Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Praying in Faith

I'm sure we've all heard the verse, "Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move." (Matthew 17:20) But, recently one of my best friend's mothers (shoutout to Mrs. Kelly if you're reading this) presented a question to me that rocked my world. Just how many of God's blessings do we miss because we're just not paying attention?

At the beginning of my spring break, I got together with 8 of my closest friends to have a fun little senior photo shoot. In the middle of taking pictures, the sun came out and it was beautiful! However, the brightness was not making our photos turn out how we wanted. Somewhat jokingly we all  thought of Matthew 18:20 (Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them) and decided we would just pray for the clouds to cover the sun so we could get the perfect lighting. We turned to face each other, grabbed hands, and I said a somewhat (or to me it was) silly prayer that went something like "Lord, thank you for the sun and how beautiful it is, but could you please just cover it up for a bit?" When I finished praying, we went on about our business and were cutting up like usual and just talking and having a great time. So much so that we didn't even notice that within just a couple minutes or less, our prayer had been answered  and the clouds had covered the sun. Mrs. Kelly, finally noticing what was occurring, quickly got us turned around and we got some of the most beautiful pictures we took all day. 

How often do we pray for things to transpire and get so occupied and distracted with other things that we fail to even realize the wonderful things our Heavenly Father is working out for our good right in front of our eyes? How many times do we pray and have little faith supporting even our smallest requests? I may have prayed that prayer, but I didn't trust that the Lord would actually fulfill what I had asked. We know that God makes all things work together for our good (Romans 8:28) so wait patiently with an expectant heart knowing that He will fulfill that promise to you. Don't become so distracted that you completely miss out on His blessings. (Even the small ones.)

God loves us so much, that even our most frail prayers or simple requests are taken seriously. What's important to us is even more important to him. Even something as simple as a picture.

-Amy