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New Article From Creating Wome Ministries

What Do You Envision When You Pray?

As I was making dinner tonight, I had the television turned to a rerun of a situation comedy called, "The King of Queens." It's a filler show for me, companionable background banter to set my mind on a clear path of relaxation after a full day of thinking. This particular episode had the main characters, Carrie and Doug, landing themselves into Sunday Mass because they felt guilty running into their priest at the fish market. Unable to hold out the priest's silence and stare, after asking them when he would see them at church, "Sunday it is," pops out of Doug's mouth, much to his wife's frustration.

Doug settles into the idea pretty easily. Carrie must be dragged to church, literally, and only warms up to praying when she prays for a raise and it comes through. She hadn't quite envisioned such success, but having achieved it, there was no stopping her. Until she prayed for her priest to choose another fish at the market so she could have what she wanted, and the dear father ends up with food poisoning. Her husband suggests they should "leave prayer to the people who know what they are doing with it."

He has a point.

We all eventually come to a fork in the road, and the decision must be made. Are you ready for the power and impact that prayer can have in your life, or not?

Rosanna Arquette was. An actress, Ms Arquette spoke of her life-changing prayer experience on, "The View," several years ago. Her daughter was hospitalized with a severe illness that the doctors were not altogether sure they could cure. While sitting by her daughter's bedside, she prayed, and she literally felt the room fill with angels, large, beautiful angels sent from God to lift her daughter up in healing strength. The angels supported her and her daughter through her healing and restoration to full health. Ms Arquette's summation: "Prayer works. God is good."
The two stories, even though one is fictional, one very much grounded in reality, share a common thread, the belief that the power of prayer is very real, and does affect daily life. And so we return to the same question. Are you ready for the power and impact that prayer can have in your life, or not?

Are you ready to expand your understanding of how God works among us? Are you ready to visualize God in all kinds of new ways? Going back to Jesus' directives about prayer found in Matthew's gospel, are you ready to receive and offer forgiveness, for yourself, your neighbors and God? Are you ready to pay attention to events and lives around you for answers to your prayers? Are you ready to really commit to this relationship with God called prayer and all it can imply for your future?

I'm sure you have heard this time-honored phrase: you get back what you put into it. This is no more true than the relationships in our lives. How close do you feel to your spouse, your children, your friends, even your pets, if you aren't able to spend quality time with them? Most of us probably feel pretty miserable, somewhat guilty. Stretched out over time, and in the extreme, the minimized relationship becomes one of neglect and personal ruin. The distance becomes destructive and devastating. The joyful interplay, the teaching and learning and personal growth, all the God stuff of life falls away, unless we are willing to turn back in time, and really focus on the relationships that fill our lives with gladness and wholeness. What we put into our relationships does come back to us. The power to change our lives, for the better or the worse, is in the relationships we choose for our lives, and how we choose to managed them.
Our relationship with God, and how we choose to manage it, is no different. There is another time-honored saying, be careful what you pray for because it may happen. I would add, whether you think you are ready for it or not. This isn't a threat, but a promise to yourself to pay attention to your life, your belief in God, and how you think that plays our in this very real world we inhabit together. What we put into our prayer lives, our communication with God, will come back to us, if we open ourselves to the power and impact that God offers to us in the most profoundly simple and straight forward ways.

One of my previous jobs was managing a furniture store. When customers came in to make their purchases, it was part of my job to ask them questions to determine their needs, and how our product could help them meet their needs. What room will this chair be going into? What other prints are on the walls? How large/small is the room? All those questions to narrow down what they need, then the clincher: What kind of car do you drive? The company I worked for did not deliver, and even though the majority of the items we sold needed to be assembled once the customer brought them home, the question of transportation could be a deal-breaker. Will this item fit in you house? And, will this item be fit in your car so you can get it to your house? We had an easy pick up area, and we always helped customers put the boxes into their cars, but they still had to make the final decision for themselves. All the effort was usually quite worth it because even a small addition or shift in a room can transform it completely.

Not so different from prayer and God's response to us as you may think.

If we choose this relationship with God in the first place, then choose again, over the course of time to deepen that relationship, some things inside us are going to need to be moved around, adjusted, to make room for God to work. We also must consider the avenue we are creating by which God's presence will be brought to this new, open space in our hearts, minds and souls. God will meet us at the door and help us load up, but we will still need to be responsible for unloading and bringing the boxes inside, opening them up for ourselves, and placing them in these new spaces. Even a small prayer can transform a life completely.

How do you envision your life changing as you invest more deeply in your prayer life? Have you made way for the power and impact of God's response? Do you have room in your life for all that God has for you? Good questions to consider, now and over the course of a lifetime.

posted by Cory L. Kemp @ 6:12 PM