God Answers His Own Prayers!

I can’t sleep tonight. My prayers are for hope and strength to trust God with what I cannot see. Lately there’s a fog about the future so close to my face that it has slowed my pace to a crawl. Afraid of a misstep, I become slow to respond to opportunities. There are cracks in the foundation of my optimism. I encourage myself, read words of wisdom and look for insight. But all around me are the flares in the darkness from others who are ahead of me on the road. Gone are they who say, take courage. The words have changed to: “be careful, be prudent” and now from so many: “brace yourself for impact”.

Laughter is dwindling to silence. Fear stirs from somewhere I’ve never been in my own soul. It flushes me with weakness. My heart is racing.  I have a sense that I have forgotten something most important. It feels like a realization that I am poorly prepared for some impending situation. “you cannot work hard enough to save yourself” said a friend to me two days ago.

My striving is not to save myself but to stay my fears until God somehow intervenes. And all I hear is “not yet”. And no answer then again to “If not now when?” . How long oh lord? I ask. And it is as though I’ve just begun the initiation. I tremble at the thought of what I cannot believe with all my strength. I have nothing that God did not give me and still has he left me feeling ill equipped.

A friend and I had a discussion about DL Moody deciding he wanted to know what it felt like to “surrender all to Jesus”. “I don’t know how you’d do that in a single decision” I said “even once made is quickly rescinded”. “I think there must be desperation of soul to make a decision of that kind” I said with the wave of my hand. That decision has seldom been made by those who love any aspect of life. Could it be that my love could make me lost? Is love being too soft? Could those feelings of love make me choose the less difficult way? Thinking all along it was right? Denial is a deception one cannot lead himself out of.

“Fewer on this planet believe in the existence of Satan” he responded. “Then perhaps Satan himself is doing a fine job” I suggested. “I don’t spend my time looking for evil” I thought out loud “evil knows right where I am, just as much as God himself does”. I survive one day at a time with the words of the serenity prayer: But “The things I cannot change” tend to remove my courage to “change the things I can”. Even my prayers fall short of strength. Where am I? I often wonder. Are these my declining years? Then how is it that the road is so steep?

Six times I have dipped myself in this muddy water and the leprosy is not at all gone. I feel ridiculous! I am labeled as some fossilized mind because I’ve been here too long. “Your father knows what things you have need of before you ask”…Scripture says.. “IF we pray because we want answers we will get huffed with God” Oswald Chambers says “we are not here to prove God answers prayer; We are here to be living monuments of God’s grace” he adds. And then I’m reminded of a comment I heard about the change someone observed of their parents. “People softened by the forced reflection that comes with loss”. God answers his own prayers on our behalf!