Fold Your Hand and Bow Your Heads

When I was twelve, my mother made the decision to change churches. It seemed like a perfect fit. Dad had friends there, they had a great youth group for my brother and sister, and they had plenty of young kids. In fact, there were three other girls my exact age.The only problem was that none of them would talk to me.  I went from seeing my best friend every week to being the outcast.  I prayed and prayed that God would give me friends. And Sunday night after Sunday night I cried myself to sleep, alone.  

Until one Sunday morning, as we sang our opening songs before Sunday school, I prayed something different.  

I said to God, “God, I’m sorry.  I have been praying the wrong thing. Church isn’t about friends it’s about you. Today I am here for just you; I don’t care about anyone else.”  

As soon as we finished singing, all three girls came up to me and invited me to sing special music with them. Not only that but they also asked me to sit with them! The moment I had started giving God the attention I wanted, and had centered my prayer on him, he answered it. I knew in that moment, that God was real. All those stories I had heard in Sunday school became alive. 

Prayer is an amazing thing because it doesn’t just change the world around us, it changes us. Prayer took me from being self-centered to God-centered.

But that’s not all prayer does. Prayer has helped this control freak who wants to fix everyone else’s problems with a way to do something when I am powerless. So often it is prayer that precedes a miracle:

• It was the appointments after a prayer vigil when doctors saw a drastic change from the malignant fast growing tumor becoming gradually smaller without any medical intervention. And then the transformation of a whole town as that woman witnessed to God’s healing.

• It was a friend’s prayer for God to do something in the next 24 hours that brought to light the deep seeded tension in a marriage on the brink of divorce…and started the long process of healing.

• It was prayer that opened the doors to friendships that have brought real life…what the Bible calls “zoe” life to our family.

You know Christians say prayer is powerful but I’m not sure we all believe it. But I do. I really do.