Prayer

(Previously published November 11, 2010)

Thank you!

I can't say it enough.

Thank you for your prayers and all of your sweet comments and encouragement. How your prayers carry me. Thank you for praying me through this last treatment and recovery. Oh, the power of prayer.

As I walk this road, boy is God teaching me more and more about prayer. I've always been a prayerer...(is that a word....you know a person who prays). God is so real to me like that. How can you be in a relationship with someone and never talk to them? God so desires to hear from us and speak to our hearts.

And I know He is listening.

He never hangs up.

He never puts me on hold.

He puts up time and time again with my mistakes and coming to His throne, head bent low, shoulders hung over as I whisper...."I'm sorry, Lord."

And in His great and unimaginable love for me, He forgives and loves me just the same.

Really, and truly, these words resonate with my soul..."when your heart is overwhelmed, Lead me to the ROCK that is higher than I."

I'm spending a lot of time at the Rock.

He is higher than all of us. I mean He is seated at the right hand of the Father, High and lifted up. In all His glory.

And to think He cares about me and listens.

It drops me to my knees.

I've always known this. But now, in my days and hours of such great need, He is always there and teaching me in His gentle, kind, loving way about His heart for prayer. And the joy, oh the joy, that I am the recipient of the prayers of many offered up on my behalf.

Thank you for praying for me and my family. Through you, God's will is being accomplished in me. Through you, God is answering my cries. Through you, God is healing. Through you, God is comforting. Through you, God is doing what I cannot even see, think or imagine.

Here is a verse that in the last two weeks, God has used in my daily devotions to speak to my weary heart.

And I must digress for a moment and say, this is the God we serve. I read two different devotionals now (yes, because I really need every morsel of truth I can get!), before I open my Bible and read the pure living word. Near me each day, is the devotional, Streams in The Desert... most days I feel like that desert and I need the stream of living water flowing over me. Second, is My Utmost For His Highest.  I never walk away dry from the words penned on those pages. Anyway, as God so intimately knows my heart, my weaknesses and my needs, He never disappoints me. He always has a word for me each time I open these devotionals and each time I open my Bible.

The words recently have focused on prayer.

The power of prayer. The privilege of prayer.  The need for prayer. The body of believers praying for each other.

The constant realization that God accomplishes much through prayer.

This verse came up twice in each devotional, within a week's time. Not a mistake.

"In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints 

in accordance with God's will." Romans 8:26-27

That even when I don't have the words to express my pain, my trial, my weakness....the Spirit does. And He goes before the Father on my behalf that God's will be done in my life.

And as He searches my heart, He sees the pain and puts a prayer in my heart that comes from God. Giving me just what I need. What will carry me through to the next moment, the next hours, the next day. And that the Holy Spirit expresses to the Father, that which I cannot even speak.

"Oh the burdens we lovingly bear but cannot understand! Oh the inexpressible longings of our hearts for things we cannot comprehend! Yet we know they are an echo from the throne of God, and a whisper from His heart. They are often a groan rather than a song, and a burden rather than a floating feather. But they are a blessed burden, and a groan whose undertone is praise and unspeakable joy. They are 'groans that words cannot express.' We cannot always express them ourselves, and often all we understand is that God is praying in us for something that only He understands and that needs His touch. We can simply pour from the fullness of our hearts the burden of our spirit and the

sorrow that seems to crush us."  (Streams in the Desert)

How thankful I am for prayer. That God knew we would need to communicate with Him and that through Jesus Christ, our access to God the Father is made possible.

There are those days following chemo, when all I can ask God is to relieve the pain and discomfort. To bring relief, even if it is brief. I am thankful that when I don't know what to pray, the Spirit goes before the Father for me. He knows.

This last treatment was rough. I am finding with Taxol that it takes 7 days from treatment to feel whole again and without pain. On Tuesday, I began the upswing toward "normalcy." Yesterday, I was just praising God for the new day. For the breath that He has put inside of me and for or another treatment behind me.

And thanking God for each of you.

May we meet each other in the throne room.

Much love,
Stacy