Begging for a Cookie

I've always had an issue with persistent prayer. 

I love the verse "Pray without ceasing."  I Thessalonians 5:16.  The thought that God calls us and asks us to pray without ceasing is an amazing thought. He wants to hear from us.  He hears us.  He is there.  What a great comfort!

Yet, here is my struggle.  I can come before my Father and thank Him.  I can come before Him and gripe and complain.  I can even come before Him and lay my requests at His feet.  And yet I struggle with the continual and repeated laying of the same request at His feet.  Repeating it time and time and time again. 

Here is where my rub lies.  Persistently praying for the same thing over and over again feels to me like a child who begs their parent for a cookie.  Please, Mom can I have a cookie?  How come I can't have a cookie?  Pleeeeaaassseeee, Mom, pleeeeeeaaaasssseee.  I've experienced this kind of thing time and time again.  After about the 10th time....I'm ready to pull my hair out and I want to scream:  "IF YOU ASK ME THAT ONE MORE TIME, YOU WON'T GET A COOKIE UNTIL YOU'RE 32!!"  So, I would come before my Father with my request.  Lord, I know you've heard this before.  I've asked you once and you know I'm going to ask you again......

And for the life of me I could not be bold before my Father asking Him again.  And again.  And again. 

I've prayed like this for years for my son, Luke.  He's struggled since day one with schooling.  I would wrestle with how to reword my requests so that it didn't sound like I was begging and pleading with Him.  Though that is exactly what I did.  I begged.  I pleaded.  I cried.  And God didn't "heal" my son and make him a great student.  After years of praying and searching, God gave me a "diagnosis"....and an action plan to help him.  He has refined my prayers for Luke.  More specific.  Step by step. 

Now I find myself praying for the healing of my Mom.  I'm specific with Him.  I want the tumor gone.  I want the cancer eliminated.  He isn't responding immediately.  (Though I'd like Him to, for sure!)  And so I must pray continually.  "GOD, I WANT MY MOM HEALED."  How many days will I have to pray that prayer before He lays the final answer down in HOW He will heal her?  And I wrestle. I wrestle with that feeling of being the petulant child who asks her Father for a cookie. 

This morning, on my walk, I began to think of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane.  He prayed multiple times: 

"Abba Father, everything is possible for you.  Take this cup from me.  Yet, not what I will, but what You will."  Mark 14:36

This cup that He referred to was the manner of death in which He was suppose to die.  As we know, it was gruesome, horrifying, incredibly painful and degrading.  Crucifixion.  Man's cruelty to man.

Jesus prayed so diligently for the cup to be removed from Him that the Bible says that:

"Being in anguish, He prayed more earnestly, and His sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground."  Luke 22:44

Such earnest prayer.  Jesus wanted to be removed from the cruel death He would face.  Ultimately, He wanted God's will more.  I find in this thought, I am beginning to feel more freedom to pray persistently.  It doesn't mean that God will fulfill things in my way.   My mother's healing is what I want so desperately.  I cannot change my prayer any other way. 

I. Simply. Can. Not. 

And so I will continue to pray.  Earnestly asking my Father to heal.  I think He's okay with that.  I think He understands.

Thank You.

The tending of Patience.

I'm finding I'm not a very patient person. 

Okay.  Wait.  I already knew that.

I guess I just long to be patient.  Actually, patience is suppose to be a fruit of the Spirit.  You know.....Love.  Joy.  Peace.  PATIENCE.

*sigh*

I hope that in some areas of my life that I have learned patience.  Yet, in the depths of my heart there is one area in which patience is not there.  Or at least it doesn't exist there naturally.  I must plant it, cultivate it, trim back the errant growth of worry and anxiety, I must continually nurture patience.

I don't know how to label that place of my heart.  It is the place that I wait for God to move.  To act.  To reveal Himself.  I think of the years that I have prayed and pleaded for God to move over Luke and his struggles with learning.  The verses that God would lay upon my heart would be things like: 
  
 “Be still, and know that I am God" Psalm 46:10

^"The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.” Exodus 14:14

Granted, God gave me many other verses that tended my heart; but, He hasn't chosen to remove dyslexia from my son.  He HAS given me resources, but He hasn't moved to remove. And I struggle.  I would love to say that I've got it all under control.  We've got a plan, we've got helps, we've got....and yet I must still Be Still and let God work His plan in Luke's life.  It is that tending of patience.  Weeding.  Pruning. 

Now, I'm in another place where I must tend patience in my life.  A terrible diagnosis in someone I love dearly.  I've done my fair share, in the short days since discovery, of pleading and begging for removal.  I war with my thoughts, demanding that the diagnosis, the cause, be removed.  CURE IT NOW. 

And yet I know: It will be long.  It will be a battle.  It won't be pretty.  And I must wait.  All I can do is pray.  And wait. 

Patience, my child.  Patience.

Shadowed Places

Have you ever thought of how closely light and darkness are connected?

Wait.

Pause.

Back the train up, Girlfriend.

 God is calling me to look at that statement a little closer. 

My first idea was looking at a leaf in brilliant light.  So bold.  So green.  Brilliant.  Yet, underneath that leaf, is darkness....a shadow.  One could not have light without having darkness right beside it.  And as I paused in that thought, I think God began to change change my direction.  Darkness doesn't really exist.  It is just varying levels of LIGHT. 

Looking at that from a spiritual point of view, as people have often equated darkness with sin, that statement of darkness doesn't really exist seems wrong.  We all know that sin is real. It is present.  We see the effects of it on a daily basis.  But what makes the Darkness of Sin non-existent is that the God of Light has overcome it.  Varying shades of LIGHT.  LIGHT WINS! Always. 

To God be the Glory!

This day, I feel like I'm walking in a shadowed place.  (Oh my, I find that God is speaking to me as I type!)  At first, it is scary.  Tragic.  I want to scream.  WHERE IS THE LIGHT?  And as I type that, I am enveloped.  Like a baby sparrow hidden in the wings of her mother.  Or should I say, Father?  My favorite image.  MY image.  My shadow is the shelter of His wings. 

In Him, I find rest.