So I was sitting in my prayer time this morning, praying for the normal things I pray for…and I started to realize how much I could be totally freaking out about. I mean, there are at least 6 huge things going on right now in my and Wesley’s lives, that I should be a huge puddle of tears and a gigantic ball of stress. Normally, I would have had melt down already….(and maybe there is still one to come…who knows). However, I am unusually peaceful today.

The company I work for has many people in the city in that was at the center of the earthquake. I received word that no one from their group was injured. Keep them in your prayers as they are continuing their work there and are joined by about 12 students this summer one from UAH.

Copied from Thabiti Anyabwile blog… This was very good and timely!!!

“This, then, is the prayer of faith: to ask God to accomplish what He has promised in His Word. That promise is the only ground for our confidence in asking. Such confidence is not “worked up” from within our emotional life; rather, it is given and supported by what God has said in Scripture.

“Truly ’righteous’ men and women of faith know the value of their heavenly Father’s promises. They go to Him, as children do to a loving human father. They know that if they can say to an earthly father, ’But, father, you promised…,’ they can both persist in asking and be confident that he will keep his word. How much more our heavenly Father, who has given His Son for our salvation! We have no other grounds of confidence that He hears our prayers. We need none.

Debbie got me an outstanding gift today for Christmas - the Ancient Christian Devotional with fifty-two weeks of readings following the weekly lectionary cycle A. You can read through them in order or by thematic interest. Each day you will also find a simple opening and closing prayer drawn from the prayers and hymns of the ancient church. It uses writings from the Ancient Christian Commentary with a simply structure of daily reading and prayer.

Wow. I intend to use it over the course of the coming year.

Last week at Journey Group on Wednesday night, someone asked for prayer regarding missing individuals. We prayed, specifically, that God would bring resolution by Sunday (yesterday.) Today comes word that both individuals were located yesterday - on Sunday.

A lot of Christians are reluctant to be specific in prayer. Several years ago, I prayed for 7 months that God would bring my youngest daughter into a serious relationship with a godly young man by Christmas of that year. What happened? On Christmas Eve we went to dinner with Gina and her new boyfriend, Nate, and it was obvious that God had spectacularly answered my prayer … to the specific day I requested. Shortly after, they were engaged and are now happily married.

Does this mean we can pray specifically for anything and get what we want? Of course not. James 4:1-3 throw some light on the subject:

It’s been six days since my open-heart surgery and I’m doing exceptionally well … due in large part to all of your wonderful prayers. Thank you so much for your prayers; they were the most helpful and important thing you could do for me. While it’s easy to sometimes get apathetic about prayer, believe me when I say your prayers had a powerful effect on me.

I was released from the hospital after only a 4-night stay. Remarkable especially when you consider that the surgeon had to replace my heart valve with an artificial valve. To show you just how efficacious your prayers were, listen to this: After surgery you go straight into ICU. As soon as I regained consciousness in ICU, they said I sat straight up in bed (I don’t remember it - being too groggy) like I was ready to leave, freaking them out and alarming them. They had to force me to lay back down.

Here is good wisdom from the “Reformation Theology” blog. I know from personal experience relationships/friendships/ministry can be damaged and even destroyed by an emotionally charged blog and its comments. There have been countless times I have been working on a blog only to delete it or let it sit several days and pray over it before submitting it.