Over the past few weeks, I’ve spent a lot of time talking to people about prayer. Who prays? Why do we pray? Does God answer prayers?
And what I keep hearing from people is that yes God answers prayers … for other people. Yes, God moves in the lives … of other people.
But when it comes to God answering our prayers for ourselves, we’re either too shy to ask or we feel too unworthy to even believe that God will take the time for us.
Don’t buy into that lie.
God loves us all equally and He is moving in and shaping your life right now.
I, myself, am guilty of sometimes believing that my problems aren’t important enough for God to work in. Doesn’t He have better things to do?
Here’s what I’ve come to believe, though, over the past few months. When we pray to God, when we allow others to pray for us, we are allowing God to love us and care for us in all the ways He longs to do.
Prayer is God’s gift of love.
The other day, I was given the opportunity to see, feel, and experience firsthand just what a gift prayer is when three women, Lorraine, Judy and Pastor Debbie prayed over me in the sanctuary. It was a healing prayer and it was something I had never experienced before.
To have someone lay hands on you and pray to God for you … I didn’t know what to expect. And let me tell you that what happened during that prayer was something I can’t explain, something I am still trying to process as God reveals Himself more and more in my life.
All three women lay their hands on me and I closed my eyes. I felt a little nervous and a little foolish, worried that I was taking up their time for something so minor. I had been sick for three weeks with an upper respiratory infection, and then I had suffered horrible rib pain for an additional two weeks after that.
The pain in my chest felt like I had been shot. It felt like an arrow had pierced my heart and then lodged there, sticking out my back. I was in a lot of pain, but even then I didn’t feel worthy of being prayed for.
I could feel Lorraine and Judy and Pastor Debbie’s hands on my back, just the pressure and then Judy started to pray and when she prayed something incredible and totally outside the realm of anything I had felt before, happened.
As she prayed, her hand began to warm. And this warmth, this heat, spread through my back and my chest like a wave. I told Judy later that it felt like drinking hot chocolate on a cold winter day. It was soothing and I could feel the pain begin to unravel.
But before I could try and figure out what was happening (how could Judy's hand just suddenly start to heat up), Lorraine started praying and the words she spoke … I can’t even remember them all, but I know the crux was that she was claiming me. I was God’s and evil was not welcome in my life.
And that was when I started to cry.
By the time Pastor Debbie spoke, I was a mess and Pastor Debbie’s words healed yet another part of my spirit as she reminded me of what God has been calling me to do.
And when it was over, all I could think was that in my life, no one has ever given me a better gift than those few minutes of prayer.
Prayer isn’t about being deserving or worthy … it is about letting God’s love work through you and in your life.
