Years ago when I was finding some stuff really heavy going, I heard something that impacted my prayers, life and expectations so deeply it has stayed with me ever since. Prior to that moment, I spent most of my prayer time asking God to fix things, change things, alter circumstances, make people be a certain way… FIX things… amke it hurt less or be less hard… you know the drill…
With what was happeneing at the time, I was ripe ready for the words that I heard in church one day. It was my brother in law Paul talking as he led the service that day. I’m sure I’ll get some details wrong here but the essence remains true.
He spoke of his Dad who’d fought in The War. On the night before armed combat Pauls Dad prayed “don’t let me be a coward”.
Wow.
I’d have been begging to live, to get outa there, for everything to go away and not be true. I was amazed at the contrast of my lesser hardships and style of prayer to that situation and those words.
Since then it has been part of me to ask less for my list of what I think God should do, and more to ask Him to fill me with courage come what may. To thank Him for His promise to equip me do do His will and to work in me what is pleasing to Him. I’ve often wished that those moments with God, where He changes something so big in me in the blink of an eye- would happen more often. Maybe they can, should or will… but I’m so glad for these times that crop up like oasis in a desert. Often at the last gasp – there comes the Living Water.