How to Pray

Lost Tooth

Megan Breedlove October 7, 2013 0Comment

A couple weeks ago, Lindsey lost a tooth. I mean, she really lost it.

Her tooth had fallen out at school, and the school nurse gave her a tiny plastic treasure chest to put the tooth in. When the neighbor brought Lindsey home, Lindsey came bounding up the steps to show me her treasure. The only problem was that when she opened the treasure chest, the tooth was no longer there.

We glanced quickly all around the porch, but no tooth. We traveled Lindsey’s route backwards to the neighbor’s driveway, but still we didn’t see the tooth. We asked the neighbor to look in her truck, but she didn’t see the tooth either.

Lindsey was crushed.

I made her come in and do her homework, because despite her grief, it had to be done. After she finished, Lindsey asked if she could search some more outside for the tooth. I agreed, and I helped her search. We all did. But no tooth.

Have you ever tried to search for a tiny, white tooth in a gravel driveway that had lots of small, white rocks, or in a yard that also had plenty of small, white rocks? We did. And we didn’t find it.

We still hadn’t found it by the time my husband came home from work. He helped look, and he didn’t find it either. Suppertime came, and I made Lindsey stop searching and come inside. She came obediently, but the minute supper was over, back outside she went, searching. “God, please let me find it,” I heard her praying over and over. “Please.”

I prayed too. In fact, we all prayed for Lindsey to find her tooth. Then I went back outside to help her search. It was getting dark. I was getting hopeless. Once again, we traveled the path between the neighbor’s driveway and our front porch without finding it. And then….

“Would you please ask your mom if we can look in y’all’s truck again?” I asked the neighbor girl, who was helping us search.

She went back inside, and soon I heard the locks on the truck click open. We began to search, Lindsey and me on one side, Gisselle on the other. “Is this your tooth?” Gisselle said suddenly, extending something toward Lindsey.

Lindsey took the object. She examined it. “Oh, thank you!” she exclaimed, wrapping the surprised Gisselle in a huge hug. “And thank you, God!”

Thank you, God, I prayed silently. You cared, and you answered.

The woman who was searching for a lost coin or the shepherd searching for a lost sheep (see Luke 15 for both stories) had nothing on Lindsey. She searched more than diligently, refusing to give up. She just kept searching and praying until it was found.

You and I would do well to be as diligent as Lindsey in pursuing our requests of God—to refuse to give up. It is true that God sometimes says ‘no’ to our requests. But when He hasn’t said no, we need to keep asking.

Too often, we don’t ask all that diligently because we don’t have much faith that God is going to do anything about our problem. We know that He can decline to grant our requests, and we figure He probably will. So we don’t ask all that hard. We ask a couple of times and then give up. Oh well, we tried. But Jesus says that isn’t the way we’re supposed to do it.

In Luke 18, Jesus tells the story of a judge who didn’t fear God or care about any of the people coming before him. Yet there was one poor woman who kept coming to the judge asking for justice—for him to do something. And the judge thought to himself (I’m paraphrasing here), I better just help her, or she’s going to wear me out by coming before me all the time! So he granted her request.

Jesus then made the point that if a mere man will help someone who keeps asking, how much more ready is God to help those who ask Him!

Again, it’s true that God sometimes says no. Sometimes, He says ‘wait’. But there are other times when we could have so much more than what we have if we would just ask for it, and keep asking.

What is there in your life that you need desperately? Are you asking God for it, or have you given up? My friend, don’t give up until God says ‘no’. Don’t put yourself in the position of missing out on something you could have had just because you gave up too soon.

Keep asking.

James 4:2b—You do not have, because you do not ask. (ESV)

Luke 18:1—Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. (NIV)

Sharing with Mommy

Megan Breedlove July 1, 2013 0Comment

My oldest daughter Ellie loves to read. She enjoys novels, to be sure, but she also enjoys reading magazines and books that tell her lots of information. When she comes across a particularly interesting fact, she likes to come share it with me.

“Mommy!” she’ll say, arriving at my side with an eager smile. “Wanna hear about….” and she’ll fill in the blank with the subject of whatever neat tidbit she has just discovered.

I love that Ellie is so eager to share with me. I hope that continues into her teen years and even beyond, into her adult years. That’s because I love her, and I love connecting with her in a fun and interesting way.

I bet God loves connecting with us in a similar way. In fact, I know He does. God’s always ready and waiting to hear from us when we pray. The only problem is, most of us aren’t interested in sharing with Him very often. When something interesting happens in our lives, we share it with our family, our girlfriends, and the entire world (via Facebook), but we rarely talk to God about it.

You see, God doesn’t just want us to pray when we need something. Just as we wouldn’t like it if the only time our daughter spoke to us was when she wanted something, so God wants us to speak to Him on a regular basis, not just when we need Him to do something for us.

The Bible commands us to pray with all kinds of prayers and on all occasions. But do we really? Most of us confine our prayer life to “thank You for the food” and “please bless all these people on my list”. Do we ever come to God for other reasons? Not very often.

We could, if we wanted to, come to God for anything at all, and He’d love to listen to us. We could talk to Him about our day, about how disappointed we were when our favorite baseball team lost in the playoffs, or about a funny joke we heard. True, it’s not like God doesn’t know all those things already. But remember that the purpose behind talking to God is not to convey information to Him, as Ellie does with me sometimes. The purpose in talking to Him is simply to be in relationship with Him.

It’s hard to have an intimate relationship with someone you never talk to, or whom you talk to only when you have a request. It’s much easier to relate to someone you talk to about everyday things, hopes and dreams, triumphs and failures.

Why don’t we talk to God this way? Maybe we think He’s not interested. Oh, but He’s interested in anything we have to say, simply because we’re His daughters. Maybe we think we don’t have time, but we all have time to shoot up a quick prayer now and then throughout the day, telling Him about something or thanking Him for something.

Do you talk to God on a regular basis? I hope you do. Is your prayer life confined to a list of requests? If it is, you need to broaden your conversations with God and talk about other things as well. God wants to be your Friend, not just your genie in a bottle. And with such an amazing, incredible Friend as He ready to listen to anything you have to say, why wouldn’t you take every chance you have to talk to Him?

Ephesians 6:18—And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. (NIV)

Close Enough

Megan Breedlove October 22, 2012 0Comment

I love the way little kids draw people when they are just learning how to draw. Usually they draw a head and two really long legs sticking out from the head all the way to the round-ish feet. Then, of course, they add two arms sticking straight out from the legs, each arm having a few (number varies) stick fingers protruding from the end of the arms (there’s never a hand). Not quite what people actually look like, but adorable nonetheless.

My 4-year-old, Jessica, went through this stage too. Then she got into drawing animals. I remember one early animal she drew for me (she regularly draws pictures and presents them to me as gifts). It was a giraffe. It had a head, a long neck, and a rectangle-ish body. So far, so good. It also had eight legs.

Close enough, right? Absolutely. I hugged Jessica and thanked her for her beautiful picture.

The thought occurred to me the other day that as far as Jessica knew, that picture looked just like a giraffe. It had a head, a neck, a body, and plenty of legs. It was even smiling. What more could a giraffe need? She didn’t recognize any differences between her picture and an actual giraffe.

That level of discernment is fine when you’re four. It’s developmentally normal and morally acceptable. The problem comes when we as moms apply that level of discernment to spiritual things.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength? Yep, I do that. I go to church regularly, I have a regular devotional time (or at least I try), and I listen to praise music. Got that one covered. Never mind the fact that your prayers consist of a whole lot of talking but very little listening, or that you can’t remember the last time your heart felt moved with passionate love for Jesus.

Love your neighbor as yourself? Got that one too. I volunteer at my child’s school, and I donate my used clothes to Goodwill. Never mind the fact that when your child wants to play with you, you are usually too busy.

When we can’t see the difference between what God intends by His commands and the level of our performance of those commands, we become spiritually blind. We’re like the Pharisees, who tithed a tenth of absolutely everything, even down to their spices, but neglected all the “heart” stuff that Jesus said was more important (Matt. 23:23).

Precious mom, are you deceiving yourself, or perhaps being deceived? If you’re absolutely certain that you see your heart and actions completely clearly, that’s a sure sign that you don’t. But whether you think you see completely clearly; whether you’re not certain whether you do; or whether you’re well aware that you’re being willfully defiant of God’s standards, you need to pray. Ask God to search your heart and reveal to you areas in which you are falling short. Of course, you have to be willing to hear what He has to say.

Don’t merely shrug and consider that eight legs is close enough.

Jeremiah 17:9—The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

Thanks to God and Scotch Tape

Megan Breedlove April 30, 2012 0Comment

My children often wait until I’m on the phone before they come up with things they just have to tell me right now. (Do yours do that?) Such was the case a few days ago when I was talking with a friend who’d moved to a city several hours away. I was sitting in my bedroom, on my bed, with the door closed, and Kenny still found me.

“Mommy, guess what?” he said.

“Just a minute, Kenny,” I said. “Mommy’s on the phone.” I made him wait several seconds while my friend and I came to a pause in the conversation. Kenny stood by patiently. “Okay, Kenny,” I said. “What do you need?”

“I just want to tell you I fixed my DS case,” he said. “It was split down the side, but I just used this.” He held up a roll of Scotch tape.

“Great, Kenny,” I said. “I’m glad you were able to fix it.”

“Oh, yes, ma’am, I was,” he said, heading for the door. He paused in the doorway to add, “Thanks to God and Scotch tape.”

When Kenny encounters a difficulty, he regularly prays for God to help him resolve it. I could just imagine a scene similar to others I have witnessed from Kenny in which Kenny knelt over the case with Scotch tape in hand, eyes closed, praying earnestly, “Please, God. Please help me fix this.”

I love Kenny’s understanding of what it takes to resolve a problem. (I also love that seeking God’s help has become a habit for him, but that’s a story for another week.) Kenny knows that when he encounters trouble, he should seek God, who cares about him and also happens to be all-powerful. He also knows that he needs to take action to help himself. Not action on his own, but with God’s help.

It would have been a less-than-best approach for Kenny to attempt the daunting task apart from God, that is, without asking God to help him. Likewise, it would have been wrong to ask God to help him fix the case, then sit there and wait for something to happen while refusing to act. Kenny understood what you and I need to understand, that usually we should do both—ask God’s help and be willing to put forth some effort ourselves.

It’s getting these two things in the proper balance that’s so difficult. Most of us tend toward one extreme or the other, either expecting God to just take care of things without our really having to do anything, or trying to fix a problem ourselves and only belatedly realizing we haven’t asked God’s help.

Those of us who tend toward the former are absolutely right in requesting God’s assistance, but we also need to be ready to work when He says, “Here’s how you can help yourself.” Those of us who tend toward the latter option are absolutely right that we need to be willing to work, but we should ask God’s help first rather than sometime later on.

Toward which extreme are you inclined? Are you more likely to feel paralyzed in your ability to act, or maybe hopeless that your actions could make a difference anyway? Or do you tend to find yourself calling a girlfriend, searching for answers on the internet, or realizing only after much exertion on your part that you haven’t even talked to God about the problem yet?

Either way, something needs to change. Usually, the right approach is one like Kenny’s—praying and then getting to work. Granted, there may be times when God fixes a problem completely apart from us, or when God helps us resolve a situation even when we haven’t talked to Him about it. But approaching the circumstances in either of those two ways presumes upon God’s grace. We can’t count on not having to lift a finger in our own behalf. Nor can we count on His blessing us in a certain way, especially when we’re full steam ahead on our own.

So if you, like me, find one of these approaches pretty natural, and even pretty frequent, ask God to help you change. Confess your sin to Him and tell Him you don’t want to presume upon His grace. But thank Him for that grace. For it’s only through His grace that anything at all will ever be resolved, no matter how that resolution comes about.

1 Kings 22:5—But Jehoshaphat also said to the king of Israel, “First seek the counsel of the LORD.”

Exodus 14:15—Then the LORD said to Moses, “Why are you crying out to me? Tell the Israelites to move on.”