If I am ever feeling a kind of spiritual dissonance or distance from the Lord, I can almost always trace it to prayerlessness. Last fall, one of my kids asked me about prayer, afraid that he wasn’t “doing it right.” I walked through tenants of the Lord’s prayer from Matthew 6 as well as the…
prayer
Gratitude, Our Fence
Eighteen years ago, I planted a garden for the first and, as it turns out, the last time. My neighbor at the time, a retired landscaper, offered to till up a corner of my yard with his landscaping equipment. He must have had a lot of faith in my gardening abilities, as evidenced by the…
Preparing for the Storm
As I write, the entire state of Missouri is bracing itself for a giant winter weather system that will bring a significant amount of freezing rain and ice with it. Where we’re located just south of Cape Girardeau, we find ourselves in this position often. My young son is praying for snow because we so…
Hearing His Voice
I found myself in tears again, sitting at the table with my head in my hands. I feel like I’ve downed a cocktail mixed of desperation and anxiety. It floods my veins with fear of the future. I hunger and thirst for wisdom with my never-ending prayer: “Lord, I don’t know how to parent this…
When God Takes His Time
I started praying for healing about fourteen years ago. I started praying for a baby twenty years ago. Of all the things I have prayed for in this life, those two things have topped my prayer list the longest. With an autoimmune disease that has only fairly recently been tamed, I’ve spent many agonizing nights…
Are They the Ones Who Pray All the Time?
For dinner that night, I’d roasted some potatoes and seared some spicy chicken (which my seven-year-old deemed way too hot). Before we ate, we grabbed hands as my husband prayed. He mentioned some news of the day in his prayer, things we wanted to remember before the Lord. A couple from church had suddenly lost…
Prayer and Mental Margin
I took a walk this morning, my first since getting over Covid. It was brutally cold, but I couldn’t resist layering on some warm clothes to take a stroll through my neighborhood. Being cooped up for the last several weeks, I’d forgotten how much I enjoy the quiet of a morning walk. While shivering through…
Until You Pray
There’s an old Puritan expression, “Pray until you pray.” I first stumbled across it when I read Tim Keller’s book on prayer a few years ago, and it’s stuck with me ever since. Pray until you pray. This little four-word exhortation captures what I often think about prayer but am hesitant to say aloud—that prayer…
I Wasn’t Half-Dead
I penned the name at the bottom of my prayer list. A friend had asked me to pray for her friend to come to faith in Christ, so I did. Each morning, I spoke the name to the Lord, asking for His saving power in their life. It wasn’t hard. It was important. And then,…
I Need You to Read Your Bible
“I can’t believe I’m asking you to pray for this,” I told my friend sheepishly. “It’s the dumbest prayer request. I mean, God has said no for such a long time, why am I still pushing for a yes?” I laughed into the phone, but an errant tear slipped down my cheek. “I want you…