A Devotion from Jim Wilson

Prayer is not making three wishes while rubbing on a mysterious lamp. Neither is it convincing God to do our will instead of His will. Prayer is one way we express our faith. Sometimes we pray in faith asking God to move the mountain, and sometimes we pray for enough faith to climb the mountain.

When Lindsey Crittenden started to pray, she didn’t know what she believed or if she was a believer but one Sunday morning, in the midst of a personal storm, she walked into a church and started to pray. She figured that church wouldn’t hurt, and besides she might just meet some nice people there.

Later, when she learned that her mother was dying of cancer, that decision would become a source of strength to her. She said, “Prayer didn’t keep my mother from dying, but it gave me a way to be with her through the chemo and the hospital stays when I visited her nightly to talk and rub her feet.”

Lindsey’s faith got her through the hard times when God chose not to remove them. It was a faith that enabled her to pray and a faith she got through prayer. The biggest mistake we make is to stop praying when our faith is weak. When all is well, and our prayers flow, mixed with praise to God, prayer is God’s gift to us. But when all is not well, and we are too tired, too discouraged, too angry to pray, but we pray anyway, prayer is our gift to God. (Reader’s Digest, April 2002, p. 101)

Psalm 3:4 NIV “To the Lord I cry aloud, and he answers me from his holy hill.”