprehension.
After our Josh had proposed to Erika, her mother was praying intently about whether the Lord would show her if this was the man for her daughter. She wanted to know and cried out fervently in prayer. She said she was driving to work along Dale Earnhardt Boulevard in Kannapolis, NC, asking the Lord to show her with certainty if this Josh was to be her daughter’s husband.
A traffic light turned red and stopped her. Then, through her prayers and tears, she glanced over at the side of the road and saw a young person walking up to a homeless man, giving him a meal and talking with him. As she continued to look at them, she was startled to recognize that the young man was our Josh. She burst out into tears and through that moment the Lord spoke to her heart and said, “That’s him!”
The odds of that happening in a metropolis the size of Charlotte, NC, are astronomical. But in the hands of God, nothing is out of his reach for guiding his children. God connected our prayers with the prayers of Erika’s mother and answered them in a dynamic fashion. God answers the prayers of Christians. He cares about our life and the lives of our children. It is a part of… Why We Pray!
