prayer beeper ...

Because I live alone and because I am a girl who needs to get her talking in even though I am typically a shy quiet person, I find it easy to talk to God especially in my alone moments. However, when I pray for someone, I find it very awkward to tell someone that I prayed for them.

I have to share a story Joni Eareckson Tada had on her program, Joni and Friends. A man had who was paralyzed for a short period of time (can't remember the name of his condition) requested prayer from all of his friends. This man's best friend went a step further and got a pager. He had the friends send a page to the beeper when they prayed for the paralyzed man. It was a huge blessing and great encouragement to hear that beeper go off many times an hour and even in the night. He knew the there were people around the world praying. It was a delightful story for me and got me to thinking .... even Joni challenged the listeners to text the ones they lifted in prayer.

I am still thinking because I don't want to come off pretentious or awkward.... I often wonder at the power of prayer and I don't think I will fully understand until Jesus pulls back the veil. I personally not sure that I have felt prayers of others.... like some say they have.... a big mystery to me....

I should do some clarifying. I have felt my own prayers. It is like a lesson from the one room school days. I am up front reciting (talking back) God's Word that I have hid in my heart. I can see parallels and opposites. I find dots to connect. I come away encouraged - His Words and Promises have that way about them.... No, I am not saying my prayer is more powerful than someone praying for me but rather the act of praying shores up my feeble faith and heartbreak. It is the act of crying out before the King of kings and knowing He bends down and takes me in His Arms and calms my fears ..

Francois Fenelon, a seventeenth-century Roman Catholic Frenchman, said this about prayer:

Tell God all that is in your heart, as one unloads one's heart, its pleasures and its pain, to a dear friend. Tell Him your troubles, that He may comfort you; tell Him your joys, that He may sober them; tell Him your longings, that He may purify them; tell Him your dislikes, that He may help you to conquer them; talk to Him of your temptations, that He may shield you from them; show Him the wounds of your heart, that He may heal them; lay bare your indifference to good, your depraved tastes for evil, your instability. Tell Him how self-love makes you unjust to others, how vanity tempts you to be insincere, how pride disguises you to yourself and others.

If you thus pour out all your weaknesses, needs, troubles, there will be no lack of what to say. You will never exhaust the subject. It is continually being renewed. People who have no secrets from each other never want for subject of conversation. They do not weigh their words, for there is nothing to be held back; neither do they seek for something to say. They talk out of the abundance of the heart, without consideration they say just what they think.


Daily Light : EVENING

We made our prayer unto our God, and set a watch against them.

Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation. -- Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving. -- Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you. Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: whom resist stedfast in the faith.

Why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say? -- Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.

Wherefore criest thou unto me? speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward.

Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

NEH. 4:9. Matt. 26:41. -Co1. 4:2. I Pet. 5:7-9. Luke 6:46. Jas. 1:22. Exo. 14:15. Phi. 4:6,7.