Always Pray

Scripture

How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemies triumph over me?

~Psalms 13:1-2, NIV

Quote

Prayer does not fit us for the greater work; prayer is the greater work.

~Oswald Chambers

In today’s text, you will noticed David is questioning God. He begins Psalm 13 with five straight questions. Obviously David feels forsaken and forgotten. He wants to feel the presence of God but can’t. He is wrestling with his thoughts and they are producing sorrow. David feels defeated. What do we do when our emotions do not bear witness to our convictions? What did Jesus do when He felt God-forsaken? He and David did the same thing, they prayed anyway. Feeling or no feelings, David prayed. When Jesus felt forsaken, He prayed...“My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me? You will note that even Jesus questioned His father while hanging on the cross. We are humans; we are going to have doubts, fears, times of sorrow and depression. Prayer is a spiritual discipline. It is an act of war and worship. The devil doesn’t want us praying and neither does the flesh. David had cultivated a habit of prayer so that he prayed no matter what: he prayed when he felt like it and he prayed when he didn’t feel like it. The one thing we believers cannot do is give in to our emotions. Emotions are fickle and unreliable; they show up at the strangest times and then when we need the most, they are no where to be found.

So remember: God is always on His throne and He hears our every prayer and this fact has nothing to do with how we feel. Also keep in mind, God works on His own time-table which means He rarely answers our prayers immediately. We humans are impatient; when we ask for something, we expect immediate results but God does not work this way. Our present crisis is a test of sorts to reveal to us our faith or lack thereof: God sanctifies us through sorrow and suffering. We cannot know His power without knowing His suffering. So here is the rule of thumb taught by both David and Jesus. Pray and keep praying. Do not allow your emotions to dictate what you do. If you will continue to pray through the emotionally dry spells, you will discover–your emotions will eventually catch up. Look at verse 6 of this Psalm…“I will sing the LORD’s praise, for He has been good to me.” The LORD turned David’s sorrow into singing because, as the old folks use to say, “he prayed through.”

I love rain so when I drove to Jack’s to get Big Mama a gravy and biscuit, I worshiped. There is nothing more beautiful to me than a gentle rain; well almost nothing. I know, you think I am crazy. Speaking of crazy and prayer: let me share a couple of things with you. The LORD gave Grace Point a mini-bus yesterday. We went to look at the bus and it was just what we wanted. The man was asking $13,000 which was about what we had saved. When it came time to exchange money, he said, “I have decided to donate the bus in memory of my wife.” I am not kidding. This makes two vans in a row that we’ve had donated. The GMC at DBC was a gift. I was in attendance of Tyler Jolley’s COLS when Holly came in and ask me to transfer the food to our little CRV so I went to the parking lot, cranked the car, pulled next to Holly for the transfer; transferred the food and I went back in to the service. I came out after the service and my lights were on. When I got to the car, the door was unlocked. Then I realized that I had forgotten to cut the engine off.  The little sucker runs so quiet that I cannot hear the engine.

Mrs. Neil Brown is celebrated her 88th birthday today. Mrs. Neil is a resident at Summerford’s.

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