The Power of Prayer

Along the same lines as my previous post...one of the greatest things that I cannot emphasize enough...prayer. Many believe in the power of prayer, others say they don't know to pray.

I say this...prayer is simply speaking to God. The beauty of prayer is that sometimes your mind cannot find the words but your heart speaks without utterance directly to the heart of God and He hears so plainly what we cannot formulate in words. Those are the deepest prayers I find...

The wonder of prayer is something that I feel is overlooked. It used to be when I was a young girl that prayer was something I HAD to do...now I am finding myself waking up in the morning, or any at random time throughout the day and of course in the evening, just lifting my eyes to heaven and "talking" to God. Be it thanking Him for life and health or thanking Him for His help or at times sighing with despair when the things of life are just too much for me.

And I feel Him, I feel His presence and I feel I love Him more with each passing day. When you love someone you want to talk to them as much as possible. You want to feel them near, their very presence can calm you and their warmth relax away your anxiety. How much more with God! It is something that cannot be described with mere human prose...it cannot be comprised in words...it IS a feeling that is far beyond that of any I have ever known. I often feel like my heart will overflow and my mind is filled with words of thankfulness and praise!

I have come to realize the power of prayer through experiences like these but I was reading through the Exodus and saw something that I never saw before...yes I had read that story many times but it never spoke to me like this time...I saw how Moses prayed for the people of Israel even as God's wrath waxed strongly against them when they turned to making a golden image and worshiping it as Moses was up on the mountain talking to Him. God was ready to do some serious damage, but Moses prayed and reasoned with Him of sorts...reminding Him that if He should destroy His people then Egypt and all the enemies of the people of Israel would think badly of the God of Israel, saying, "He led them out of Egypt to kill them in the wilderness..." Now, God is all knowing...I don't think that Moses brought anything new to His attention but it appealed to me in this way...God was so wroth He did not care about that for a bit, just wanted to punish them...severly! Yet, those words of Moses brought about a change of mind and God actually hearkened to Moses' words. HOW unbelievable is that!!! I mean that in how AWESOME! THIS to me is the very epitome of the power of prayer! Sometimes we feel you know, I am not worthy of forgiveness, God should punish me, I did too much wrong...I know He wants to address that. But I so enjoyed the thought that God is so much more prone to turning away His wrath if we could only be willing to go to Him and lay it all at His feet and beg for mercy and plead with Him to help us...so that His name be not a mockery to others but rather our changed life can praise His name and be a testament to His power.

It seems like many years ago when I stood up in convention and gave my testimony...from the book of Psalms..."What is man that Thou are mindful of him or the son of man that Thou visitest him?" I don't know still but I do know this...for some reason God IS interested in every little one of us and my heart is glad for that. Even more so for the fact that He wants to communicate with us and we can be assured that there is no better ear to have than that of the Almighty and Living God! The power of prayer is an awesome thing...and I know I want to be in touch with Him as often as I possibly can each and every day..."For if God be for us, WHO can be against us?!"

AMEN