8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.
9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” Isaiah 55:8-9.
I was encouraging some dear friends today, parents of their 30-year old son who continues to struggle with addictions. I encouraged them to continue to pray and not to give up praying. I shared with them some of my prayers that I have prayed for decades.
I know from life experience that continued prayer is essential to the Christian life. We can never give up praying and trusting God with the answer to our prayers.
So today this blog is simple: if you are struggling with something or with a prayer you have been praying for years, please never give up on God.
When people ask me “Does prayer really work?”, I like to make this distinction: It’s not so much that prayer works, it’s that God has given us a huge gift of prayer to remind us that IT IS GOD WHO IS WORKING every moment of our lives to fill us with His grace and to forgive us. Prayer is God’s gift of communication between two lovers. Prayer reminds me every day of the text above and keeps me in prayer — without ever giving up.
There is a reason why Jesus, when He taught us to pray, told us to pray these words: “…may Your Kingdom come and Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” A friend told me once, that if we truly believe these words above from The Lord’s Prayer, we better learn to duck, because this is exactly what God wants for us all!
Lord, today we pray what we have been praying day in and day out. So let us trust You and be patient with Your mysterious ways. And may we never doubt for a second that in Your time and in Your perfect ways You will answer all of our prayers, in this life or in the next. And this is why we always pray in Your Name, amen.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me a sinner.
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