Called to Pray

So do not fear, for I am with you

Do not be dismayed, for I am your God

I will strengthen you and help you

I will uphold you with my righteous right hand

Isaiah 41:10

All around me, it seems, there is trouble. Family members struggling with betrayal, disappointment, upheaval, and heartache. Family members dealing with life threatening illnesses. Friends whose children and husbands are fighting for their health, for their normal, for their lives. Students whose parents have died, are dying, or have left. Friends that are longing for children that they cannot have, that have opened their hearts and homes to a child to come, only to have the door closed, God's answer...not yet. Entire countries being rocked to their foundation by disasters natural and man made.

There have always been hard times. There have always been people struggling. There have always been natural disasters. Perhaps I have been too wrapped up in my own little world of "not enough time, money, patience, talent, energy" to notice. Or perhaps God has in the past called me to focus my energy, my prayer, my service to my family.

Yet this morning, and every morning this week, I have been awoken at 4:00 am. This in and of itself is not unusual. Sleep and I have never been friends, and I find myself up throughout the night. What is unusual is my deep longing for fellowship with the Lord at 4:00, when usually the only fellowship I crave at that hour is with my pillow. The overwhelming desire to pray.

I will admit a bit sheepishly that I end every night with prayer, and more often than not, the prayer ends when my mind and body succumb to sleep. At 4:00 this morning, though, sleep was not coming. My mind was not wandering, except to the prayer list I keep in my Bible. Need after need after need running through my mind, my heart, my prayers. Romans 8:28. But why? But how?

This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, he hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have what we asked of Him. 1 John 5: 14-15