The Trouble With Prayer Vacations

The peacefulness of a sleeping human is unlike anything else.

You know they aren't dead but they aren't really in the realm of where we are standing either. Often times I like to double check everyone before turning my lights out at night. Kissing and asking God to protect them from scary dreams and lures of evil. I see their angelic faces, their thoughts lost inside a world where I am not. I see them grow right before my eyes. They were a baby last time I checked them, weren't they? Just yesterday they were a tiny new baby, and then morning came, and now they are bigger. People always say, time flies. They aren't kidding!

What a wonderful time to pray over the children. Yes, it blesses them to hear your prayers for them, but to pray for them while they sleep, it feels different somehow. We have a drawing of a man bent over his child's bed obviously praying for his son or daughter. In the big window behind him, an Angel from the Lord is spreading his arms and wings preventing an evil angel from coming into the room where the sleeping child lay. I envision that picture often.

Because it's real. I know it is.

My prayers for my kids protect them from things that I will never know how they protected them or when.

Praying can be like that a lot. Not knowing where they go or how they are helping someone or a situation. It's like writing letters and requests and holding the paper in the wind and letting it go. Never seeing that it gets anywhere, but fully trusting that it will get exactly where it should get too. I think that's why us humans aren't very faithful in prayer is because we want results and we want to see, and touch and hear them now. Prayer is a highly powerful tool, that we don't use often enough. I know for me, when I get out of the habit of prayer, my life and attitude turn to mush. And I start relying on human beings to glue my brokenness together. And they can't. I must be patient. For He is patient, and many times slow to answer.
 
God doesn't do things our way. He doesn't need me. He wants me and He loves me and He will use me, but He doesn't need me.

If I won't do a job he is asked of me, He will find someone else who will. Understanding this concept can and does change the way I think about prayer. It becomes a privilege to speak with my Lord. I get to talk to Him!
 
Prayer molds me. There is power in it. And in all my 45 years. I feel like I have barely tapped into it.

I am on a journey. And I have come into the realization, I can not take breaks with prayer. I don't need them. Breaks and vacation from prayer hurts me. There can be no such thing. I don't actually intend on taking breaks, but it happens. The devils hand me more invites on a daily basis to do something other than prayer than there are tea bags in the Buckingham Palace pantry.

Some trials are downright nasty to me. How can I forget to give it away so I don't carry the ball and chain myself? Why am I so bent on keeping my trouble? I forgot. I had someone who would take it for me. And my consequence for not praying my troubles away, is stress. The stress of trying to be in control and knowing I can't control it. And I think we can ad, grouchiness to that too...
 
I must make prayer like the water I drink, the food I eat, the shoes I wear. It must be throughout my day, everyday. And it will change me. He loves me, but He doesn't need me...  but I need Him.
 
-Prudence
 
Colossians 4:2
Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful.
 
I recently finished a book I would recommend by Bob Russell called When God Answers Prayer. You may find it interesting, the man is amusing in his writing and conveys his points about prayer fairly clearly.